Showing results by author "Torey Hayden" in All Categories

Bestselling author Torey Hayden's novel is a fascinating study of a fractured family, a troubled child, and a psychiatrist's attempts to rescue them. Conor, aged nine, arrives in the play therapy room of child psychiatrist James Innes with the diagnosis "autistic". His mother Laura, an aloof, enigmatic novelist, can't handle him. His rancher father, embroiled in divorcing Laura, does not feel there is anything wrong with Conor. His six-year-old sister Morgana insists he really does see ghosts.

Hayden has chronicled experiences from her long career as a special education teacher in several books, including One Child and The Tiger's Child. Successes in this difficult and often frustrating field can be few and hard won, a fact which Hayden deftly illustrates while simultaneously offering hope and joy in small victories. This time she brings to life the story of a scruffy seven-year-old, Venus, who is so unresponsive that Hayden searches for signs of deafness, brain damage, or mental retardation.

Jadie never spoke. She never laughed, or cried, or uttered any sound. Despite efforts to reach her, Jadie remained locked in her own troubled world - until one remarkable teacher persuaded her to break her self-imposed silence. Nothing in all of Torey Hayden's experience could have prepared her for the shock of what Jadie told her - a story too horrendous for Torey's professional colleagues to acknowledge.

A light in the darkness for severely troubled children, former special education teacher Torey Hayden faced three of her most extraordinary challenges after she left the classroom. Nine-year-old Cassandra, kidnapped by her father and found starving, dirty, and picking through garbage cans - a child prone to long silences and erratic, violent behavior, whose hard-won recollections of the nightmare she endured could not be fully trusted.

His name was Kevin but his keepers called him Zoo Boy. He didn't talk. He hid under tables and surrounded himself with a cage of chairs. He hadn't been out of the building in the four years since he'd come in. He was afraid of water and wouldn't take a shower. He was afraid to be naked, to change his clothes. He was nearly 16. Desperate to see change in the boy, the staff of Kevin's adolescent treatment center hired Hayden. As Hayden read to him and encouraged him to read, crawling down into his cage of chairs with him, Kevin talked.

A dramatic and remarkable narrative of an extraordinary teacher's determination, from the author of the Sunday Times bestsellers The Tiger's Child and One Child. Torey Hayden faced six emotionally troubled kids no other teacher could handle - three recent arrivals from battle-torn Northern Ireland, badly traumatized by the horrors of war; an eleven-year-old boy, who only knew life inside an institution; an excitable girl, aggressive and sexually precocious at the age of eight; and seven-year-old Leslie, perhaps the most hopeless of all, unresponsive and unable to speak.

Six-year-old Sheila was abandoned by her mother on a highway when she was four. A survivor of horrific abuse, she never spoke, never cried, and was placed in a class for severely retarded children after committing an atrocious act of violence against another child. Everyone thought Sheila was beyond salvation - except her teacher, Torey Hayden. With patience, skill, and abiding love, she fought long and hard to release a haunted little girl from her secret nightmare.

I 'Vackra barn' tar Torey Hayden hand om en grupp barn med svåra psykiska störningar, bland annat den åttaåriga flickan Venus som inte kommunicerar med omvärlden. Efter ett tag lyckas Hayden komma under skalet på Venus, men bara för att inom kort se henne glida tillbaka in bakom sin avskärmning på nytt. Hayden blir övertygad om att förklaringen till Venus tillstånd finns att söka i flickans hem...

Han är femton år och har levt på institutioner sedan han var åtta. Under dessa år i samhällets vård har han vägrat att prata, ingen vet om han kan. Men talsvårigheterna är inte Kevins enda problem, inte ens det värsta. Han är psykiskt störd och hans rädslor tvingar honom att ständigt gömma sig under ett bord med stolar omkring som ett skyddande galler. Mer eller mindre mot sin vilja tar psykoterapeuten Torey Hayden sig an Kevin, även om hon tror att det är hopplöst. Men för att inte bli ännu en i raden av alla som svikit honom bestämmer sig Torey för att ge honom en chans.

Tomaso är en våldsam tioårig pojke som varit vittne till styvmoderns mord på hans pappa och sedan slussats mellan olika fosterhem. Claudia är en blyg flicka på tolv år som är gravid. Lori, sju år, har fått en hjärnskada när föräldrarna misshandlat henne, och hon skäms för att hon inte kan lära sig läsa. Boothe är en autistisk sjuårig pojke som bara kan repetera väderleksrapporten och brottstycken av vad andra säger till honom. Tillsammans utgör de fyra barnen Torey Haydens specialklass.

Del 5: Utsatta barn. I Rävungen beskrev Torey Hayden sitt arbete med en sorgsen och tyst autistisk flicka, Sheila. I sin gripande uppföljare Tigerungen berättar hon hur Sheila, som nu är en ung kvinna, till slut lyckas komma fram till en uppgörelse med sin mardrömslika barndom.

I 'Skymningsbarn' skildrar Torey Hayden sitt terapeutiska arbete med patienterna Cassandra, 9 år, Drake, 4 år, och Gerda, en äldre kvinna. Att nå fram till dem visar sig bli en av Haydens största utmaningar och till slut tvingas hon att ifrågasätta sina egna arbetsmetoder. Cassandra är en svåråtkomlig flicka som lider av dissociativ störning eller multipel personlighet och har blivit utsatt för sexuella övergrepp. Drake är en begåvad och änglalik pojke som inte säger ett ord och Hayden och de andra i teamet tar för givet att han lider av selektiv mutism.