An articulate, highly informative, and enjoyable puppy-parenting primer.
A guide for compassionately helping puppies, rescue dogs, and older traumatized canines live their best lives, based upon neuroscience and strategies developed for aiding at-risk children.
At the time the highly respected parenting guide The Connected Child: Bring Hope and Healing to Your Adoptive Family (2007), coauthored by Sunshine, was about to be published, the author adopted a fragile puppy. The tiny brown pup, part of a litter born behind a gas station, was but several weeks old; the puppy had been separated from her mother and siblings too early to learn any rules of the jungle and was painfully frightened, dehydrated, and loaded with worms. After dealing with the medical issues, it was time to teach Hazel, as the increasingly wild brown ball of fluff came to be called, how to become a good canine citizen. But, as Sunshine writes, “Puppy training guides failed me. Nothing in their pages explained what to do with a scrambling, out-of-control bundle of teeth and claws.” And then she was struck by a thought that has resulted in this lucid and informative volume: Perhaps the pages of The Connected Child held valuable insights for raising a puppy. (Like pre- and non-verbal children, dogs communicate their needs to anyone who pays close attention.) Taking a calm, nonjudgmental approach to understanding Hazel’s behavior in terms of her underlying neurological and emotional needs—much as she would with at-risk children—the author began rewarding the pup for “good” behavior and giving her “do-overs” for her mistakes. Sunshine’s guide adopts the approach of “therapeutic parenting,” in which the pup is given the benefit of the doubt. Despite copious neurological and biological discussions, the text is easily understandable—it’s an approachable compendium of scientific research and fascinating “reflections from the field” case studies from like-minded experts. A bonus is the inclusion of surprising and intriguing behavioral tidbits, such as the small-scale study conducted in a rescue facility showing that dogs who raised their inner eyebrows were adopted more quickly. The techniques advocated here are designed to offer puppies (and difficult older dogs) patient, compassionate instruction that relieves their anxiety and leads to close bonding between canine and human.
An articulate, highly informative, and enjoyable puppy-parenting primer.Pub Date: May 28, 2024
ISBN: 9780757324956
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Health Communications Inc.
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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