Daniele is a beautiful fourteen-year-old boy with severe developmental delay and autism. He doesn't speak, and he shows no apparent response to outside stimuli—yet there are moments when he clearly enjoys affection from his parents and friends. He has his own way of communicating and making himself understood, a language that must be learned and interpreted by those close to him.
At fifteen months, Daniele began losing everything he had learned up to that point. By age three, he started attending public school with a support teacher and a municipal assistant (AEC) who handled diaper changes and fed him. Both the support teacher and the assistant were present for a maximum of two hours each day. Anna Maria, his mother, speaks on Daniele's behalf, sharing her experience of raising a severely handicapped son in the public school system.
Overall, preschool went well for Daniele. There was less pressure around formal instruction, and socializing with other children was relatively easy. The real problems began when he entered elementary school—a Montessori program. The Montessori materials do help with teaching; they make sensory activities more concrete. Musical instruments encourage listening, for example, or soft objects invite touch.
Children like Daniele cannot follow ordinary lessons. They need individualized instruction. Integration, to work, must be understood and lived differently. There's no benefit if students like Daniele spend most of their time in hallways with support staff or custodians. Classroom teachers often resist having such students in the room, fearing disruption and worried about the reactions of parents with "normal" children.
Here Anna Maria touches on something crucial: support services often serve the parents of non-disabled children far more than they serve students like Daniele. It's those parents who need better preparation for having a child with disabilities in the classroom. Too often, ignorance and fear of the unfamiliar—things outside the usual framework—breed attitudes and behaviors that wound disabled students and their families deeply.
A deeper understanding of who Daniele is would help his integration into the classroom and with his peers. A child who spends most of the day in hallways is not truly part of the class, because he is not physically present. And that carries serious consequences. Daniele is not always invited to class parties. He doesn't participate in plays or concerts. He doesn't go on school trips with his classmates.
Third grade was Daniele's worst year. He made his distress very clear, refusing to enter school and throwing himself on the ground. He also picked up an old habit: putting everything he found into his mouth. Anna Maria couldn't rely on teachers to help her understand what was wrong, but the other children would tell her what was happening in class.
Only much later did she realize the problem was jealousy from another boy with milder difficulties. The support teacher had decided to "rationalize" her time and work, applying the same teaching method to both boys. For Daniele, it was impossible to keep up, and Pietro was losing precious attention.
Daniele left that school at age twelve. A call came, providentially, from the psychologist at Anni Verdi, who realized that school integration as it had been set up was producing no results. Daniele was then placed in a public school with integration support, but also a special program better suited to him—a curriculum tailored almost entirely to his needs, with support teachers who do this work out of conviction and calling, not out of desperation while waiting for a permanent teaching position.
Huberta Pott, 2005
