Our vacation is coming to an end and it has been wonderful.  Vacation with kids from the “hard places” is unique and Russ and I have had to adjust our expectations.  As structure decreases, anxiety increases, and behavior gets more volatile.  We are trying to keep everyone’s hearts filled up with love and wear the kids out on the beach…but we’ve had some tough moments.  Fortunately the great moments far outweigh the challenging ones!

Tomorrow Russ and the guys head home while I head to my sister’s as we wait for appointments on Thursday and Friday.

I just finished reading 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.

I wish I had read it sooner.  As I seek to understand my children, and other children we know, I want to grasp all that I can.  It is enlightening to get a glimpse of the ways the brain is literally shaped and affected by trauma.

This is an engrossing book that grabs you and is hard to  put down. While the children’s stories are very sad, most of them are hopeful.  I personally found certain chapters hard to read as I thought about my own little ones.

Perry writes:

Troubled children are in some kind of pain — and pain makes people irritable, anxious and aggressive. Only patient, loving, consistent care works; there are no short term miracle cures. (p. 244)

and

I also cannot emphasize enough how important routine and repetition are to recovery…The longer the period of trauma, or the more extreme the trauma, the greater the number of repetitions required to regain balance. (p. 245)

Bruce Perry is a staunch evolutionist, which makes for some interesting thoughts, yet he is offering a great work to the world.

Have you read it? What did you think?

~Lisa