Twilight Children
Three Voices No One Heard Until a Therapist Listened
-
-
4.2 • 5 Ratings
-
-
- $9.99
Publisher Description
From the bestselling author of One Child comes the story of three of former special education teacher Torey Hayden’s most extraordinary challenges.
Nine-year-old Cassandra, kidnapped by her father and found starving, dirty, and picking through garbage cans—is a child prone to long silences and erratic, violent behavior.
Charming, charismatic four-year-old Drake will speak only in private to his mother—while his tough, unbending grandfather's demands for an immediate cure threatens to cause irreparable harm.
And though she had never worked with adults, Hayden agrees to help fearful and silent eighty-two-year-old massive stroke victim Gerda—discovering in the process that a treatment's successes could prove nearly as heartbreaking as its limitations.
This gripping memoir follows three unforgettable journeys back from silence:
Dissociative Disorder: Nine-year-old Cassandra, who survived a two-year abduction only to return with violent outbursts and terrifying, manipulative lies that hint at a fractured personality.Family Dysfunction: Four-year-old Drake, whose refusal to speak to anyone but his mother puts him in the crosshairs of a powerful grandfather demanding a cure at any cost.Case Studies in Psychology: Eighty-two-year-old Gerda, a stroke victim whose silence hides a lifetime of memories, presenting a challenge Hayden has never faced before—an adult mind locked away.An Inspirational Memoir: A raw and compassionate account from the front lines of special education, where a teacher’s patience and insight are the only tools she has to reconnect these lost souls to the world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hayden was working as a special ed teacher and needed a break. With her psychiatric training and specialization in "elective mutism," she was cajoled into working for a hospital-based psychiatric crisis and assessment unit. She begins this book with the story of a girl who was only six when she was abducted by her father; returned to her home two years later, she alternated long stretches of silence with lying and sexual accusations. Hayden was then asked to assess a delightful preschool boy whose voice no one had ever heard except his mother; his belligerent grandfather ordered Hayden to "fix" the boy's problem. Then she was called to observe an elderly woman who'd had a stroke that may have rendered her unable to speak. Gradually, the woman began to recount girlhood memories to Hayden who thus knew she was still lucid but would that satisfy the doctors who wanted to send her to a nursing home? Each case unfolds like a detective story, with Hayden piecing together the mystery of the silences from the various clues she gleans. Besides being a delightful raconteur, Hayden is also a very gentle, very sensible therapist. Yes, her patient is dissociating, but that's normal, we all do it the real question is, "at what point on the continuum does it move from being resourceful and helpful to maladaptive and damaging?" This is a compulsively readable book.
