Love and Torey Hayden

I've always been interested in child development and in the early 1980s, when I first began teaching, I came across, quite by chance, a book called One Child by an American author, Torey Hayden.

It was a true story about her work as a teacher with a little girl who was an elective mute - that is, a child who can talk, but for some reason - often connected to a past trauma - doesn't.

I found it fascinating. Nobody seemed to have heard of Torey Hayden: I kept the book and re-read it several times over the years.

Then, just a few years ago, Torey Hayden popped up again. She had now - to my amazement - moved to Wales and had started writing up much of her work with other children who were elective mutes, or who had other special needs, in a series of books. Emily and I have bought each one as it's come out, and frequently fought over who got to read it first.

I like Torey Hayden's simple, no-nonsense written style, and I've always liked her views on the world, and on people, and her approach to education.

Currently, I'm reading Silent Boy, and in it I found a passage which rang so true with me that it made me realise why I've liked her so much all these years.

It's a paragraph about love, and here's the relevant part of it:

"I was a great one for loving anyway. It was an emotion that came easily to me. I could do it effortlessly and over such an incredible range of people, big and small, old and young, male and female. I savoured the emotion: it made all things bright and beautiful to me when in the hard, cold light of day, I knew they really weren't. But that was always enough, to feel the beauty."

That's how I feel.