Compelling Story | One Child

Excellent book | One Child | Torey L. Hayden

books:


	• One Child Torey L. Hayden Turtleback Books: A Division of Sanval, 1999 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 178 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Makes you want to read more of her books

I came across this book while looking online for true story books. I like to read books about things that have really happened. Torey Hayden a special ed teacher/ psychologist does a great job with this book.In this book she writes of 6 year old who comes from a rough place and has alot of horrible things happen to her. It shows how much she really made a difference in this girls life and how great a person she really is. When your done reading this one you really want to know what happens to this little girl "Sheila" later in life. I just finished the sequal to this book called "The tigers child" and it was also a great read. Shocking to think all these sad things could happen to a little girl but the bond she has with Torey is unbelievable. I plan to read more of her books.

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Compelling Story

What a book! It is very hard to put down despite the sadness of this child's story. A wonderful example of how one can change, if not the world, at least one person through persistence, care, and love.

Excellent book

I am half way through it and so far it is an excellent book. It was recommended to me by two other people and I will continue recommending it myself!

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Nothing Can Erase the Past But Love (even imperfect) Heals

This was a beautiful story, illustrating the perseverance and courage of young victims of abuse and neglect. It's funny though; after reading it, I conjectured that Sheila rebounding the way she did at age 6 was hard to believe. After undergoing severe abandonment from her mother, ongoing physical and verbal abuse by her father, and right after surviving severe sexual molestation, she accepted the leave-taking of the only person who had ever loved her, her teacher, Torey. She did not take it easily, and she clung to the story of the Little Prince, which helped, but still! I thought that either the story wasn't true or Sheila's acceptance was actually a self-injurious defense mechanism that would later be exposed. Researching the book after I read it, I realized that the book is a true story. In a sequel titled, The Tiger's Child, I learned that Torey again re-entered Sheila's life and continued to support her. Yet the abuse Sheila incurred had been serious and despite her high intelligence, we learn that she struggled greatly after Torey's departure and on into her adolescence.

Reading the reviews on Amazon, I noted that a few blamed Torey for leaving Sheila at the end of the year. They said that it was her fault that Sheila experienced such turbulence later in adolescence. I feel that those reviews may well have been written by people who themselves never completely healed from abandonment and still ache inside. The truth is that Sheila's fear of abandonment was caused by her early childhood trauma of being left on the side of the highway by her mother. It does no good to blame one who loves such a wounded bird, even if it was in the context of a short-term relationship. Because of the nature of Sheila's wound, even if Torey committed to staying with her for life, Sheila would have still continued to struggle with a false sense that she is prone to getting abandoned. Healing from that type of wound requires a long-term process that involves recognizing the deception of the false beliefs and emotions and using truth to fight them.

Though Torey made some mistakes, her time with Sheila was overall positive because, like a flower, her love allowed Sheila's heart to be opened to the possibility that her emotions and false beliefs were wrong. In the last few chapters, it appeared that Sheila was able to understand Torey's departure cognitively, if not emotionally. The only aspects I would have changed about Torey's approach would have been to ensure that Sheila knew well ahead of time that she would be leaving. I would never have let her call me "mother" or "father" because it is not true; children can easily mistake fantasy for reality. Also, from the very beginning, Sheila should have been seeing a child therapist who could keep helping her on a more long-term basis.

What an incredible story, more so because Torey really is the loving teacher she wrote about, and because Sheila is the child whose resilience inspires us all! I ask God to give me the courage to love abused kids unconditionally as Torey did, yet also the wisdom to know when to employ healthy boundaries to keep those children safe.

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wonderful, hopeful story

WOOOOOOOOOOOOW! I read it on the train to work, walking up the street, on my breaks, sneaking a few pages in during work and on the couch at home until I couldn't keep my eyes open. When I wasn't reading this beautiful story, I was thinking about it. When I was done, I reread the last chapter, and kept skimming through the book wishing there was more. THEN I found out she wrote another one about Sheila!!!! I bought it today...I just finished One Child this afternoon!

This beautiful and deeply moving tale recounts educational psychologist Torey Hayden's battle to unlock the emotions of a troubled and sexually abused child who, with the help of Hayden, was finally able to overcome her dark past and realise her full potential. 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 -- and nurture the spark of genius she recognised trapped within Sheila's silence. This is the remarkable story of their journey together -- an odyssey of hope, courage, and inspiring devotion that opened the heart and mind of one lost child to a new world of discovery and joy.

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