The Perfect Child Quotes

“Children of trauma are experts at triangulation.” “Triangulation?” I asked. “The child will act a certain way with one parent and a different way with the other parent. They try all kinds of things to drive a wedge in the parents’ relationship.”
― Lucinda Berry, The Perfect Child

“She crawled up on my lap and whispered in her sweet voice, “I like hurting people. Do you?”
― Lucinda Berry, The Perfect Child

“I wished I were as optimistic as I pretended. I used to be. Not anymore.”
― Lucinda Berry, The Perfect Child

“No matter how many times I was questioned by the police, it never got easier. My nerves jumped into high gear automatically. They always made me feel like I was lying, even when I was telling the truth.”
― Lucinda Berry, The Perfect Child

“You can’t just give your kids away when it’s rough.” “You can if your kid is a monster.”
― Lucinda Berry, The Perfect Child

“It gave us an opportunity to miss each other, and sometimes you needed that in a relationship even when you loved each other as much as we did.”
― Lucinda Berry, The Perfect Child

“Parenting a traumatized child is horribly difficult. Most of them suffer from severe attachment issues, and mothers are usually the targets of their rage. It can get pretty awful.”
― Lucinda Berry, The Perfect Child

“It never crossed anyone’s mind that someone else might be in trouble. I wished it would’ve. Maybe then things would’ve ended differently.”
― Lucinda Berry, The Perfect Child

“I wished I lived in a world where I didn’t know violence intimately, but I’d seen more than my fair share, given the work I did.”
― Lucinda Berry, The Perfect Child

“Why did the universe allow people who hurt kids to have them? Why couldn’t it give them to people like me, who wanted them?”
― Lucinda Berry, The Perfect Child

“Christopher scoured Amazon, overnighting books to the house so we could take a crash course in working with traumatized children.”
― Lucinda Berry, The Perfect Child

“No man understood what it was like for a woman not to have a baby to hold.”
― Lucinda Berry, The Perfect Child

“The house was dark when I got home. Stillness enveloped it. I opened the door quietly and stepped over the spot on the wooden floor where it creaked. I tiptoed through the living room and into the hallway. Janie was already sleeping. It was too early for her to be asleep. Hopefully she wasn’t sick. Our bedroom door was shut. I put my ear up to the wood, straining to hear anything. I wasn’t going to wake them if they were asleep. I’d sleep on the couch. It was worth a terrible night of sleep if Hannah got a chance to rest. My heart sank when I heard whimpering.”
― Lucinda Berry, The Perfect Child

“They’d officially diagnosed Janie with child abuse syndrome. People always assume sexual abuse is the worst kind of abuse that a child can endure, but it’s not. It doesn’t have the kind of lasting effects that you see in kids who’ve been severely neglected.”
― Lucinda Berry, The Perfect Child

“I didn’t like labeling children with psychological disorders. They were too young to be slapped with mental health diagnoses.”
― Lucinda Berry, The Perfect Child

“There was nothing better than the feel of the sun on your skin after a long winter.”
― Lucinda Berry, The Perfect Child

“See, that’s what I was saying last night—we need a girls’ weekend. It’s been way too long,”
― Lucinda Berry, The Perfect Child

“Fine,” she huffed. But nothing was fine. We both knew that.”
― Lucinda Berry, The Perfect Child

“What are you talking about? We can’t just give her back—we’re her parents. Her parents, Hannah. Whether you like it or not, that’s what we signed on for.” His body shook as he tried to control his anger. “You can’t just give your kids away when it’s rough.” “You can if your kid is a monster.”
― Lucinda Berry, The Perfect Child

“Lillian had only been gone for three days, and Hannah was already stretched to her limit again. Cole was a voracious eater and fed every two hours, sometimes sooner, and she wasn’t sleeping more than a few hours at a time. Even when she slept, she wasn’t completely relaxed. She jolted awake at the slightest sound. Cole was in a bassinet next to our bed, and she obsessively woke up to check and see if he was breathing, terrified of SIDS.”
― Lucinda Berry, The Perfect Child

“I ordered a carpet cleaner on Amazon today.” I raised my eyebrows. “We don’t even have any carpets.” “We have rugs,” she said like that explained everything.”
― Lucinda Berry, The Perfect Child

“The questions went on and on. They spoke around me like I wasn’t there. I couldn’t keep up with the plot or process the information correctly. The sound of Cole’s skull as it cracked against the side of the porcelain tub interrupted everything they said, everything that was going on around me. It forced its way in unbidden. He was never supposed to get hurt.”
― Lucinda Berry, The Perfect Child

“A sense of impending doom filled every room in our house. The smell of urine hung in the air no matter how much I cleaned because Janie peed everywhere like a dog that wasn’t housebroken. I couldn’t even be in the same room with her, and just the sound of her voice made my skin crawl. Waves of fear pummeled me. As soon as my heart sped up, so did my breathing. It was only a matter of seconds before I was gasping for air.”
― Lucinda Berry, The Perfect Child

“Please, I’m trying to understand. How could you hurt your mommy?” She crawled up on my lap and whispered in her sweet voice, “I like hurting people. Do you?”
― Lucinda Berry, The Perfect Child

“I know we always said that we didn’t want a nanny, but that was before we had two children and realized how hard it was to juggle everything. I’m having a hard time managing all of it myself.” I didn’t want her to think it was only about her. I was struggling too.”
― Lucinda Berry, The Perfect Child

“I didn’t give her an opportunity to say no. She’d changed into her pajamas and washed her face when I came back. She looked so worn down. The bags underneath her eyes grew bigger each day.”
― Lucinda Berry, The Perfect Child

“Postpartum pregnancy hormones are brutal, but you’ve got to be near the end of them,” he said. “Things will be better soon.” His words were positive, but they were forced, and he still hadn’t looked at me. Why wouldn’t he look at me? It made the situation more uncomfortable, and things were already weird enough.”
― Lucinda Berry, The Perfect Child

“fell in love with my baby boy instantly, marveling at his perfection and that he’d lived inside me for so long. My feelings stemmed from the deepest parts of me. He wasn’t a stranger in my arms—it was like a missing piece of myself had been returned.”
― Lucinda Berry, The Perfect Child

“I looked at Hannah again. She stared back at me. She didn’t have to speak to let me know what she was thinking. This was more than a bump in the road. It was a sinkhole.”
― Lucinda Berry, The Perfect Child

“These kids tend to be very manipulative and controlling. They’re constantly trying to pit people against each other, like we’ve talked about before with the ways she tries to triangulate the two of you. They can make friends, but they have a hard time maintaining them once their friends actually get close to them. The biggest concern we have is when they start to hurt other people or animals. It’s a huge red flag. I’m glad you guys came in when you did.”
― Lucinda Berry, The Perfect Child