Clinical distancing undercuts Eichenstein’s otherwise compassionate advice for parents of atypical children.
As a pediatric neuropsychologist, Eichenstein tries to answer all of the questions parents ask when their children are diagnosed with dyslexia, autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, OCD and other brain differences that affect learning and development.
The questions include: Is this a lifelong disorder? Will she get better? What interventions should we try? In addition, the author attempts to answer some of the questions they don’t ask: How could this be true? Is this my fault? Am I a bad parent? Drawing on the emotional stages of grief described by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross—denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance—Eichenstein makes the case that parents of atypical children often go through a similar process, the “five stages of acceptance,” when facing their children’s diagnoses. In occasionally repetitive chapters, the author addresses each phase and provides definitions of various disorders, as well as a sprinkling of composite case studies. There’s a lot of useful information here and a clear intention to acknowledge parents’ struggles, but it often reads more like a clinical—and sometimes-critical—assessment of the parents. For instance, Eichenstein dismisses parental attempts to search for alternatives to conventional advice as evidence that they are in a denial or bargaining phase. To those who want to research the diagnoses themselves, she writes, “[m]ost people do not have the time…and even if they did, they would not understand what they were reading.” Leave it to the professionals, she seems to be saying, a message that may put off many readers. The author’s suggested remedies include a menu of self-help therapies like meditation, self-compassion and cognitive reframing. The author provides support, with a side of scolding, for parents facing a child’s diagnosis with a neuropsychological disorder.
Clinical distancing undercuts Eichenstein’s otherwise compassionate advice for parents of atypical children.Pub Date: April 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-399-17176-5
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Perigee/Penguin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 6, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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