Aya, 12, will not go to school this year

As the start of the school year approaches, Samia, the mother of an autistic daughter living in Montpellier, is struggling to find a school for her child. A problem she has been facing for several years.

“Until you experience it, you can’t know what autism is. My daughter Aya is 12 years old, she has been out of school for two years now. She was supposed to start CP, but it was complicated because she didn’t speak. Fortunately, in the meantime, we managed to enroll her in a private school for autistic people. There is only one in the department, it cost between 60 and 70 euros a day, it was very expensive,” Samia Daye told France Blue Herault. Having been out of public school since she was six, Aya was enrolled in a private school. But the experience was not conclusive. “She was starting to have a lot of behavioral problems, she was becoming violent,” Samia continues. “After a few months, they told us they couldn’t keep her. I found myself with a kid who was pulling her hair out, who was having tantrums, it was very complicated. We don’t have the means to recruit specialized autism educators at home. I’m not a specialized teacher, I’m just the mother and it’s complicated to manage everything at home.”