Alessandro, Guendalina, and Magalì are seven years old. Like all children their age, they inspire affection.
Yet Magalì cannot climb stairs alone. Alessandro cannot bear a stranger entering his personal space. When Guendalina pours water from a pitcher into a glass, she "forgets" to straighten it again—spilling everything onto the tablecloth.
All three have significant difficulties communicating with the outside world. Together with thousands of other French children, they live with a condition called autism.
For years, this condition—which affects 15 people in 10,000 and strikes three times as many boys as girls—was thought to stem from a psychological block rooted in the mother-child relationship. In recent years, new theories have emerged. Autism, like Down syndrome, may not be psychological at all, but neurological. A chromosomal alteration might underlie the interior world each of these children constructs to escape reality. Autism has no cure.
September 1989: School opens. Magalì, Guendalina, and Alessandro enroll. Three days a week, they attend the Petit Choeur de la Croix de Bois in Glaignes—a boarding school unlike most others. Its 108 students, with voices celebrated worldwide, pursue both elementary and middle school studies here.
A specialist teacher and an educator work full-time with the three autistic children. They explain: "Autistic children cannot follow a regular curriculum. For now, we teach them at a preschool level. Our goal is to help them adapt and learn to socialize with the other children."
They work in a small classroom where the two teachers tell stories, have the children draw and make collages, and organize observation games. "Each child has a different level of independence. Their skills are very uneven—one of them handles electronic games with great skill, but cannot go to the bathroom alone."
Each child has a personal desk where the teacher assigns work matched to their abilities and interests.
The most striking progress happens outside the classroom. During the day, Alessandro, Guendalina, and Magalì spend time with the other children. "They play together in the schoolyard during recess and eat lunch with the others," the teacher says. "Autistic children create their own reference points, with rituals that are sometimes incomprehensible to us. Simply being near other children and school staff creates real frustration for them. That frustration matters enormously. Through it, they learn that they cannot do everything and that they are not owed everything. Gradually, they understand they cannot do whatever they want with other people's things. They discover there are limits, rules to follow. Once they get past that first wave of frustration, things get better."
Magalì learned to eat alone. Guendalina stopped spilling the entire pitcher onto the table. Alessandro began, little by little, to accept the presence of a stranger beside him.
This integration initiative was one of the first of its kind in France.
When these children reach adulthood, they will find it easier to function in a normal social environment. "We want to give them every possible chance to live as well as they can in society," one of the educators explains.
— Pascal Neau, article from Courrier picard, January 1990