October 3, 1981. The maternity ward of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul Hospital in Paris. A boy named Florent is born. His mother looks at him: she is already in love. The immense joy of bringing her second child into the world. She looks at him and sees nothing. She sees none of what, as a specialized educator, she should notice immediately — if she were not blinded by this new love. She sees nothing of what her husband will suggest to her, so gently, to bring her back to earth and help her face reality: "a small chromosome problem."
She understood at once. For ten years she had worked with those remarkable children who had trisomy 21. Ten years was not a small thing. She had thought about stepping back, about focusing on her own two children, about leaving the world of the handicapped behind. Then Florent arrived, and she recognized God's irony at once. She threw herself back into it, day and night, fully immersed. She was no longer the educator — she was the mother. Her years as an educator guided her: the tenderness, the laughter, the songs, the joy. A few years later, a little girl arrived to broaden and balance the family circle. Florent was surrounded by an older brother and a younger sister.
September 21, 1992. Rome. A boy started at his new school. It was Florent, and he was almost eleven. His parents wondered: "Will he feel at home in this new life?" A month earlier, he had changed homes and countries. Today he was changing schools, language, and classroom. His brother and sister attended the French school; Florent would attend an Italian one. Perhaps our French friends would have asked: "Did you find him a specialized school?" They might not have known that in Italy, handicapped children are integrated into public schools. That is rare in France and happens only when there are special integrated classes. Individual integration is not practiced at all on the other side of the Alps, and certainly not when dealing with a handicap as severe as Florent's.
There are children with trisomy 21 who are quite alert, who develop normally, and are only slightly behind their peers. But this was not Florent's situation. He was slow to reach every milestone. At eleven, he was small for his age, he barely spoke (a few words at most), and while he understood situations fairly well, he could not truly adapt them to his own person. We had good reason — not to worry, perhaps, but at least to wonder what his entry into the new school would bring.
But the truth is that Florent, in his blue smock and white collar, integrated quickly. And rightly so. The warm, attentive welcome was exactly what this child, so hungry for tenderness, needed most. Everything else followed naturally. Isabella, his support teacher, became his anchor immediately. Florent easily fell into the rhythm of following her to personalized work sessions for developmental activities, then joining his classmates for recess, games, and snack time. This success was helped by his mother's request to place him in first grade, where the children were closer to him in every way. All the teachers willingly "adopted" Florent. They taught him to know them, to recognize their names and their specific roles, and from the first weeks they asked that he stay for lunch to strengthen his integration. They invited him to participate in activities suited to him — physical education and music. From that point on, he came to school in the afternoons three times a week. The entire educational team worked with the family — especially the support teacher — continuously: organizing meetings, arranging transportation by school bus, communicating through his diary.
September 21, 1993. The boy is still there. He has found his school again. His parents were worried when they learned there would be no support teacher this year and that full-time attendance would be difficult. But gradually everything was arranged again. Florent found the same teachers, the same classmates, the same joy of going to school. His mother has one regret: that he has no handicapped friends with similar difficulties. In France, Florent had attended a specialized school. He spent his free time in specialized play groups and at weekends organized for handicapped children. This new life in Italy is the complete opposite. At first, it was a joy to see him grow in a normal environment, surrounded by dynamic, intelligent children who stimulated him. But there is no doubt that he also needs activities with children who have difficulties like his own. One must always be vigilant and not put the child in situations where he will fail. We must take that step too — then Florent will gather some school friends and other friends, a little different from the others, for his birthday. A party that will symbolize a synthesis we wish to see more often, both in Italy and in France. In Paris, at first, Florent had attended kindergarten, but there was no support teacher. Because of the teacher's lack of availability, Florent, with his legendary passivity, remained in a corner of the classroom. Later he attended a specialized institute where he found more stimulation — the classes were smaller, the activities more suited to him. But there was a break with normal children.
Why must one choose between everything and nothing? Florent, who speaks little and who seems to understand Italian as well as French, will he become bilingual? That would be the small miracle of the Italian experience.
In any case, integration in Rome has been a good opportunity for him.
- Marie-Claude Chivot, 1993
HOPE, Little Sister
(from a poem by C. Péguy)
Faith is a faithful bride, Charity is a Mother.
A mother burning, full of courage.
Or an older sister who is like a mother.
Hope is a thin child
who came into the world on Christmas Day.
Faith is easy,
disbelief would be hard.
But hoping is hard.
And easy is the inclination to despair
and that is the great temptation.
Little Hope proceeds
between her great sisters,
yet no one pays attention to her.
On the rough path of salvation,
on the endless road,
between her two sisters
little Hope proceeds.
And one pays attention
only to the two great sisters.
The first and the last,
who go very quickly.
And one almost cannot see the one in the middle.
The little one, she who still goes to school
and who walks steadily
between the skirts of her sisters.
And people readily believe
that it is the two great ones
who drag the little one by the hand.
In the middle. Between them both.
To make her travel this
rough path of salvation.
When it is the middle one who drags
her great sisters.
For without her, they would be nothing.
And she, the little one, who drags everything.
For Faith sees only what is.
And she sees what will be.
Charity loves only what will be.
Faith sees what is.
In time and in Eternity.
Hope sees what will be.
In time and for eternity.