A review by georgiasbookescapes
The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook by Bruce D. Perry

challenging dark informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog is a well known book by Dr Perry, and for good reason. It looks into different traumas experienced by children and what they taught Dr Perry about loss, love and healing despite their traumatic events. Dr Perry explains different highly traumatic stories but from there, what he learned about how these traumatic experiences can affect the brain and reactions and how we can learn to support people through these traumas. I purchased the revised edition with further notes by Dr Perry 10 years after the initial publication where he shares embarrassment at some of reported feelings he notes in the initial stories. By doing this Dr Perry shows the need to recognise the importance of growth and how our understanding of best responses and understanding what is occurring is ever evolving. This book was extremely informative to me. 

I cannot stress enough how traumatic some of these stories shared are - child abuse, attempted murder, witnessed murder, children murdering others. So if you decide you want to read it please do, but also take care of yourself whilst you do. 💕