The final two chapters of The Boy who was Raised as a Dog seem to
summarize the ideas that Dr. Perry believe are the key to helping disadvantaged
children. Chapter ten is titled The
Kindness of Children and it involves a little boy named Peter and his adoptive
parents Amy and Jason. Amy and Jason adopted Peter from a Russian orphanage
when he was three-years old. Peter was seven when his parents took him to see
Dr. Perry. Peter had a history of speech and language problems as well as
challenges with attention and impulsivity. Peter also had some social and
academic challenges in school.
The orphanage that Peter lived in
for the first three years of his life could be equated to a warehouse filled
with children. The room he lived in had about sixty children in it with two
caretakers on shift every eight hours. The children there received no
individual attention from adults. They were essentially caged in cribs. The
children in the orphanage turned to each other and somewhat became parents to
each other. They would hold hands through the bars of their cribs they even
created their own type of language to communicate with each other. It was
probably the interaction that the children had with each other that helped
limit the damage that occurred in Peter and the other children.
When Jason and Amy adopted Peter,
they knew that they would have to provide extensive help for Peter. Once in the
United States, Peter worked with speech and language therapists, occupational
therapists, physical therapists, and mental health providers to help him
develop more normally. Peter had improved dramatically over the four years he
had lived with his parents but the progress was very slow. Amy and Jason took
Peter to Dr. Perry after he seemed to plateau once he started school. Peter had
a somewhat fragmented development. In some aspects Peter was a seven-year-old
boy, but in other developmental aspects he was still a toddler. This fragmented
development made it extremely difficult to parent Peter because Amy and Jason
often had to shift their parenting strategies with Peter.
With this good foundation in place
for Peter the subject of school needed to be broached. When Peter went to
kindergarten, he had a very hard time because the other children did not
understand Peter’s bizarre behavior. Peter didn’t understand the social cues
that take place in a classroom and because of his behavior he was marginalized
in school. This seemingly very difficult situation regarding school and Peter’s
interactions with his peers actually wound up being the best treatment for him.
Dr. Perry decided that he wanted to try to make Peter’s class into therapists
for him. Dr. Perry and Peter went to Peter’s first grade class and taught the
students a little bit about the brain and how it develops as you are growing.
Dr. Perry then explained Peter’s situation to the class and explained that the
beginning of Peter’s life was very different than the beginning of their lives.
Dr. Perry explained that Peter’s brain didn’t start learning all the things it
should have until he went to live with his parents and Perry asked them if they
would just be Peter’s friend because Peter learns so much from playing and
being around them.
This conversation with first
graders was instrumental in changing the way that Peter was viewed by his
classmates. The students essentially provided therapeutic experiences and
helped Peter to catch up to them developmentally. All people fear something
that they do not understand. With this new understanding of Peter’s unique
situation, the students worked to help Peter instead of ostracizing him. From
every situation expressed in this book, Dr. Perry found that “relationships are
the agents of change and the most powerful therapy is human love.”
The final chapter of The Boy who was Raised as a Dog is
titled Healing Communities. In this
chapter, Dr. Perry doesn’t present a case that he had seen; he essentially
summarizes everything that he has learned as a child psychiatrist. It is in
this chapter that I find the most compelling argument about what needs to be
done in our society to help these children who have dealt with such trauma.
Ultimately, relationships with people matter. These relationships are the
single most important tool that is needed for healing to take place.
Unfortunately, so many of the children that are the most likely to experience
trauma are the least likely to have a supportive family and community. People
need healthy relationships in order to be mentally healthy. People need to be
shown love in order to learn how to love themselves and others. The system in
America for dealing with abused and traumatized children is far from perfect.
In fact, this system is wholly inadequate for handling the problem and they
often hurt the situation more than they help the situation.
This is where the church can come
into play. The relationship between the church and modern culture is very
difficult. In this situation, I believe that Christians and the church have the
ability to transform our culture into something that is helpful for these children.
There are so many opportunities to help. You can start at the beginning, in an
attempt to help prevent trauma, neglect, and abuse by changing the treatment of
new parents and infants. A little bit of knowledge about the development of
children and how to support parents can go a long way. Christians should help
create the community that can help families when they need it. People can learn
what to look for during development. Something as simple as knowing that a baby
not crying at all should be just as much of a concern as a child that cries all
the time. Our society needs to not just focus on the intellectual development
of children but also on the emotional needs of these children. We should want
to have future generations that are not just intelligent, but children that are
able to reach their full potential in all aspects of their life.
The church should have a major
focus on building relationships, not just for adults but also for children.
Relationships are one of the most important aspects of life. Our brain is use
dependent, if we do not use the emotional, relational parts of our brain, they
will not continue to develop and will eventually whither away leaving an
underdeveloped brain. Christians can help teach parents about how to raise
children in order to help them reach their full potential. Christians can help
the children who have experienced trauma, abuse, or neglect and help them to
heal from their injuries, both physically and emotionally. The call of
Christians is to love your neighbor and these children need love more than
anything else. I believe wholeheartedly that Christians can help create a
loving and caring community in order to prevent abuse from happening and also
to help those who experience it to recover most fully.