If we could clone the author on a massive scale and make her services accessible to all children with diverse nervous systems, this book would be unnecessary, and the world would be a healthier, happier, more loving place. Until then, "Parenting Your Porcupine" can get us closer.
For over 25 years I have taught providers and parents the importance of relationships, brain function, and stress reduction, and always emphasize the difference between willful misconduct and brain-based glitches. I realize I've only skated on the surface of the understanding needed. This book will help me shed much further light on the realities of our children and what can help make things better.
Drawing from her vast knowledge, clinical experience, and research, Antonia Rathbun Lindsey brings us into the actual workings of the body and lets us see what might be causing the resistance, rage, or shutdowns that so plague our neurodiverse kids and the families doing their best to raise them. She shows us compassionate and creative ways to calm and relieve these little nervous systems, always
keeping an eye on the caregiver's well-being.
The journey through this admittedly intense book is graced with beams of light, humorous writing ("the neurotypical infant molds to the caregivers embrace like a little sack of lentils, versus stiffening and arching (Moro reflex) or the other extreme, going limp and completely falling asleep with the floppiness of a stewing chicken (hypotonic). Either extreme disrupts an infant's ability to feed
successfully").
The author also goes beyond recognizing and respecting cultural differences to a fierce advocacy for healing historical wounds and their neurobehavioral effects. Most early childhood clinicians do not have this profound and complex knowledge, nor the creativity and compassion that drive the author of this book. But for all of us parents of neurodiverse children and professionals serving them, Parenting Your Porcupine can infuse us with enormously helpful, at times delightful, and always, at the bottom, loving perspective.
­- Dr. Kathryn Page