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Summary: A book for our time: violent children, the pain and the hope
Review: The Nightmare is here. How many times have you wondered...will the end of life as we know it come with a nuclear holocaust, or a meteor, or a worldwide epidemic? An epidemic: perhaps a super tuberculosis, or an antibiotic resistant salmonella, or a mutant STD. A disease that will burn through us and leave the world silent. We are preparing for such a disaster as best we can, investing in vaccines, seeking methods of detection and cure. We grow pahtogens in test tubes and study them, gaining confidence in our control over their brutal powers. But the epidemic we fear is here, now, eating us away. It grows in no test tube, fears no medicines, and thrives on its own waste. It began several thousand years ago, in small pockets of humlan misery, making a carrier of each sufferer who helplessly transmitted the disease life-long to...children. And they, growing up, became carriers and expanded the range of destruction. No one knows where it started, but certainly it spread across the steppes of Russia, through India and Africa, and to Old Europe from whence it sailed to the New World bringing far worse than smallpox to the native peoples of America. It is here, with us, now, in the schoolyard bully and the child who murders, in the con man and the avaricious politician. It glimmers dully in the pale light of CAT scans and in the chemistry and structure of the brain. It is a failure to thrive, a loss of opportunity, a malnutrition of being. In their book, Dr. Magid and Carol McKelvey compile the data of destruction, the epidemic of our failure to our children. They note: "Infants deprived of...important sensory stimulation during the first months of life suffer dramatically. Severe mental retardation is often the result: with lesser degrees of abuse leading to children (and then adults) who can neither give nor receive affection, who are cruel, who engage in self-destructive behaviors, who lie, steal, and who themselves may continue the cycle of depravation on their own children. The aut! hors state that, "...prior to birth the fetus possesses a full complement of neurons and if these neurons are damaged there is virtually no regeneration...the goal during the later months of pregnancy and during infancy and early childhood is to get the neurons organized into patterns of responsiveness." Minimal brain damage may be caused by organic problems, or it "...may occur in a child who has not experienced the (parenting) necessary to get a reasonably organized nervous system", leading to 'unattached children'. "It is impossible to tell which unattached children will become serial killers, but we do know that some will become murderers. Others will become manipulators, thieves, con artists, wife-beaters and child abusers." This book includes life histories of both adult and child murderers, the causes and symptoms of failed development as well as the consequences of interrupted brain development and states: "The killers are just the tip of a massive iceberg. The message this book has for you is that the chances for increasing numbers of psychopaths are escalating. We must search for answers to the pressing social problems that are helping to create unattached children." If you only have time and energy in your life to become knowledgable and involved in one public issue, there can be no more urgent one than this. "High Risk" not only explains the biological basis for the rise in violence among children in our country, but also sets out reasonable and viable methods for turning the trend around. This is an excellent read and one of the important books of our time.
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Summary: The best book written regarding Attachment Disorder
Review: This book was a lifesaver for my family. I had unknowingly adopted a daughter with Reactive Attachment Disorder and this book was the insight I had into what was wrong. This book is well written and extremely accurate. My daughter who is now grown has read this book and feels that it is a very accurate representation of RAD. Unfortunately, the realities of RAD can be very frightening and often people try to discredit the information in the book due to their lack of knowledge.I highly recommend this book for any parent who is considering adopting or has adopted an older child. Knowledge will help you adopt a child that is appropriate for you family or provide you with the support you need to help a child you already have in your family.
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Summary: High Risk: Children Without a Conscience
Review: This highly publicized book was written in the late 1980's and contains outdated information. There is no medical proof that children with attachment issues will turn out to be the next Ted Bundy. In fact, Ted Bundy never had the diagnosis of Reactive Attachment Disorder of Infancy. The signs and symptoms listed in this book as indications of reactive attachment disorder more closely match the diagnostic criteria for conduct disorder. The authors create a false sense of urgency, to encourage parents to hurry off for controversial therapy, rather than take children to medical professionals who will take the time to make an appropriate diagnosis. Fear of unattached children is used to scare parents into seeking immediate attention. A better book to read would be It's Nobody's Fault: New Hope and Help for Difficult Children and Their Parents by Harold S. Koplewicz, M.D.
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Summary: Abuse is not the answer
Review: This is a very partial review: I couldn't face reading all of this book, because I felt physically sick. I got to the descriptions of "rage reduction therapy", and gave up in disgust and fury. This "therapy", also known as "holding therapy" entails one or more adults pinning a child to the ground and provoking them (verbally or using physical prodding or poking) until they are screaming with rage or fear. Supposedly, this allows the child to release all their past traumas and magically and instantaneously bond to their parents (bonding evidently being a form of psychological super-glue which can be poured on in a matter of days or weeks without the necessity of building a relationship). If this didn't have a pseudo-therapeutic rationale behind it (the authors even mention proudly that it was devised for treating autistic children, having failed to notice that autism has been conclusively shown to be neurological in origin), we'd call it child abuse. In fact, it has been heavily criticized by many experts, including authorities on working with traumatized and attachment-disordered children such as Beverly James (editor of the "Handbook for Treatment of Attachment-Trauma Problems in Children"), who argue that it only traumatizes and abuses the child further. Parents shouldn't be pressured into inflicting controversial and harmful treatments on their children by claims such as those in this book that unless they do their children will become sociopathic criminals. The behavioral and emotional problems of abused and traumatized children are very real, and very dificult for both adoptive parents and society in general to cope with. But this isn't the answer.
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Summary: Anyone remotely connected to children must read this book.
Review: Unlike the above reviewer (who didn't finish the book) I feel this was an extraordinary book that should be required reading to anyone who has any connection to children. I mean, if you ever were a kid, had a kid, taught a kid, or adopted a kid you must read this book. I adopted an 8 year old with an attachment disorder, and let me tell you, it ain't pretty.
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