Meltdown Moments [children's book] - Anne Sved Williams, MD

[PearlsBefore]

Meltdown Moments Author: Anne Sved Williams and Marie Jonsson-Harrison Publisher: Women and Children's Health Network, Gov't of S. Australia. 2018 Paperback: 20 pages ISBN-10: 0646982508 ISBN-13: 9780646982502

Book description:
A rhyming story written expressly for the young children of parents with Borderline Personality Disorder, it does not expressly mention BPD except in the materials for adults at the back of the book. Because I believe it's important to know the given names of characters in children's books to avoid giving your own children unhealthy associations by accident - the two children are named Nate and Jane, and the parents are simply Mum and Dad.

Review:
"Mummy is crying, says SHE's been bad./Dad says "You're sick", Mum says "I'm mad!".

"Now Mum's in a class to learn to be calmer/To help stop the anger and all that drama."

There are too few children's books about dealing with maternal BPD to fairly review and compare them; the few that exist all help fill a terrible void in such publishing. That said, this one is really better than most in that it presents a didactic story rather than a lecture to the children. Together with its (occasionally frenetic) illustrations, it even manages to touch on the fact physical abuse can be a reality, medical intervention and support groups, that one of her two children is also now exhibiting symptoms of BPD, and that "Sometimes she's better, sometimes no way!"

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About the author...

Anne Sved Williams, MD, FRANZCP, is a perinatal and infant psychiatrist and is the Medical Unit Head, Helen Mayo House, Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Services, Women’s and Children’s Health Network, SA; and is on the medical sciences faculty  at University of Adelaide in South Australia. Williams trained in family therapy at the Ackerman Institute for the Family in New York, in 1976–77.

In 1979, she was one of two women invited to join the original Editorial Board of Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy. She often speaks of her pride in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy's continuing tradition of Education Update, originally Anne's own initiative.

She has written about her introduction to family therapy, her training, and her decision to move away from repair work with parents needing help in parenting adolescent children, in order to start ‘at the beginning’ with the parents of infants.