On the first day of school, the moment we walked into the classroom, everyone noticed a girl who was taller than us and didn't speak clearly. She started pulling everyone's hair — even the teacher's, and our teacher is very patient. The teacher explained that we shouldn't do that, and she stopped.
But only for a while. Soon she started again — pulling hair, taking things that weren't hers, and running out of class.
The teacher would scold her, but never laid a hand on her, because hitting doesn't solve anything.
After about three weeks, she stopped pulling hair and stopped running away. Only sometimes did she take things that didn't belong to her — but then she'd give them back.
At first, nobody wanted to be near her. But once she stopped being difficult, we started playing with her too.
Now she's in fourth grade and she's still with us. She can do word problems, write short compositions, do arithmetic, and lots of other things.
We care about her very much and we help her.
She still doesn't speak very well, so she goes to speech therapy twice a week.
Sara Cabras (9 years old), 1979