25 April 2007

Discrimination?

I’m angry, bloody angry! And sad. Abbe is not getting his place at the big brother’s Montessori nursery school. There’s such a long queue and it wasn’t Abbe’s turn yet. So what, you might think. But, this is starting to become a bit fishy. And it makes me pissed off and scared.

It should be Abbe’s turn. Going by age, sex and everything else taken into consideration for the admission. There was nobody else ahead of him in the queue. But nope. No place. By pure coincidence, we heard from friends that another little boy had been accepted. "Right from the street". And no sibling priority.

I have tried loads of times to talk to the headmaster. Tried to make her explain what the current queue looks like. But she doesn’t want to know. Instead, we start talking about things like extra resources, the need for support and "we already have a child with Down Syndrome who needs extra resources". And now this is making my blood boil. At the same time, a part of my world is falling to pieces.

Is this the way things are going to be? Is this a first example of the life Abbe is facing? Mistrusted, had people making excuses for him, marginalized and difficult. Is that the way he will be treated? I couldn’t take that.

And we moved Abbe’s older brother from a nursery which he liked, to give Abbe priority to a pedagogy he might come to need. It’s not easy to do the right thing.

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