Marta is about to turn fifteen and when she sees a boy pass by her side, she blushes like any teenager, when she is close to girls her age, she can't help getting flirtatious, as has happened to us all. However, a diagnosis makes the education system consider that it should go to a special education school. "That is the principle of social labels," his mother tells me, "the principle of exclusion."
Surely right now your story does not sound but maybe if I tell you that his mother, Lola Rizo, a few days ago he got nothing more and nothing less than more than 21,000 likes and more than 24,000 shares In his Facebook post where he requested friendships for his daughter, it already sounds like you.
Marta was diagnosed with TGD (Generalized Developmental Disorder) closer to Asperger Syndrome than to severe autism and during all primary education she attended her usual school. There, his teachers recommended that he attend an open classroom that basically consists of a physical space where special attention is given to children with diversity but they share the school with the rest of the children at times such as recess and also in subjects such as music, plastic or education physics, allowing greater motivation and inclusion.
Here there were no labels or prejudices, Marta felt very loved by her peers and stimulated and as Lola confirms "children learn to be much more empathetic" if they grow up seeing that there are no disabilities but different disabilities or abilities.
Once this stage was finished, Lola had to accept the decision of our educational system and enroll Marta in a special education school to continue secondary education. She herself tells me that "her new classmates are beautiful people, as well as families or teachers, but she doesn't receive enough stimulation." "That circle doesn't stimulate her, my daughter changes her position when a normal fifteen-year-old girl approaches her."
Facebook Appeal
That is why Lola decided that it was time for her daughter to do things of her age, to leave an environment that does not benefit her and does not help her in her development and posted a message on her wall that ran like gunpowder in a few hours Half the world In it, Lola was looking for "candidates" of Marta's age to go to the movies, paint her nails or why not, criticize herself!
The result? Messages from more than 15 countries offering their friendship, people from their area, others who at least offer virtual friendship, messages of support, and even words of thanks for teaching many parents to value something as simple as a friend.
Marta has already been able to have a first contact with some new friends, although Lola tries to be prudent and do this process with caution to avoid any inconvenient situation to her daughter. In the end, many will disappear but others, with whom there is a feeling will remain and Marta will see her circle of friendships and stimuli expanded beyond her special education center.
Although writing in public on Facebook "was a mistake", as she tells us, discovering the humanity of so many people sure it was worth it.
The lack of inclusion of the education system
Lola tells us that she has discovered that not only does this exclusion occur in Spain but also in many other places.
"That my daughter cannot be in a school with the other children because I do not like it, although the schools have many deficiencies. I researched a lot about the educational system as it is, and I learned about methodologies such as multiple intelligences or cooperative learning, that are used in many schools in isolation or by many teachers, but that are not established. And I will be more upset, because if all this were there, my daughter and many children would enter the system. That is my fight for an improvement of the educational system for her and for many more children, "Lola tells us.
In our country the special education system is divided as follows: Special Infant Education (3 to 6 years), Compulsory Basic Teaching (6 to 16 years) and Transition to Adult Life (16 to 21 years).
Although it is convenient to see the specific information of each autonomous community we can review the information regarding the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports.
"These children are isolated from the education system"The problem, as Lola denounces, "is the lack of inclusion that prevents on the one hand that children with some type of disability can receive adequate stimuli and on the other the lack of empathy with the growth those children who otherwise, sharing school desk day after day with children of different abilities, they would never see barriers that separated them. "
