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Torey Hayden

Victoria Lynn Hayden, known as Torey L. Hayden (born May 21, 1951 in Livingston, Montana) is a child psychologist, special education teacher, university lecturer and writer of non-fiction books based on her real-life experiences with teaching and counselling children with special needs.

Subjects covered in her books include autism, Tourette syndrome, sexual abuse, fetal alcohol syndrome, and elective mutism (now called selective mutism), her specialty.

Hayden attended high school in Billings, Montana and graduated in 1969. She then attended Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington.

A little time after having written her most famous book One Child, Hayden moved to Wales in 1980 and got married to a Scot called Ken two years later. In 1985, she gave birth to her daughter Sheena. Hayden is now divorced.

She has also written three books of fiction in addition to her non-fiction books.


“It's a funny place, this world. Hate has rights. Love has none.”
Torey Hayden
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“She looked up. "What I can't figure out is why the good things always end.""Everything ends.""Not some things. Not the bad things. They never go away.""Yes, they do. If you let them, they go away. Not as fast as we'd like sometimes, but they end too. What doesn't end is the way we feel about each other. Even when you're all grown up and somewhere else, you can remember what a good time we had together. Even when you're in the middle of bad things and they never seem to be changing, you can remember me. And I'll remember you.”
Torey Hayden
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“It's better being crazy because if you don't like the way it is here then you can have dreams. And if you don't like the dreams, then they come and give you shots and you don't feel anything anyway and you just drift around. Dead. Half-dead. Alive but like you're dead. You just drift around alive, but dead. And it all seems the same after a while.”
Torey Hayden
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“This here be my class.-Sheila "One Child”
Torey Hayden
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“Safety is the most basic task of all. Without sense of safety, no growth can take place. Without safety, all energy goes to defense”
Torey Hayden
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“Memang sangat sulit mengubah pribadi yang sudah terbentuk oleh lingkungan selama ini, tapi sekalipun sedikit bukanlah sesuatu yang tidak mungkin”
Torey Hayden
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“Perhaps the greatest magic of the human spirit is the ability to laugh, at ourselves, at each other, and at our sometimes hopeless situation. Laughter normalized our lives”
Torey Hayden
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