The Scarred Heart: Understanding & Identifying Kids Who Kill

The author, upon seeing the high prices for used copies, has seen fit to to "put the book (which is out of print, and which won't see a new edition anytime soon because she's working onanother project) up for free download in PDF form on her website."(quoting her InstaPundit hubby).GoTo: http://violentkids.com/scarred_heart.html

For all the brutal reality of the deeds and people Dr. Smith describes, this is a refreshing antidote to the apocalyptic hysteria that usually dominates the discussion of violent kids. She helps us see that these are people, caught in obsessive emotions or skewed perceptions, who are often doing the best they can to make sense of their world. Dr. Smith gives us much concrete reason to believe that we'll be able to reach many of those kids before it's too late, and that we'll be able to make changes in our society that will make these painful outcomes less likely in the future.

Dr. Smith cuts through the usual psychobabble in her accounts of troubled young people, accounts which are compelling and blood-curdling at the same time. Her first-person soliloquies of youthful killers have the ring of authenticity, and her no-nonsense approach to identifying and helping the potentially violent child obviously come from her rich experience. Any parent or professional working with young people will profit from reading this book.

Dr. Smith could have been staring into my son's eyes when she wrote this book. We had convinced ourselves his acting out was "just a stage," but reading "The Scarred Heart" frightened us into taking action before our son became another one of Dr. Smith's statistics. I recommend it to all parents, everywhere, who are questioning the "ok'ness" of their kids.

No one involved with young people today should miss following Helen Smith as she enters a maze of violence in search of the minds and souls of these kids who have killed!