Customer Reviews

Through the Eyes of Children

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Each story in this book deals with an "animal child" who has a problem dealing with some aspect of his parent's divorce and, with the help of some caring adult, reaches a solution for coping.

The stories are unsophisticated and the morals are "too obvious," and the book obviously is written for young children. So I expected mine - ages 9 and 8 - to be bored silly. To my surprise, they can't get enough of this book!

They apparently the directness and the clear relevance to their own dilemmas.

Based on this unexpected response of my own kids, I highly recommend it for any children of divorce from pre-school AT LEAST through the age of nine!

I'm a full time family law mediator ... and my mediation partner is a marriage and family therapist who specializes in parenting plans for divorcing couples. We recommend this book to all of our clients with age-appropriate children. We particularly like the sand turtle story--it's touching, sweet, simple, and it gets the point across, i.e., the sand turtle and the sea turtle can't live together but they're both loving parents to their baby turtle.
[...]

The stories are based on important themes that children can relate to. It serves an important role in assisting kids to process these painful issues in psychotherapy.

My 6 year old son says that he feels better after we read the stories in this book. They are stories of animals who have divorced in various different scenarios, relating to high conflict, low conflict, and many other types of divorce. I am so glad that I got it. It was recommended by the Kids' Turn website. Kids' Turn is an organization that provides education to families going through divorce. They are very well respected.

I have brought this book by JR Johnston for the purpose of providing group counselling/parenting to parents who are having difficulty focusing on the needs of their children at times of emotional crisis and/or trauma in their lived such as separation or divorce. I have given the book five stars because I believe it is excellent in understanding children and their behaviour.

After extensive research in the area of trauma and domestic violence, including personal experience, I've come to realize that while Johnston puts on a good "understanding" front, she clearly has no clue about what really goes on behind closed doors and consistently assigns blame to the the victims instead of the abusers. As a result, much of her work and "typing" of such situations has done VAST damage to victims. I would recommend ... STRONGLY ... that everyone read books by Lundy Bancroft before purchasing any of Johnston's work. His work is the first, and only, to date, that I've read that truly, honestly depicts the true nature of abuse and the effects it has on children.