Any modern parent knows that, if you avoid smacking, argument is the only way to maintain discipline. Quiet words and sweet reason are supposed to do the trick when confronted with a tantruming toddler or angry adolescent. Of course, it doesn’t always work out like that. You can find yourself screeching like one of Roald Dahl’s witches, or just abjectly begging for mercy. Yet your voice is there as your prime means of keeping your children obedient, entertained, consoled and safe. Whether you use it like a whip-lash, or roar as gently as any sucking dove, it is the tool of first choice.

But what do you do if you suddenly have no voice at all?

Earlier this year, I discovered I had thyroid cancer. I had suspected I was ill for some time because I felt tired all the time, and have (despite many attempts to reverse this) gone up four dress sizes, but my GP kept telling me I was just a stressed-out working mother. Eventually, I paid for a private blood test, which revealed I needed a scan, which revealed I needed a biopsy, which revealed a carcinoma right over my voice-box… and then, last month, I had to have my thyroid out. The cancer was “huge” according to the surgeon, but hadn’t spread. (Thyroid cancer, though excruciating to have out, is the one cancer for which a “magic bullet” exists, in the form of radioactive iodine: catch it in time, and you have a normal life-span.) That was the good part. The bad part is that, despite being operated on by the best surgeon in Britain for this problem, I have lost my voice for the indefinite future.

Not only do I now look like Frankenstein’s monster, with stitches right across my neck, I am also the Little Mermaid – my least favourite character. Being struck dumb is a curse second only to blindness in most fairy-tales; although mine is apparently temporary, and far less dreadful than being blind or deaf, I have begin to see why. The equation of a voice with power is fundamental to most human interaction, and having none affects every possible aspect of my life. Everything, from judging this year’s Whitbread Prize, to making sure my kids do their homework, has just become very difficult. Do you try to convey your thoughts by writing them on huge placards that other members of a panel can read, as in Edwardian theatre? Do you enact a violent pantomime, beaming like a lunatic or miming death by strangulation when Deborah Moggach, Alan Hollinghurst or David Mitchell are mentioned? At least, with my professional life as a novelist I can communicate via email. Domestically, however, it is a nightmare.

I always wondered, when watching The Piano, how Holly Hunter’s character brought up her child when unable to speak. My daughter and son are just as lively, imaginative, naughty and noisy as the children in my new novel, Love in Idleness, who mix a real love-potion for the adults they are on holiday with, and at times it has felt as if all that stands between domestic order and chaos is the strength of my vocal chords. For me, the experience of love in my life has always been one of conversation, and my children reflect that, at full volume. Both have been used to a continual exchange of chat, questions, jokes, gossip, songs and information from the moment they could put two words together. Suddenly, that has been cut off. My voice lies in my throat like a ball at the bottom of a deep well, and nothing but time can get it up again. I speak, effortfully, in a faint, breathless whisper that even someone sitting next to me finds it hard to understand. It’s bad enough for my husband, but to my children it seems as if I have become a ghost. Not only can I not ask them very basic stuff like what their day at school was like, I can’t read them stories at bed-time or comfort them with anything more than cuddles. Some friends have suggested I use a policeman’s whistle, and it’s true, I can whistle – or clap – as if to dogs. Otherwise, I have to whisper.

And yet – and yet – something else has happened, too. Not being able to speak does force you to listen. If words can seem like a ball kept bouncing between two players, or a shower of javelins between two armies, they can also mask feelings, and create misunderstandings. What to me is a supple, subtle knife, capable of splitting hairs, is to them a blunt instrument for conveying feeling. Children, like dogs, are acutely sensitive to the way words are said, rather than the language chosen. For them, the emotion is all in all, not what it is wrapped up in. They hate being shouted at as much, or more, as they hate being hit. Even if what you are saying is perfectly sensible and reasonable, they will only hear the volume. Though less and less parents strike their children, I suspect that more and more of us shout at them instead. How else to express impatience, frustration or even anger? You can believe yourself to be compassionate and non-violent, but raising your voice to a child can be just as terrifying as raising your hand. Each generation of my father’s family has made efforts to shed an aspect of anger, from my grandfather, brought up in a notoriously cruel Edinburgh orphanage, to my father who refused to beat his daughters with a leather belt as he had been beaten, to myself, possessor of the kind of temper traditionally associated with red hair and a voice that, when roused, has not needed a microphone when addressing a public meeting. I have tried not to use this when exasperated, and all too often failed. I never, however, expected to be forced into becoming a child whisperer.

If you just listen to a child, instead of talking to (and occasionally, it must be admitted, at) them, making the odd grunt or sigh to show you’re there, no end of stuff comes out. Since losing my voice, I have learnt more about what my son thinks and feels than I’ve ever knew. From this, I’ve learnt that children want a silent, sympathetic audience far more than they want advice, stories or even prompting. Being able to only whisper gives them a sense of intimacy which they rather enjoy. Not being able to call, bellow, shriek or yell at them means they have to come close and listen when I ask them to do something, which makes them concentrate harder on what I’m actually saying. To my great surprise my noisy, exuberant pair has become much quieter, more considerate and more obedient. I don’t think it’s just that I’ve been ill. We have been forced to listen to each other.

Children are assailed by noise, from over-loud music, films and personal stereos to the demands and instructions of adults in their lives. No wonder their concentration, in this generation, tends to be poor. They need to learn how to speak up, but they also need to be heard, much more than I ever realised, and they need peace and quiet in which to learn to hear their own thoughts. When my voice comes back, and the normal cacophony of family life returns, I hope the gift of the gab doesn’t swamp the sounds of silence. Keeping mum as a mum isn’t the end of the world. In fact, it feels like a new beginning.

Amanda Craig’s novel, Love in Idleness, has just been published in Abacus paperback £6.99