John Brooks (9) (1956–)

This is every parent's nightmare - to have your child give up on life and wonder what you could have done differently. As an adoptive parent myself, I feel fortunate that information about attachment was much more available when we began our journey with our children. But I could relate to the difficulty in finding appropriate therapists and in knowing how to parent children with such deep seated emotional difficulties. I think Mr. Brooks has done a great service in bringing attachment into show more the public eye through his memoir. Unfortunately, there are no easy answers or quick fixes to this problem and unfortunately, his daughter is not the only tragic victim. show less

This is a compelling look at a 17-year-old girl’s suicide as described by her father. Casey had been an only child adopted from an orphanage in Poland when she was 14 months old. Her adoptive parents knew little, if anything, about her history before her adoption. They only knew they wanted a child and that they were willing to do almost anything for her. However, as it turned out, they did not understand her or what she truly needed from them. They relied on child-rearing books and show more therapists who were great for most of the patients they treated, but their advice was actually counter to what Casey really needed. When Casey had temper tantrums, etc., especially when she was small, they should not have left her but held her even closer to compensate for her attachment disorder. Unfortunately, these well-meaning parents did not discover what Casey really needed from them before it was too late. The author now devotes much of his time working to prevent these types of things from happening to others. This was a wonderful, if sad, story. show less