Pennyworth Books

The book portrays a boy named Alex as having a mother who suffers from frequent emotional outbursts and mood swings. 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 concept of moods and discusses positive and negative moods such as happiness, excitement, sadness, and grumpiness. It moves on to discuss how people’s moods change, but that most people 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 certain other psychological conditions.

The next few pages cover how a person with unpredictable moods behaves and how it feels to be around such a person. Alex reveals that it’s very confusing and he doesn’t know what to expect. Further, he notes that his mother 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 mother is in a bad mood. He can play with his computer, play in his room, or go outside to play with a friend. Alex mentions that when his mother is not so stormy, she can be a fun person, too.

Finally, Alex learns that it helps to have talks with other people 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 really intended to be read by young children. Nor does it explain the common 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 endure 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.

Rob Washington is a devoted father of three children and an avid researcher and writer for angiemedia.com, where you can find out more about An Umbrella For Alex

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