Mother of disabled child excluded from Christmas play: 'We'll change schools in January'

"We are not going to the Christmas play tomorrow, absolutely not. We don't want to have anything to do with that school anymore, I don't want to see it anymore." This is how the mother of the 5 year old boy suffering from regressive hyperactivity with cognitive delay and suspected autism, excluded from the Christmas performance of the private school in Afragola that he has attended since last January. The story, as the mother of the little boy recalls speaking to journalists, began with the discovery, on the Whatsapp group of mothers of classmates, that her son had been excluded from the event and that the teacher would have reserved the choice after a discussion with her. A choice that sent the child's family into a rage, determined to enroll Andrea in another school already in January, while in the meantime he will not participate in any way in the school initiatives related to Christmas. "Two days ago - the woman continues - I received a message from a teacher in which she said that Andrea must take a Christmas photo, because she had not managed to do it the week before. They didn't even take a Christmas photo of him, so they already took it for granted that he would not participate, now instead they say that they would decide only after a meeting with me. In the meantime, however, we had paid the symbolic fee to buy sweets, pizzas and crisps, without anyone telling us anything”. For the little boy’s parents, the lack of participation in the Christmas play is the classic straw that broke the camel’s back: “From January onwards – explains the mother – on several occasions we were very unhappy with how they behaved with the child. Once we found him dirty and the teacher explained to us that she had run out of tissues to clean him, on another occasion we noticed some scratches and bites on his skin, clear signs of normal confrontations between children. That time the teacher told us that our son had become self-harming, to our great horror. All we had to do was go to the doctor for him to confirm that he had not caused those scratches himself”. The inspectors of the Campania Regional School Office are already working on the matter, and will try to shed light on what happened, starting with any responsibilities of the school.