Sheila is initially angry and has violent outbursts. Thus, she came to school dirty and smelly every day. 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.

Since then, Sheila has lived in poverty with her neglectful and verbally abusive father. Guillermo, 9, blind, but he's in this class because the normal blind classes were unprepared to handle his aggressive behaviorĪt 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.William, 9, OCD with phobias of water, darkness, cars, vacuum cleaners, and dust.Sarah, 7, angry, defiant and selectively mute because of physical and sexual abuse by her father.Freddie, 7, obese and profoundly mentally retarded.Peter, 8, who has seizures and aggressive behavior caused by a neurological condition.The students at the beginning of the year are as follows: Her teaching assistant is a Mexican migrant worker named Anton who did not finish high school. Meanwhile, Hayden incrementally learned more about Sheila's background, which included horrific abuse from an uncle.Ī sequel to this book, The Tiger's Child, was published in 1995.Īt 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. Over the subsequent five months in Hayden's class, Sheila gradually became more involved in classroom activities. Sheila had been abused and abandoned by her parents, and she rarely spoke. Since there was no place for her at the hospital, the girl, named Sheila, was placed in Hayden's class. 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.

The book has inspired people to move into Special Educational Need careers. It was also loosely adapted as the 1994 Lifetime television film Untamed Love, starring Ashlee Lauren, Lois Foraker and Cathy Lee Crosby. This book has been translated into 27 languages and dramatized as an interactive opera. It was first published in the United States in 1980, becoming a best seller in the 00s. One Child is a memoir by American author and psychologist Torey Hayden.

One Child by Torey L. Hayden