I am the mother of a child with developmental delay—psychological, cognitive, and motor—and I am also a teacher. I mention this because it will be impossible for me to assess what has happened and what lies ahead without considering what I see happening in schools today.
It will be difficult to separate these two roles when trying to make sense of my daughter's situation. Especially since my experience with school integration runs much deeper as a teacher than as a mother.
My daughter is three and a half. Until now, she has attended a municipal preschool—a place that sits somewhere between a daycare and a gentle introduction to formal schooling.
At this level, the child-educator ratio remains very hands-on, and certain "delays" in learning are still tolerated. The preschool also has no specialized support teacher. Instead, the staff is supplemented with additional educators, depending on how many children with handicaps are enrolled. My daughter has been placed in a class with her peers and assigned one educator who is available to her full-time. In her first year, the school brought in a young, inexperienced educator. In the second, they chose one of the classroom's most experienced and prepared educators.
Over these two years, we have held meetings with my daughter's educators and her therapist to share observations about how she is doing at preschool and to get advice on activities and games to try with her.
Even in those conversations, a pattern emerged. Some educators asked what my daughter could not do and wanted to know how to make her behave "like the others"—a discouraging, unproductive approach. Others saw what my daughter could do and tried to understand what she might genuinely accomplish alongside her peers.
I want to say something about the educator who has been closest to my daughter this past year. Her name is Appia. An unusual name that my daughter learned quickly and carried home with her into our family. Appia has always been welcoming and honest. She was genuinely moved when my daughter would run to her smiling each morning, calling her name. Attentive to every shift in my daughter's mood, Appia took the initiative to connect us with a child development and neuromotor center in our area. It was Appia, too—on her own and without waiting for the slow bureaucracy of schools—who reached out to the kindergarten teacher who will receive my daughter next year. People do make the difference. Buildings and programs matter, but without heart and affection, they become hollow.
Now we are preparing for my daughter to move into kindergarten. We have already been in touch with the new school—I know it well because it is my school, where I teach, and where my other children attended.
I had an informal conversation with my daughter's future teacher, someone I already knew. She wanted to understand my daughter—her difficulties, her favorite games and activities. I shared my anxieties and worries. From what little she said, I sensed confidence and genuine goodwill.
She was firm that it will be the teachers' responsibility to help my daughter settle into the class and become as independent as possible in basic routines—eating, using the bathroom—regardless of the other adults the school provides (the AEC aide and the support teacher).
It is hard to take stock of these two years at preschool. I have no direct feedback from my daughter, though she has shown no resistance or refusal despite attending daily. Perhaps talking about "integration" at such an early, unformed stage of school is complicated. My daughter's struggles, in any case, center on difficulty relating to her peers, keeping up with them, and accepting their attention. Being with other children is necessary for her, useful in overcoming her tendency to withdraw.
But as I think ahead to kindergarten and beyond—to elementary school, where children begin to actually "learn"—I ask myself what the school will do to help her. And in that question, laden with my own anxieties, I hear the voice of a teacher who sees a foggy, if not dark, picture of what schools offer children with disabilities. All too often, integration is treated as a logistical and organizational problem rather than as something schools are actually meant to do.
I want my daughter to be welcomed and accepted in her class, to be truly integrated. I want that for her and for her classmates. But I would also expect the school to help her acquire the foundations she needs to grow in whatever way is possible for her. How can that happen relying only on the goodwill of a few dedicated teachers? My own elementary school, for instance, has twelve children with handicaps—four with severe psychological and physical disabilities—yet we have no permanent support teachers on staff, no lab, no dedicated space for alternative activities that complement regular teaching. Moreover, the school assigns support hours based not only on the severity of a child's condition but on the "category" of their disability—physical, hearing loss, etc.—creating unequal treatment.
For my daughter, I believe it is necessary to supplement what the school offers.
Since she was five months old, my daughter has received rehabilitative therapy. Now, because of her significant difficulties with social interaction, she will begin group therapy with other children whose conditions are compatible with hers—two to three months, meeting daily.
It is a demanding schedule, almost like school itself, but with the crucial difference: the children are followed, observed, and monitored by rehabilitation therapists who can intervene constructively.
This will not replace school, which she will continue to attend to preserve the integration she has gained. But it will offer something more focused on her actual growth. I want to say something to my fellow teachers. We must find the will to adjust our planned curriculum, to shape our teaching closer to each child's reality—so that all of them, even if they cannot reach the same goals, can benefit from class activities and feel genuinely part of the group.
Teaching today, despite all its difficulties—or perhaps because of them—must be undertaken as a mission. Only then can we truly accept and integrate, with all the physical and emotional strain that requires, children who do not fit the learning standards of the classroom.
Among typical children, some may struggle with history or math because a teacher is distracted by a child with special needs. That might slow certain objectives. But I do not think it will fundamentally alter their development.
For a child with significant disabilities, an inattentive teacher might mean lost opportunities for real growth. A failure to truly accept her difference.
The challenge is finding balance—making sure everyone belongs in the classroom together. And here we touch on something larger than school itself.
Monica