The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook-- What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love, and Healing by Bruce D. Perry, Bruce Duncan Perry, Maia Szalavitz, Maia Szalavitz

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Synopsis

A world-renowned child psychiatrist takes us inside his pioneering work with trauma victims to offer a groundbreaking new perspective on how stress and violence affect children’s brains-and how they can be helped to heal

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Children who suffer early trauma seem to have different rates of recovery, and some never recover. In this collection of stories, Dr. Perry tells of a number of children he helped. Most had difficult or even horrible childhoods, often full of misguided parenting, abandonment, or torture. Through the stories, he teaches the reader about the human brain and how it can be hurt and healed. In a number of stories, he tells of similar situations with different outcomes. He tells the story of Leon, who at the age of 16 rapes and murders two young girls. Leon was raised by a well-meaning mother who successfully raised an older sibling; the biggest difference was that when the mother (who was mentally impaired) lost her support system, she didn't understand the impact of leaving the younger boy alone, and basically abandoned the baby during the day. Another child was also left home alone in his crib by the caretaker/cousin hired by his parents, who didn't discover his neglect for over a year. This child was able to recover because he had some affection and care when his parents were home. Peter was raised in an orphanage in Russia for three years that left him infantile in some ways and developed beyond his years in others. Dr. Perry actually trained his first grade classmates to understand brain development so that they could help Peter gain the steps he was missing. The boy in the title story was raised by his grandmother his first year, but when she died, he was left with a step-grandfather who only knew how to raise dogs and treated the child like a dog, leaving him in a crate most of the time. Dr. Perry shows great understanding and respect for these children, which enabled him tocomprehend their level of development and help them move forward. Reviewer: Nola Theiss

Biography

Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D. is the Senior Fellow of The ChildTrauma Academy, a Houston-based non-profit organization which promotes innovations in service, research and education in child maltreatment and childhood trauma. He has served as a consultant to the FBI and is the former Chief of Psychiatry at Texas Children's Hospital, as well as former Vice-Chairman for Research in the Department of Psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine. He lives in Houston, Texas and Alberta, Canada. Maia Szalavitz is an award-winning journalist who specializes in science and health. She is the author of Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids and Recovery Options: The Complete Guide with Joseph Volpicelli, M.D., Ph.D. She lives in New York City.