Books

Reviews Elsewhere – The A-Z of Therapeutic Parenting by Sarah Naish

ByMikeM Reading Time: 1 minute

I found this review by Ali about Sarah’s book. It’s not necessarily for everyone, but I think if you’re a parent of a child who has been through trauma, whether you’ve adopted them as Suzy has, or your biological child has been through trauma, this book might come in handy.:

As a mum of two through adoption, I’m always researching and reading. I’d message other parents I’ve got to know on Instagram, asking if their children had experienced similar things. The answer was yes and one of the recommendations was this book.

When I read the “Basics” chapter, I had a lightbulb moment. Was Sarah describing my son? Soon I realised that a lot of children who’ve experienced trauma and neglect, can (not always) have very similar behaviour traits. Obviously, they come in all different shapes and sizes. But all those behaviours were what I couldn’t quite describe, because sometimes I just couldn’t find the words Sarah has.

So, while I’m an adult survivor, I know there are some folks who read this blog, or follow on social media because they are parenting, or fostering, kids who’ve been through their own traumas in their young lives. If that describes you, maybe take a look and see if this book can be a resource for you.

Or, perhaps if the book isn’t your thing, maybe take a look at the We made a wish website about adoption, for more resources and to connect with others!

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Mostly though, it’s just luck. Just as I’ve mentioned many times that I was privileged and lucky enough to be able to get help to learn how to deal with my trauma, I was also lucky enough to have only been homeless for a little while, and to have not had a violent or disruptive outburst that led to my being imprisoned or killed.

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As a society, we have, rightfully, tried to move away from doing those things, but we haven’t really gotten better at helping people build resiliency. Is it any wonder that we had an epidemic of anxiety, even before COVID-19? We’ve kind of left people with an uncertain world, in which anything can just randomly happen to anyone, while leaving intact our belief systems that teach us that the world is fair.

It’s not. It’s not even close, and yes part of the reason it isn’t fair is that there are bad people in power doing bad things, but even if we could rid ourselves of that as much as possible, (and we should), the world would still be a random place where random things happen, for no good reason.

There would still be natural disasters, accidents, and yes, even abuse and crime. There would still be people with disabilities, mental and psychical, and there would still be victims. Because we’re human, and being human is kind of messy and random.

That’s not going anywhere. The challenge is to find the resiliency to live our lives anyway. This is where we’ve failed too many people, and where we have failed ourselves, finding comfort in false “explanations” instead of facing the hard truths.

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