Today’s guest author is John Greally. John, 58, a statistician, is a serial co-founder of many autistic organisations that work for better lives for autistics globally and in New Zealand. As an autistic, son of an autistic, and father of an autistic, John supports all efforts to transform autistic lives stuck because of old intractable approaches that are going nowhere or are harmful, to ones informed by autistics and their unconditionally loving allies – away from the manipulative operant conditioning of ABA and PBS, towards acceptance, nurture, and freedom. John is married to beautiful Emma Dalmayne, successful international fighter against MMS bleach and so many other quackeries and abuses levelled at autistics, especially children.”
Today John will share some of his thoughts on the book The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog by Dr. Bruce D. Perry and Maia Szalavitz.
Creative and Compassionate insights abound in this book.
It could help in understanding trauma and how relationship dynamics play an essential role in healing.
It could help understand self-injurious behaviours.
It could help faster recovery from PTSD, recovery on a sounder footing too.
It could turn around the impacts of neglect, abuse, harm, and poor or traumatic attachment.
It could further the “why” line of enquiry and sleuthing needed to comprehend unexpected or less common child experiences and reactions.
It could assist foster carers charged with the care of children from adverse backgrounds.
Stories are about 20% of the book, and a discussion of research and findings, failures and successes, mainly occupies the other 80%.
Where a child shows unexpected or sustained resilience and where another might show no or flagging resilience is considered… an eye-opener.
Also discussed are some hidden regulators that exist in children’s lives by which they stay calm. And the real importance of attuned carers to responding appropriately to a child’s emotional age rather than to the chronological age.
Dr. Perry makes this an intense but still surprisingly easy read for everyone, though necessarily harrowing in parts as it must introduce what certain humans have experienced of the very worst this world has to offer. It’s a ‘can’t put it down’ book.
Goodreads members gave it 99% thumbs up. Appropriate for a book that could be themed as being more about … “Untragedy’… than developmental trauma.
~ ʎllɐǝɹƃ uɥoɾ
