The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook

by Bruce D. Perry

This history also included the nature, timing, and quality of resilience-related factors, such as connection to family, community, and culture. Together, these findings gave us an estimate of the “developmental risk” that the individual had experienced at key times and developmental stages. This allowed us to “measure” the timing of developmental risk.

Many studies of children with these diagnoses never even assess whether they have been abused, neglected, exposed to violence, or otherwise suffered potentially traumatic experiences—even

Moreover, there is no existing DSM category that captures developmental trauma adequately.

To begin, we intentionally stopped giving “labels” to individuals and started creating “pictures” of their developmental journey and their current brain organization and functioning.

it helped reduce stigma for our clients and made them feel less broken and alien.

This gave them more control, more ownership, and more hope—all of which have been shown to help healing, in and of themselves.

the “punishment” room has now become more of a regulation area, where a teacher helps guide children to regulating activities—basically, whatever that particular child has previously found helpful—to help them calm down enough to return to class.