![]() | This article's tone or style may not reflect the encyclopedic tone used on Wikipedia.(January 2023) |
![]() First edition | |
Author | Torey L. Hayden |
---|---|
Language | English |
Subject | child psychopathology, child abuse |
Publisher | Putnam |
Publication date | 1980 |
Publication place | United States |
ISBN | 978-0-399-12467-9 |
Followed by | The Tiger's Child (1995) |
One Child is a memoir by American author and psychologist Torey Hayden. It was first published in the United States in 1980, becoming a bestseller in the 2000s. [1] The book has been translated into 27 languages and dramatized as an interactive opera. It was also loosely adapted as the 1994 Lifetime television film Untamed Love, starring Ashlee Lauren, Lois Foraker and Cathy Lee Crosby. [2] The book has inspired people to move into Special Educational Need careers. [3]
The book opens with Hayden, a special education teacher, reading a newspaper article about a six-year-old girl who had beat up and burned a three-year-old boy a couple of days prior. Since there was no place for her at the hospital, the girl, named Sheila, was placed in Hayden's class. Sheila had been abused and abandoned by her parents, and she rarely speaks. Over the subsequent five months in Hayden's class, Sheila gradually became more involved in classroom activities. Meanwhile, Hayden incrementally learned more about Sheila's background, which included horrific abuse from an uncle.
A sequel to this book, The Tiger's Child , was published in 1995.
At the beginning of the year, Torey is given a long, narrow, carpeted classroom with a single window at the end – very inconvenient for a special education class. Her teaching assistant is a Mexican migrant worker named Anton who did not finish high school.
The students at the beginning of the year are as follows:
At age four, Sheila's abusive then-eighteen-year-old mother left and took Sheila and two-year-old brother Jimmie with her; however, on the highway, Sheila's mother opened the door and pushed Sheila out, leaving her behind. Since then, Sheila has lived in poverty with her neglectful and verbally abusive father. When she joined Torey's class, Sheila's dad did not have enough money to get water to wash themselves or the one set of clothes Sheila owned. Thus, she came to school dirty and smelly every day.
Sheila is initially angry and has violent outbursts. These classic hallmarks of reactive attachment disorder are a result of her having been abused at home.
Sheila joins the group just after Christmas vacation. At first, she refuses to participate in class and refuses to speak to anyone. She stays sitting in one chair. On her first day of school, at lunch, Sheila takes all of the goldfish from the aquarium and stabs their eyes out with a pencil. Torey and Whitney, a shy fourteen-year-old girl who assists the class, chase Sheila into the gymnasium, and Torey eventually soothes the terrified girl into coming back to class.
After a few days, Sheila and Torey begin to trust one another, and Torey takes to giving her a bath every morning and massaging her body with baby lotion so she will smell nice. Torey also shampoos Sheila's hair and styles it with kiddie barrettes, giving the child a chance to enjoy feeling beautiful and learn how delightful it is to feel appreciated and cared for, although Sheila fears that the pretty new hair decorations will be confiscated by her father.
After Sheila began participating in class, there were still a few issues. First, she was focused on revenge. At one point, a teacher scolded her in the lunch room, so she went into the teacher's room and caused $700 worth of damage to the classroom. Also, Sheila refuses to do paperwork. However, when given other media to work with (stacking blocks, for instance), she reveals that she is incredibly smart and talented for someone who only had a few months of first grade; her I.Q. is later tested and comes to a total of 182, which is, according to Torey, around 1 in 10,000 for a six-year-old. Sheila remains obsessed with showing people that she matters, and is terrified of abandonment.
At one point, Torey goes to California for a few days for a conference. The students were given plenty of notice, but Sheila interpreted it as abandonment by the one person who had shown her love and misbehaved throughout the whole trip.
In the middle of the year, Torey is notified that a space has opened up at the state hospital for Sheila. Torey is horrified and cries, seeing that this girl with all her improvement should not be put into an institution. Torey brings the case to court, with the help of Torey's then-boyfriend Chad, a lawyer, and wins. Afterward, Torey and Chad take Sheila out for pizza and buy her a dress.
One day, Sheila comes to school looking pale and poorly. She uses the bathroom twice in the first half-hour. Torey takes Sheila on her lap and then notices she's bleeding. Sheila eventually discloses that her uncle Jerry had tried to rape her, and when she was too small, he cut her genitalia with his knife. Sheila is rushed to the hospital after losing a lot of blood and has to have surgery to repair the damage. In the 1995 sequel, The Tiger's Child, it is revealed that because of this incident, Sheila is infertile. Sheila deals with the traumatic experience remarkably well, though she refuses to wear dresses for a while afterward.
At the end of the year, Torey introduces Sheila to the next year's teacher. Sheila will be going into third grade because Torey feels she can deal with the harder material and that it is more important at this point that Sheila's teacher be loving and understanding. Torey knows this teacher personally and knows she would be.
The book has been used as the basis of research by Appalachian State University, by Michael Marlow & Gayle Disney. [4]
Bookrags has provided a One Child Summary & Study Guide for educational purposes. [5]
Reviewing the book for the Australian Journal of Human Communication Disorders , Mandy Brent concluded that "this book is an interesting but undeveloped narrative and is of limited use to the practising clinician" . [6]
The book is used as a reference in the book Inquiry and Reflection: Framing Narrative Practice in Education by Diane DuBose Brunner. [7]
Physical restraint refers to means of purposely limiting or obstructing the freedom of a person's or an animal's bodily movement.
Victoria Lynn Hayden, known as Torey L. Hayden, is a special education teacher, university lecturer and writer of non-fiction books based on her real-life experiences with teaching and counseling children with special needs and also of fiction books.
The Montessori method of education is a type of educational method that involves children's natural interests and activities rather than formal teaching methods. A Montessori classroom places an emphasis on hands-on learning and developing real-world skills. It emphasizes independence and it views children as naturally eager for knowledge and capable of initiating learning in a sufficiently supportive and well-prepared learning environment. It also discourages some conventional measures of achievement, such as grades and tests.
Selective mutism (SM) is an anxiety disorder in which a person who is otherwise capable of speech becomes unable to speak when exposed to specific situations, specific places, or to specific people, one or multiple of which serving as triggers. This is caused by the freeze response. Selective mutism usually co-exists with social anxiety disorder. People with selective mutism stay silent even when the consequences of their silence include shame, social ostracism, or punishment.
Elective mutism is an outdated term which was defined as a refusal to speak in almost all social situations, while selective mutism was considered to be a failure to speak in specific situations and is strongly associated with social anxiety disorder. In contrast to selective mutism, it was thought someone who was electively mute may not speak in any situation, as is usually shown in books and films. Elective mutism was often attributed to defiance or the effect of trauma. Those who are able to speak freely in some situations but not in others are now better described by selective mutism.
Sweet Valley High is a series of young adult novels attributed to American author Francine Pascal, who presided over a team of ghostwriters to produce the series. The books chronicle the lives of identical twins Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield, who live in the fictional Sweet Valley, California, a suburb near Los Angeles. The twins and their friends attend Sweet Valley High.
Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) is listed in the DSM-5 under Disruptive, impulse-control, and conduct disorders and defined as "a pattern of angry/irritable mood, argumentative/defiant behavior, or vindictiveness". This behavior is usually targeted toward peers, parents, teachers, and other authority figures, including law enforcement officials. Unlike conduct disorder (CD), those with ODD do not generally show patterns of aggression towards random people, violence against animals, destruction of property, theft, or deceit. One-half of children with ODD also fulfill the diagnostic criteria for ADHD.
Inclusion in education refers to including all students to equal access to equal opportunities of education and learning, and is distinct from educational equality or educational equity. It arose in the context of special education with an individualized education program or 504 plan, and is built on the notion that it is more effective for students with special needs to have the said mixed experience for them to be more successful in social interactions leading to further success in life. The philosophy behind the implementation of the inclusion model does not prioritize, but still provides for the utilization of special classrooms and special schools for the education of students with disabilities. Inclusive education models are brought into force by educational administrators with the intention of moving away from seclusion models of special education to the fullest extent practical, the idea being that it is to the social benefit of general education students and special education students alike, with the more able students serving as peer models and those less able serving as motivation for general education students to learn empathy.
Factitious disorder imposed on another (FDIA), also known as fabricated or induced illness by carers (FII) and first named as Munchausen syndrome by proxy (MSbP) after Munchausen syndrome, is a mental health disorder in which a caregiver creates the appearance of health problems in another person, typically their child, and sometimes (rarely) when an adult simulates an illness in another adult partner. This might include altering test samples or injuring a child. The caregiver or partner then presents the person as being sick or injured. Permanent injury or death of the victim can occur as a result of the disorder. The behaviour might be motivated by the caregiver or partner seeking sympathy or attention.
Bibliotherapy is a creative arts therapy that involves storytelling or the reading of specific texts. It uses an individual's relationship to the content of books and poetry and other written words as therapy. Bibliotherapy partially overlaps with, and is often combined with, writing therapy.
Emotional and behavioral disorders refer to a disability classification used in educational settings that allows educational institutions to provide special education and related services to students who have displayed poor social and/or academic progress.
The Spinal Cord Perception is the first novel by Joshua S. Porter, better known by his stage name Josh Dies, the singer/songwriter for the band Showbread. Self-published by Porter in 2006, the book revolves around a small-town substitute teacher named David Rivers, who is haunted by a small black monster which he refers to as the "Llapasllaly". Written in a stream of consciousness narrative, the story is told in a series of bi-polar rants by Rivers, and chronicles his thoughts in non-linear sequences from childhood through his adult life. It depicts his downward spiral into depression, apathy and an apparent anti-social personality disorder. The novel depicts many hallucinations from Rivers' perspective, and the reader is left not knowing which scenes are reality and which are fantasy.
Feminist sexology is an offshoot of traditional studies of sexology that focuses on the intersectionality of sex and gender in relation to the sexual lives of women. Sexology has a basis in psychoanalysis, specifically Freudian theory, which played a big role in early sexology. This reactionary field of feminist sexology seeks to be inclusive of experiences of sexuality and break down the problematic ideas that have been expressed by sexology in the past. Feminist sexology shares many principles with the overarching field of sexology; in particular, it does not try to prescribe a certain path or "normality" for women's sexuality, but only observe and note the different and varied ways in which women express their sexuality. It is a young field, but one that is growing rapidly.
A residential treatment center (RTC), sometimes called a rehab, is a live-in health care facility providing therapy for substance use disorders, mental illness, or other behavioral problems. Residential treatment may be considered the "last-ditch" approach to treating abnormal psychology or psychopathology.
Raleigh Christian Academy (RCA) is a private, Christian, coeducational, primary and secondary day school located in Raleigh, North Carolina, United States. Also referred to as simply Raleigh Christian, the school seeks to educate students in a traditional Christian environment.
Positive discipline (PD) is a discipline model used by some schools and in parenting that focuses on the positive points of behavior. It is based on the idea that there are no bad children, just good and bad behaviors. Practitioners of positive discipline believe that good behavior can be taught and reinforced while weaning bad behaviors without hurting the child verbally or physically. People engaging in positive discipline believe that they are not ignoring problems but dealing with the problem differently by helping the child learn how to handle situations more appropriately while remaining kind to the children themselves.
Sex differences in education are a type of sex discrimination in the education system affecting both men and women during and after their educational experiences. Men are more likely to be literate on a global average, although higher literacy scores for women are prevalent in many countries. Women are more likely to achieve a tertiary education degree compared to men of the same age. Men tended to receive more education than women in the past, but the gender gap in education has reversed in recent decades in most Western countries and many non-Western countries.
Children have been accused of witchcraft, both historically and in contemporary times, in societies that harbor beliefs about the existence of witches and black magic. These accusations have led to punishment, imprisonment, torture, and execution of children.
Annette Patricia Lareau is a sociologist working at the University of Pennsylvania.
In the Best Interest of the Child is a 1990 American made-for-television drama film about child sexual abuse starring Meg Tilly, Ed Begley Jr., Michael O'Keefe and Michele Greene, directed by David Greene. It was originally broadcast on CBS on May 20, 1990.