The book portrays a boy named Alex as having a mum who suffers from frequent emotional outbursts and mood swings. Straight through guidance from his emotionally stable father and his therapist Dr. Gillman, he learns that is he not responsible for her outbursts and bad moods. He learns to view his mother's bad moods as unpredictable storms from which he can protect himself by pretending he's got an umbrella.
The book initially introduces the opinion of moods and discusses clear and negative moods such as happiness, excitement, sadness, and grumpiness. It moves on to discuss how people's moods change, but that most habitancy tend to not have radical mood swings. Then it opens up the topic of a parent with unpredictable moods. This behavior is typical of parents with Borderline Personality Disorder and clear other psychological conditions.
Umbrella Childrens
The next few pages cover how a someone with unpredictable moods behaves and how it feels to be colse to such a person. Alex reveals that it's very confusing and he doesn't know what to expect. Further, he notes that his mum yells and says nasty things to him and it hurts his feelings. Alex learns that his mother's mood swings, even if she yells at him, are not caused by him. She owns her problem, he does not. He should not feel responsible for taking care of her mood problems.
Alex's father points out to him that he can do fun things on his own when his mum is in a bad mood. He can play with his computer, play in his room, or go exterior to play with a friend. Alex mentions that when his mum is not so stormy, she can be a fun person, too.
Finally, Alex learns that it helps to have talks with other habitancy about his feelings and the impact his mother's unpredictable nature has on him. It mentions other adults, good friends, and therapists as being such people.
The book never uses any psychological terms such as Bpd except for in the foreword page which isn't indeed intended to be read by young children. Nor does it explain the tasteless origins of the illness. The focus stays on the child's perception of unpredictable emotions, how it feels to be exposed to them, and what may help the child to experience such mood storms. As such, we think this book may be useful for children who have a parent with other unpredictable emotional disturbances such as Bipolar Disorder.
Overall the content of the book is helpful. We think the message might have been packaged more nicely with color printing for the artwork, but can understand that's not easy to do with a low-volume book printing that's designed to help raise funds for Personality Disorder Awareness Network's goals to spread awareness of personality disorders.
Book narrate - "An Umbrella For Alex," by Rachel Rashkin, Ms
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