Testimonies
Below is a compilation of testimonies from the campaign, updated as of April 24, 2024. So they are not forgotten.
| #AndNothingHappens | My son was like this for a long time… He was alone during recess and played with his lunchbox. His bullies found it fun to mock him by taking his lunchbox with his breakfast, breaking it while playing soccer with it, and making fun of him… The day my son exploded and said enough was enough, he ran after them to get it back, and that’s when they punished him alone, without recess. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I went to pick up my daughter (Early Childhood Education), and I found her in the hallway surrounded by parents who had come to pick up their children. When I went to the classroom to get her coat, the teacher started looking for her in the classroom. She hadn’t even realized she wasn’t in the classroom. I never took her back. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I think it’s wonderful and very necessary not only to make visible the failure of the education system [y el hashtag] #andnothinghappens, but at the same time and with the same intensity to recognize the work of those wonderful people who educate with respect and love. #QuererlaEsCrearla |
| #AndNothingHappens | I really don’t know why it’s so hard for them to make a couple of totally reasonable adaptations, when all autistic people spend our lives adapting to others so they can understand us, etc. They really think their way of relating is the only valid one. It’s regrettable. But we’ll get better at it every time. |
| #YNoPasaNada | It makes me laugh when teachers make a student repeat a year, even if they’ve passed all their subjects, but their behavior, due to some disability, is different, and the excuse is that they are not prepared for the next level. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Student with ASD, 1st year of ESO (Compulsory Secondary Education) with no learning difficulties. The Catalan language teacher assigns homework and tells him: “Just do 2 out of the 5 exercises for me, I’ll be satisfied.” I repeat, a student with no learning difficulties. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Yesterday they forgot my daughter in class. But what hurts me the most is that no one missed her. Sometimes I’m scared, but I will never stop fighting for her. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Accommodations depend on the training, time, and sensitivity of the teaching staff. No one checks if they are done or not. Often, children end up scribbling on inaccessible worksheets or exhibiting disruptive behaviors due to the underlying emotion of frustration and anger from not being able to participate. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Many times it seems that no information about our children should leave the classroom and reach their families. In my case, they do it this way so that I don’t have proof that the teacher is not doing her job and is not making adaptations. |
| #YNoPasaNada | I don’t understand what the problem is with giving quality activities to children with disabilities. I don’t understand why they think they don’t need training. What are they basing that on? On the fact that it’s always been done that way. |
| #YNoPasaNada | I feel immense gratitude for the way you contribute and illuminate. Your initiative moves me daily. Each testimony stirs up many emotions and forces me to remember stories I’ve always tried to forget in order to keep going. However, my commitment to inclusive education and the courage of your initiatives have encouraged me to share some of my experiences and also bear witness. My son has had a disability since he was one year old. Even so, we always insisted that he attend a mainstream, and moreover, public school. From the very first day, even without knowing him well enough, they were already offering us a reserved spot in the ‘aula enclave’ (special needs classroom). It was a ‘invitation’ repeated every term, every year, which we always ended up declining, and we saw the looks of surprise and tension on the teachers involved. How can disability be automatically associated with exclusion (special needs classroom) without even having met a student or evaluated them? It’s an inertia and a common practice that no one wants to question deeply: it’s always been done this way. All of my son’s official grades during his early years in preschool were ‘not passed’ in all areas. However, ‘so that we wouldn’t get discouraged,’ they gave us informal (unofficial) feedback detailing all his progress and advancements, which was in flagrant contradiction to what his report cards stated. This was something perfectly deniable to the Educational Inspectorate, but we never actually did it to avoid unnecessary tension. I regret it now. The hidden intention was to force a sufficient curricular gap to provoke and justify his change of schooling model to the special needs classroom. How is it possible for a student’s evaluation to be distorted in our education system in this way? |
| #YNoPasaNada | How can they justify my son’s segregation due to lack of resources and then act so nonchalant about it? I can imagine the uproar if this same argument were given to the mother of a neurotypical child to justify their exclusion from school. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Is this really the life that awaits me? Fighting every day, not against autism, but against human stupidity and its inability to understand that difference is what makes life exciting. Yes, that’s right. |
| #YNoPasaNada | At what point do people choose to classify us by what we cannot do or have difficulty doing? Is the discrimination that exists when having a disability in the school, work, social, etc. spheres not sufficiently known? There is plenty of data. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Does anyone explain the difference between early childhood education and special education? If my daughter, an adolescent, receives the same methodology and curriculum as in early childhood, why call it special? What is the pedagogical criterion for this practice? |
| #YNoPasaNada | When do you say the day for bad and discriminatory educational practices is celebrated? It’s for a friend… |
| #AndNothingHappens | Why does the student have to change schools? What needs to happen is for the teacher to be removed from their post. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Can someone explain to me why my daughter is obligated to carry an empty “school diary” in her backpack every day for years? Is this the punishment she has to pay for not being verbal? |
| #AndNothingHappens | And what about how devastated you feel after a meeting with your daughter’s teacher, given her disability? |
| #AndNothingHappens | And what is our intervention if we don’t involve families? Hiding is synonymous with “taboo,” synonymous with making it difficult to understand – making ourselves specialists in something that is also overwhelming for us; and, therefore, synonymous with discrimination. |
| #AndNothingHappens | “If I’m just another one in every class, why are you taking me to a different school? |
| #AndNothingHappens | 4th grade, new tutor, my son doesn’t respect anyone, he does whatever he wants, the diagnosis is just something they made up now. The problem is that my son lives between his mom’s and grandma’s skirts and doesn’t have any father figure to straighten him out and teach him authority. |
| #AndNothingHappens | To this day, there are still teachers who believe that attention to diversity is only the responsibility of the Special Education Teachers (PTs), the same ones who are supposed to have passed a competitive exam where they should have demonstrated how to cater to the diversity of their students. |
| #AndNothingHappens | To mothers and fathers who call your children ASD: that is also bullying. |
| #AndNothingHappens | My autistic daughter hasn’t been allowed to enroll in dance, English, or music academies. Not even to see her to check if her disability would prevent her from doing it. You know, my daughter has a gift, she has perfect pitch, an incredible musical memory, and she plays the transverse flute beautifully. Well, they didn’t even receive us for a summer music course, or at the conservatory. They didn’t even see her, hear her, hear me. Nothing. |
| #AndNothingHappens | My son has a lot of difficulty writing. Yesterday he answered the entire Spanish exam in writing, because they don’t even print it for him, he answered everything, only one question was missing. The teacher’s message, “If you try harder, you will surely succeed,” makes me want to set everything on fire. |
| #AndNothingHappens | They keep insisting from the high school that my son with ASD should go to a special center. They treat him there like a lost cause. They have lost hope that he will finish secondary education, and honestly, at this point, so have I. |
| #AndNothingHappens | They pressure me with that segregating proposal and lie to me, saying that if he evolves well, he will leave there and return to the mainstream classroom. I told the principal that I still don’t know anyone who says their son or daughter left the ASD classroom and returned to the mainstream one. |
| #YNoPasaNada | A teacher suggested that my son not take the PISA exam to “avoid causing him distress.” Later, I found out they told this to all students in Special Education so as not to lower the school’s overall score. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Sometimes I defend my son’s rights, and sometimes I prefer not to speak so as not to be alone. Even when I write something on Instagram, I choose my words very carefully out of fear. |
| #YNoPasaNada | By segregating students based on their ASD diagnosis, in this case, the message conveyed to the rest is that they are inferior, that they don’t meet a certain “X” standard that someone has decided upon. And the worst part of segregation, the message sinks in; it’s “okay” to separate them from the rest, it slows down the class pace. And thus, it contributes to perpetuating an exclusionary societal model, where there is no room for vulnerability. It’s very sad. |
| #YNoPasaNada | That’s right, everything our autistic children do is always done wrong, especially for the bad therapists who see our children as defective beings who need to be changed. I once read a comment from a mother of an autistic child asking for help because her son liked to jump and she had been told that she had to correct that behavior. Human stupidity goes that far. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) classrooms in the Community of Madrid that students call “the dumb class” |
| #AndNothingHappens | Although we know that school alone cannot fix the world, it should at least try. And what school must certainly be required to do is provide a space where diversity not only exists, but is the starting point from which everything is viewed. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Yesterday a mother told me, “everything was fine until I started complaining, that’s when I was left alone. I had to choose between speaking up and defending my son’s rights at school or solitude. I chose the latter. I don’t regret it, I would do it again.” |
| #AndNothingHappens | Yesterday, one of our students with ASD began to have a small hypersensitivity crisis upon returning from recess. I sat next to him, and the whole class began to softly sing the clapping song he likes so much until he calmed down. We all returned to our tasks. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Every meeting used to end in tears. Unable to defend myself or my son, to say anything knowing it’s abuse and they’re breaking the law, denying any attention. You lower your head while they mistreat you and leave. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Every time I had a meeting with the teaching staff, I knew I would be devastated for at least two days by everything I had to hear. I even warned my family because it never failed… I even asked myself, does my son have anything good about him? Does he do anything right? They would pause and start spouting nonsense to cover up their screw-ups… Years later, I changed schools, and it was completely different. I left crying with happiness; they only had good words and hope for everything. They even told me, “I would love to have a child like yours in all my classes,” “Your son can get two degrees if he sets his mind to it.” The child was the same; the professionals weren’t. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Tired of being pressured to call an ambulance if you don’t go in 15 minutes when your son is in an autism crisis, and on top of that, they tell me he did it on purpose, when he HAS AUTISM |
| #AndNothingHappens | 2nd-grade class with a student with ASD + ADHD and a girl with ADHD. The teacher gives out “prizes” for good behavior in a subject taught at the end of the day and in English. Everyone gets the “prize” except those two. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Contradiction in terms: Working within the special education classroom “in a more inclusive way.” And they act as if nothing happened. What is affirmed is later denied, or what is denied is later affirmed. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I believe this campaign has helped us realize that families are not alone and, above all, that we are not crazy. That the current education system doesn’t work and that it pushes aside those who are different. That sufficient human and economic resources are not provided to support our children, and that nobody cares. |
| #AndNothingHappens | When my son was in his first year of secondary school, his own classmates, encouraged by adults, parents, and/or teachers, collected signatures for the administration to expel a fellow student with special needs. |
| #AndNothingHappens | When you have a teacher who does an excellent job, you realize how poorly others perform… Today I remembered the entire school year when Lucía started an hour later and left an hour earlier, supposedly for her own good, of course. |
| #YNoPasaNada | As a child, I didn’t choose to be a target for bullies, I didn’t choose to be neurodivergent in a capitalist world, I didn’t choose to be mistreated. All of that has led me to have consequences that I am learning as an adult to deal with. But I feel guilty. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Two months without writing anything but the date in his notebook. And they call this inclusion? |
| #YNoPasaNada | In the 2022/2023 school year, we enrolled my son in a public school in Las Rozas, in his first year of school. We had only received his autism diagnosis 6 months prior. The school was opening a TEA classroom that year, and despite the tutor and the PT being very involved, neither the administration, nor the school, nor the faculty were willing to make the slightest effort, nor to train themselves… “Those children don’t belong here,” “Take this child out of my class, I can’t stand him anymore.” The school principal delayed my son’s potty training process for 3 months, justifying that he, the tutor, and the PT had to meet to organize this process (a process we had already started at home with the help of a private therapist; we gave the school an email with instructions to follow). They also didn’t want to let the children in the classroom participate in the Christmas play. We met 3 times with the DAT West, 2 times with the inspector because of how shady and corrupt both the school and the principal were. We provided evidence, statements from two teachers… Nothing, no consequences. No one took responsibility. We took our son to a wonderful subsidized school where we are clients, they work great with my son, they respect him, they love him there. It’s a shame he was kicked out of public education and that it’s all based on paying. School, therapy… |
| #YNoPasaNada | The first bullying is done by the school itself. A school that segregates and discriminates based on abilities, what does it teach its students? |
| #AndNothingHappens | The problem wasn’t that she wasn’t learning, it was that no one was willing to work with her. |
| #AndNothingHappens | The education system is a farce, it’s a lie. Everything is geared towards those who get good grades and behave well in class. Everyone else is discriminated against, not just those with disabilities, but also based on race, economic level, religion, and many other things. This discrimination is sustained over time because it’s not seen, it’s subtle and isn’t reflected in any paperwork. It’s all a lie. |
| #AndNothingHappens | It started with bullying from her teacher when she was 5 years old, and at 8, she still remembers being put in the thinking chair every day for not writing a vowel correctly or for making stereotypies. |
| #AndNothingHappens | In attention to diversity, we’re always like this: professionals passing the buck to each other, and families always being underneath, trying to prevent the ball from ever hitting the ground. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Once upon a time, there was a teacher who “forgot” to tell a student about a field trip. |
| #AndNothingHappens | It is necessary to change our approach to help move towards inclusion because, unfortunately, we have been and continue to be barriers and obstacles to inclusion. |
| #AndNothingHappens | They are so involved that when you complain because they didn’t give her more time on the exam, they say… “Honestly, I forgot she had dyslexia.” I can already imagine the methodological adaptations she’ll make. This term, she failed, despite knowing the subject. |
| #AndNothingHappens | This third term, we’re going on a field trip to a farm school with all the early childhood students. There are about 8 students with ASD. Since the farm school tells us that each of those students needs a dedicated person, and that we have to provide them, one of my colleagues comes up with the idea of telling the families that their children shouldn’t go on the field trip. I don’t know how it will turn out, but just proposing that seems very extreme to me. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Talking to a mom, she confirmed that groups of parents have formed asking for the expulsion of children because they consider them unsuitable for their own children. Nothing surprises me anymore. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Talking about the student-teacher ratio as the ONLY solution to school failure is a fallacy. Look at rural schools. However, some people repeat it often just as an excuse to pass the buck and shirk the responsibility we have as professionals. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Even in special education schools, there is discrimination based on the degree of disability. Today, they did an activity about trees, and only asked for help watering the plants from here to there, leaving two people, a boy and a girl with multiple disabilities, without doing the activity. |
| #AndNothingHappens | We have to speak up, we have to act against injustice. We have to dare and stand up to it. We have to do it now, we can’t wait any longer. Inclusive education is a right, we are not asking for anything that isn’t ours. We are not stealing, we are not doing anything wrong. Enough segregation! Let’s go for it all! And let something happen. |
| #AndNothingHappened | Today what I was so “afraid” would happen, happened. We were called from school to see if we could take our daughter home because she was too restless. They said that at school they have their resources (preferential for a TGD, TEA classroom) but that the teacher has 25 students and can’t handle them all. What my brain translates: if your daughter gets intense, she goes home. And that this becomes recurrent. As soon as my daughter “overwhelms” in class, they send her home. That large ratios and limited resources are not the fault of the teachers, nor the parents. |
| #AndNothingHappened | There was a time when they demanded that I sign a paper for my son with ASD and ADHD to go on excursions, exempting the school from responsibility for his escapist and nervous behavior. I went as a chaperone and they were chatting amongst themselves. I refused and threatened to report them. |
| #AndNothingHappened | My little one’s “report cards” are devastating. Especially in things we know she knows perfectly well, there’s a big X for “not initiated” or something like that. Example: my daughter has been counting from 1 to 10 in English for over a year now, yet in recognizing the number 1 in English, it says she hasn’t. |
| #AndNothingHappened | Those of you who, to improve attention to diversity, ask for more resources (mind you, I include myself): are you suggesting that there should be more professionals to take more students with needs out of the classroom for longer periods? Because that is called attention without inclusion, which is the same as segregation. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Tomorrow, October 25th, Pedro is expelled from his school and is not allowed to attend. Despite our fight for your rights to be respected, for you to be treated with the respect you deserve, and despite our doing everything we can to prevent difficulties and provide the support you need… All has been in vain. To those hateful people who do not want to work for true inclusion, to those who do not want to collaborate, to those who do not want to listen and limit themselves to using only ancestral educational techniques for the functional diversity of their students, to those who believe that Pedro is a burden, extra work, a complication, a problem… I tell you that you make me very sad because you are missing out on the best student you could have ever had in your life. |
| #AndNothingHappens | A friend tells me that she has been asked to look for another school because her daughter, at 10 years old, has “reached her ceiling.” |
| #AndNothingHappens | I love finding out through the school app that there are winners of the pet contest for the library. Especially because I didn’t know about such a contest. Just because my daughter is autistic (non-verbal) and they don’t tell me, doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to/can’t/knows how to participate. And so it goes with everything. |
| #AndNothingHappens | My daughter with ASD has gone from third to sixth grade ALONE in the schoolyard, no teacher ever noticed, and when they did, their response was that my daughter wanted to be alone. All her jackets have been cut with scissors in class by her classmates, she has soiled herself from fear (at 10 years old) and no one noticed either… |
| #AndNothingHappens | My son has been at the same high school for 3 years. This year, the counselor forgot to mention that he has inattentive ADHD, with crossed laterality and anxiety. All the teachers have failed him and say he’s distracted, they haven’t adapted exams or assignments for him. He failed 7 subjects. We found out the week of the exams through a tutoring session I requested. No one bothered to ask why everything was so difficult for him. A lost semester and maximum helplessness. |
| #AndNothingHappens | My son admits that the X in the last box means ‘never’, and tells me ‘they are all wrong, mommy’. My heart breaks and I end up changing the final spiel they give and pretending to read it, telling him all the good things he does, how hard he tries, and how great he is. |
| #AndNothingHappens | My son, who has severe non-verbal autism, was in a center for students with ASD for years. With teachers and classmates who included him as one of them. But despite everything, we felt terrible because we had to pick him up from the reference classroom and the teacher barely stopped to talk to us to tell us how the child had been because the teachers from the ASD classroom already wrote to us. I don’t doubt that teacher treated my little one wonderfully because I loved her very much, but how the teachers treat the parents of ASD children and the little information they exchange with us, knowing that our children don’t tell us anything about school, is very tough. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I will neither forget nor forgive when a certain superior told me that I couldn’t say I have a disability in front of other professionals because it would undermine my credibility and was unprofessional in her opinion. |
| #AndNothingHappens | No place where students are separated is what they call inclusion. And special education schools, and schools. Separation is inclusion. Neither taking a student out of class, nor going to recess alone is inclusion. None of that can be called inclusion. Let’s reserve that word only for when everyone can be together with their needs met. Then yes, let’s use that word that some data distorts. Let’s call things by their name. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I don’t understand what the problem is with giving quality activities to children with disabilities. I don’t understand that they think they don’t need training. What are they basing it on? On the fact that it’s always been done that way. |
| #AndNothingHappens | The whole class is not invited except for one. Repeat after me. The whole class is not invited except for one. That is not done. THAT IS NOT DONE. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I wish one day those teachers who are in the wings would not promote, foster themselves, the exclusion of students. Where children are alone during recess, where no one wants them in groups to participate in class, where children cannot go on an excursion and enjoy it and don’t go alone on a bus. It’s hard and sad, but they have to do their part, it’s not all about comfort. |
| #AndNothingHappens | We think that only our child with a disability suffers mistreatment. However, all their classmates are also exposed to this violence. From a very early age, they learn to accept as normal something that is not. Finally, due to “learned helplessness,” they end up reproducing what they have experienced. Every time they discriminated against my son, my heart also went out to the rest of the class, immersed in a world of adults that is difficult to understand. |
| #AndNothingHappens | A teacher was very offended because I told her that “if working with my son discourages you…” I apologized, “excuse me, I thought that’s what you meant when you said earlier that you felt like going to the bathroom and banging your head against the sink.” |
| #AndNothingHappens | Well, the first ones who left me alone were the parents of the other children with disabilities at the school. As soon as I started protesting, requesting resources, speaking up, and writing letters, they turned against me. And it wasn’t just one or two; it happened with many of them in several schools. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Having to constantly fight, against everything and everyone, is exhausting. We already have enough with our lives, from therapies here and there, to dealing with people who don’t know about autism, to having to fight against “specialists” too. |
| #AndNothingHappens | It turns out there are people who believe that taking action for students who need it is giving them an advantage. Explain that they have been living at a disadvantage all their lives and that our job is to remove the barriers that prevent them from reaching their full potential. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Meetings attended by a mother with a child with special educational needs, who finds herself surrounded by ‘professionals’ who treat her as if she were a punching bag, systematically beaten in rigorous turns. Beaten for asking and demanding what her child is entitled to. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Whether it is easy or difficult, enriching or not, inclusive education is a right for all students. It does not need to be justified. Rights are not debated, they are defended. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Since public school is a right for students and an obligation for parents, it cannot and should not be an institution that offers this response: ‘I am forcing you to be here, but I have no options for you.’ And this is happening, it is hidden and invisible, but it happens, and it seems like nothing happens because it happens, but many children are left behind, and no one gives them back the lost years. When will this stop happening? |
| #AndNothingHappens | I am autistic and I study early childhood education, my notes are full of ableism |
| #AndNothingHappens | Working collaboratively and having the autistic person’s role be ‘make sure your classmates don’t fight’ while the rest organize and write is not adaptation or inclusion, it’s just having them as furniture. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Sad, but this is the summary of an entire school term. Top educational level. ‘We don’t know how much they know about things, it’s hard to check without language’. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I’m coming from the school meeting, and exclusion is what I struggle with the most. Their teachers are fantastic, but inclusion isn’t achieved when my 5-year-old son, to have support during his day, has to be put in a special classroom, when the only thing he and I like about school is being with his classmates. Today I just want to cry from helplessness and the pain of never knowing if I’m doing the right thing. Of not being able to visit schools, of having to enroll him in a school blindly because visits aren’t possible, and how much it all hurts. |
| #YNoPasaNada | And they pressure you indirectly. They judge you as parents. They take many things for granted just to hide their lack of training. The moment a school disrespects families, it’s not a good school. |
| #YNoPasaNada | And have they ever thought of calling the other 24 families to come pick up their children when they get, as they say, “restless”? Or have they ever thought of calling the other 24 families to take their children home so the tutor can attend to this student who is also their student and has the same right to be attended to? This would be unthinkable, right? |
| #YNoPasaNada | The night before, I don’t sleep due to the stress that going to parent-teacher meetings generates in me. And then I spend several days distressed and crying, feeling powerless, not knowing what else to do to help my son. |
| #YNoPasaNada | I don’t know what pedagogy is, but I am clear that many widespread practices are anti-pedagogical and should be eradicated. Like treating adolescents with disabilities as eternally small children. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Saying that there is a lack of training in UDL is a wonderful catch-all to blame teachers for classroom situations that are impossible to manage, generated by the lack of resources and policies of false inclusion. — Quoted: That, my friends, is the truth about that UDL invention: blaming the teacher when they can’t respond to all the realities of their students. It won’t be for lack of resources, it will be for lack of DUALIZING. Uberizing education and selling it as inclusive. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I wanted to suggest that we not get stuck in this arid and hopeless panorama. A similar campaign, when this one is considered closed, that opens the door to hope, that shows those small things that are done differently, those humanized micro-practices that have a positive impact, that invite us to believe in the positive, that invite us to believe. That teacher who looked differently, who knew how to see, welcome, make truly inclusive adjustments. I don’t know what it could be called, but we need to see what is possible, learn about positive examples, spread good practices. Greetings and thank you for all your contributions. |
| #AndNothingHappens | My daughter, who has ADHD, was invited NOT TO TAKE the sixth-grade exam of the Community of Madrid so that the school’s average grade would not go down. |
| #AndNothingHappens | At my son’s high school, they instilled in him the idea of being a “spectator” and did not anticipate activities for him using augmentative language. As a result, no one understood his “I don’t want to,” when in reality he meant “I don’t understand,” and thus he was left out of being one of the group, becoming a “spectator.” Furthermore, he was unaware of what it means to be a spectator, as he remained apart without seeing what his classmates were doing or what it was for. |
| #AndNothingHappens | True! It causes a lot of pain, helplessness, and anger how many children and young people are treated in schools and institutes. This has to change now! And reading each of the testimonies from #AndNothingHappens stirs me deeply at so much nonsense and dehumanization. |
| #AndNothingHappens | The day before the school year ended, my son was super excited at night preparing his candy for the end-of-year party, but the tutor didn’t let him be there and sent him with the special education teacher without his classmates. |
| #AndNothingHappens | On the last day of school, at the end-of-year party, since he bothered her, she sent him with the special education teacher [Pedagogía Terapéutica] to a classroom, all alone, so she could enjoy the other children without Rubén, who was the one who bothered her. |
| #AndNothingHappens | In the tutoring sessions, the principal always, always, came to intimidate and make us feel different. |
| #YNoPasaNada | These things happen and will continue to happen as long as we remain silent. It’s sad to read, yes, but it’s what they make our children live through day after day in schools and in society. It starts in schools and the children see it and end up being displaced… And it’s all a real shit. Belén, never retire. I love reading you, a big hug. |
| #YNoPasaNada | I’m reading all these stories and my heart is heavy, the gratuitous harm done to all these children and all their families is horrible!! I can’t stop crying, what a great sadness. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Hello, Belén, I’m a school counselor, autistic, and a victim of the school system, which is undoubtedly what has marked me most in life. This campaign is deeply impacting me. Yes, it happens, it certainly happens, school continues to harm, crush, traumatize, today as it did 40 years ago, our children like us. It’s devastating. |
| #YNoPasaNada | School continues to be such a cruel place for the different and vulnerable, today as yesterday. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Manuel, a 6-year-old boy with Down syndrome, who was non-verbal at 3 years old, had a tutor who, coincidentally, was also a Special Education teacher and a Speech and Language Therapist, but who was unwilling to spend 1 minute of her time on Fridays after school to tell parents what had been worked on that week in the classroom. The management and guidance team ignored the issue. |
| #AndNothingHappens | My daughter, who has hearing loss, wrote words as she heard them. She repeated a grade because of this, and her teacher’s phrase was: ‘She’s very hardworking, the most, but effort doesn’t always pay off.’ |
| #AndNothingHappens | My son with autism was also at the other school. 3rd grade, they hand out new English books. When they finish, the teacher approaches his desk and in front of the whole class says to him, ‘You don’t get this one, because you can’t.’ And she gives him one from 1st grade for the holidays… (he is currently in 1st year of Batxiller without any adaptations). |
| #AndNothingHappens | My son with ASD started speaking at 7 years old, and on the first day of high school, the teacher tells him to take the gum out of his mouth, when he has never chewed gum in his life. |
| #AndNothingHappens | My son didn’t go on any field trips, he stayed in the support classroom… Thank you, Belén. |
| #AndNothingHappens | We are not alone, nor are we crazy. There are many of us, and this cannot stand. Thank you for your work, Belén. |
| #AndNothingHappens | We have been fighting for 5 years to get the necessary resources for my son and for the IEP (Individualized Education Program) to be real because they don’t adapt anything for him at school… When they have difficulties with something, they just ignore it. Personally, I am having a very hard time. I constantly feel like we are being punished for taking our child to a mainstream school. The truth is, it’s a desperate situation. I don’t know where to turn for at least some guidance. Too much anguish and anxiety. |
| #AndNothingHappens | For them to take my son on the end-of-year trip, I had to pay for the trip myself and go too. Because they wouldn’t take responsibility for him like the other children. As if that weren’t enough, one night I decided not to go to dinner, and my son went with his classmates. His teacher then reprimanded me very upsetly, saying that she couldn’t have dinner peacefully because my son had been talking to her the whole time. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Excellent initiative to share all these expressions of pain and some frustration that all families carry, despite our optimism and desire to give our children a life with rights. |
| #YNoPasaNada | I told her that my daughter has 22Q11 syndrome and that it affected her speech and hearing, and she told me that she didn’t care what she had, that if she didn’t make it, she didn’t… She cried so much when she saw that she wasn’t going with her friends the following year. It’s been 3 years since then and I still cry when I think about it. |
| #YNoPasaNada | I have many from last year, my Rubén had a very bad time with the tutor he had. One of them divided the class into 3 groups; Rubén, who as you already know has autism, was placed with his back to his classmates at a desk facing the wall. That is one of the ‘shitty things’ she ended up doing to him. |
| #YNoPasaNada | How to punish the mother of a non-verbal child? -Give her the empty agenda every day. -At dismissal, don’t tell her anything, just say ‘He/She did well’. -Don’t write her emails or tell her about progress or ways of working. -Zero calls. -Let the school year pass and even if that mother tells you or begs you, don’t pay attention. |
| #YNoPasaNada | ¿Cuánto tiempo tenemos que esperar, aún, para que finalice la segregación y todas las personas tengan sus derechos? Por favor, que la falta de recursos se solvente ya para que deje de ser una excusa. |
| #YNoPasaNada | A partir de leer muchos post de #YNoPasaNada, me he dado cuenta de que muchos de los profesionales que trabajan con nuestros hijos ND (neurodivergentes) pretenden que cambien. Usan la palabra ‘madurar’, ‘aprender’, ‘distinguir’… pero siempre es con la misma finalidad. Ellos tienen que adaptarse a una realidad que no contempla sus ‘singularidades’ y, al final, la gran mayoría de ND (neurodivergentes)aprende a evitar las situaciones que hacen que tengan un meltdown, a buscar estrategias para no llamar la atención, a ‘socializar’ según dice la norma. Y no se trata de encajar o moldear a las personas. Se trata de que hay que saber adaptarse también a sus realidades. Ayudarles a que sus crisis sean menos intensas y no dañen ni a otros ni a ellos. Se trata de hacer que el mundo sea para todos. Y me parece muy complicado. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Acabo de llegar a casa con el corazón encogido. Chicos y chicas que han sido compañeros de mi hijo los tienen en una UCE (Unidad de Currículo Específico). A las 12, en vez de estar en clase con el resto de sus compañeros y compañeras, estaban en el parque debajo de mi casa, en los toboganes ( parque para menores de 4 a 5 años). Años que menores de 15 años tendrían que estar haciendo tercero de la ESO y que, conociendo a una parte, tienen la capacidad para hacerlo. ¿Qué hacen esos menores en el parque cuando tendrían que estar en clase? Y los profesores sentados en un banco. Eso es absentismo por parte de las instituciones. Si unos padres dejan de llevar a sus hijos al colegio, se les condena por ello, van a por los padres, pero las instituciones pueden negarles el derecho a la educación al igual que al resto ¿y aquí no pasa nada? |
| #YNoPasaNada | We learn to make ourselves heard, to demand that the lack of resources not be an excuse for a lack of humanity and respect. I believe that when it happens to us, we just lower our heads further, we convince ourselves that nothing can be done, and NO. It’s not fair, and although it’s frequent (too frequent), it should not be tolerated. |
| #YNoPasaNada | It’s a damn shame what persons with disabilities experience in public universities. To have supports removed, like being able to go to the bathroom or move around, is simply despicable. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Hello, after reading all the publications, I reaffirm what I’ve always thought. The teaching staff who act badly towards children with special needs. They treat them as if they can’t distinguish reality from fiction when they tell parents about the discrimination they are subjected to. The moment they are labeled with ‘disability,’ ‘chronic illness,’ or ‘disorder,’ they are treated like babies when it comes to trusting their word. They try to make us families doubt what our children tell us, convincing us that they exaggerate because, since they have ‘x’ label, we protect them, they have trauma, they are emotionally incapable of facing the reality of the life they have to live. I don’t know about yours, but mine is a 15-year-old boy with a very well-furnished head; he ‘only’ lacks half a leg and has sequelae from cancer. He understands everything, knows the difference between a joke and an insult, knows when they try to ridicule him because they see him as different and less capable. But in his previous school, the teaching staff and administration always treated him as if he were an imbecile and exaggerated everything because, according to them, he had trauma and didn’t accept that they would always make fun of him for being amputated. Since he was 5 years old, we have worked on his self-esteem at home, on him not feeling different or incapable. The school, his classmates, and the families have come close to undoing all of that, and for a few years, they succeeded… According to them, they were doing everything they could for my son. They even prayed for him! |
| #YNoPasaNada | The teachers’ notes… ugh! From 2nd to 3rd grade, they left a note about my daughter for the new tutor. On the first day of school, the teacher wanted to talk about the note. Since I knew more or less what it was about, I told her to observe her behavior and we would talk later. About 15 days later, she tore up the note. She asked me if I wanted to read it first. There are good teachers and there are terrible ones. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I explained the initiative to my mother, and she asked me to write in memory of the girl with terminal cancer who her teachers failed, made her repeat primary school, and didn’t share her last days of life with her lifelong classmates. |
| #AndNothingHappens | It seems we have to wait for them to be kicked around. My daughter was threatened with sending some thugs to beat her up in the street. She hasn’t left the house alone for 3 years due to fear, so they haven’t been able to carry out the threat. The judge issues an acquittal. My daughter remains afraid. |
| #AndNothingHappens | They also say that about special education schools, ‘the school for dummies.’ A comment made right at the entrance of my daughter’s school. What’s serious is that it was said by a mother who was with her ‘neurotypical’ children. |
| #AndNothingHappens | A school that has signed with UNICEF for children’s rights, and they don’t recognize my child’s AUTISM! And they treat it as a behavioral problem. They violate all her rights. |
| #YNoPasaNada | How many recess times did my daughter spend alone! How many birthdays she wasn’t invited to. For her 10th birthday, both classes were invited and only 3 children showed up! You can’t imagine how many mandalas she painted in class while her classmates were learning. You complain to her tutor about it and she tells you that you haven’t accepted it and what good it will do her. |
| #YNoPasaNada | How many recess times did my daughter spend alone! How many birthdays she wasn’t invited to. For her 10th birthday, both classes were invited and only 3 children showed up! You can’t imagine how many mandalas she painted in class while her classmates were learning. You complain to her tutor about it and she tells you that you haven’t accepted it and what good it will do her. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Thank you for giving us a voice! I think most people are not aware of what we have to hear. For me, going to the mainstream school to pick up my daughter became traumatic. Never anything good, as if it were my fault that she has ASD. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Thank you for giving us a voice! My son is 8 years old and has ASD. Since he was 5, he has been suffering bullying, 80% of which was from tutors because he didn’t write perfectly. Because he struggled to learn to read, because he saw how classmates were punished instead of re-educated, because he was denied a second explanation when he needed it. For making him believe that he was to blame when they pushed him or threw his food in the yard. The last months of last school year he spent at home with anxiety attacks and tachycardia, the result of everything that happened every day in class and the continuous lack of respect from his teachers. My son told me that last morning of school: “Mom, I’ve found a solution to stop suffering in class. I’ll throw myself out the window, go to heaven, and then I won’t have to go anymore.” Thanks to his psychopedagogue, I was able to make him understand that option would separate us forever. And he was able to understand what it meant. His scars are mine. And we are still fighting. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Thank you for this awareness work, Belén! For a few years, I provided classroom support to children with autism (the service was paid for by the families). These children also had assigned hours in the SIEI classroom (Intensive Support for Inclusive Schooling). In one school, the psychopedagogue responsible for providing this support to the child I was accompanying refused to take him to the SIEI classroom, saying he was too disruptive and that he already had enough with the private support he received. The tutor didn’t know whether to report it to the administration or not. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Thank you! For giving a voice to the many parents who have had horrible experiences with our little ones at school. We had to change his school. We hope that now everything will be better… After hearing from the Primary School principal and his tutor that “they had done everything possible, but it had become very difficult, impossible…” For our 8-year-old son… We thought the world had ended, but NO. We will never give up, because our son has the right to be attended to as he should be, not to be marginalized, stigmatized, or pigeonholed. We will always fight for his education, his inclusion, and that of all children with ASD. Thank you, truly. The worst has passed for us, or so we hope. At least, this journey has made us stronger!! |
| #AndNothingHappens | Hello! I didn’t know about #AndNothingHappens, but I found out about it today by chance. A post impacted me because I have a sister with ataxia whose teacher nicknamed her “dizzy duck,” a nickname that stuck with her throughout her entire school years. |
| #AndNothingHappens | The school inspector for my son told me that I was a very annoying mother! Just like that! |
| #AndNothingHappens | More drastic! Write 100 times: – In school, invitations are not handed out to everyone except one. Nor is it said no and the other eye is turned. We get involved! – Excursions are not organized for everyone except one. – Activities are not planned for everyone except one. – Festivals or commemorations are not held for everyone except one. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Are you seriously telling me there’s a hashtag called TeacherPhobia?? This is incredible. I’m a teacher and I find it ridiculous. The vast majority of teachers turn a blind eye to bullying cases and have zero interest and knowledge in different conditions. |
| #AndNothingHappens | How many of us have been advised by the guidance counselor on duty to take Diazepam or similar? Of course, they say it’s to cope with the diagnosis. They won’t admit it’s so we can’t react to one discrimination after another by the education system. Anyway, I wish we were few, but we’re not. |
| #AndNothingHappens | How many of us have had to medicate our children because of school? That’s another can of worms. |
| #AndNothingHappens | What is the ABBA method (Applied Behavior Analysis)? Dog training for people. And I speak from experience. Because I refused to practice it, I was removed from the board’s list of educators. I didn’t care. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Is it common for your child (with non-verbal ASD) to be diagnosed with ‘mental retardation’ and for, over the years, with our tireless work and accompanied in the classroom by their personal assistant, they to graduate from ESO with the best grades in the class? What do you think? |
| #AndNothingHappens | “It’s just that in order to give him more resources, I have to take them away from others!!” |
| #YNoPasaNada | “The student has escapist behavior and instead of working on modifying that behavior, the measure taken is to keep him locked in the classroom while his classmates go out for recess…” |
| #YNoPasaNada | “Because it’s not just your daughter in the class… I have 30 students to attend to.” And I was thinking, you don’t have 30, you have 31 with my daughter. But attending to her needs and making the required adaptations was interpreted as taking time away from the rest of the students who really deserved it more and would benefit from it better. |
| #YNoPasaNada | “This student (user of AAC with synthetic voice) cannot use his communicator in the classroom because it bothers his classmates. They are working on literacy; they lost a lot of time during the pandemic. Poor things, it doesn’t let them concentrate.” |
| #YNoPasaNada | “This student (user of AAC with synthetic voice) cannot use his communicator in the classroom because it bothers his classmates. They are working on literacy; they lost a lot of time during the pandemic. Poor things, it doesn’t let them concentrate.” |
| #AndNothingHappens | “Institutional mistreatment” is that which is exercised by any administration when it does not provide citizens with adequate attention or the necessary resources to guarantee their dignity and equality. UN Convention. |
| #AndNothingHappens | “Mom, I want to fall asleep and never wake up again.” My daughter at 8 years old. |
| #AndNothingHappens | “Mom, if I died today, nothing would happen.” (María, 11 years old) |
| #AndNothingHappens | “We are not saying we cannot attend to her, we are saying we believe she would be better off elsewhere.” And in front of her: “she has to be with her own kind.” And then they were surprised that she refused to enter the classroom, when they were making it very clear to her that she did not belong there. |
| #AndNothingHappens | “I can’t attend to him because I have 20 or so more.” I experienced this in a classroom with 10 students, a mainstream classroom. With resources (the teacher was never alone, I counted up to 5 adults in the classroom at the same time) and it couldn’t be done. |
| #AndNothingHappens | “That’s what Special Education centers are for. I didn’t study to deal with this type of student.” |
| #AndNothingHappens | “I’m calling you from the school to let you know that you can’t bring your son today because the AT hasn’t come and the teacher can’t take charge.” This happened quite a few times. |
| #AndNothingHappens | “You should be grateful that in this school we respect your son a lot and we all adapt to him. Not all schools would do the same.” And by ‘respect’ they meant not kicking him out, but politely inviting us to take him away. Everyone had duties except him, all the planners were used except his. No information and having to beg to know what my son does at school every day. |
| #AndNothingHappens | “Don’t worry, they sideline children who don’t keep up in the special education school too, I know from experience.” |
| #AndNothingHappens | “Your daughter (Down syndrome, autism, and ADHD) doesn’t belong in this park,” “what attitude is your daughter teaching the other children?” “Leave, or I’ll call the police.” I went home crying with my daughter because I couldn’t believe what was happening to me. |
| #AndNothingHappens | “Your son needs to go to a special school. It’s like when you have cancer and go to Houston; they have more resources.” |
| #AndNothingHappens | …every time I had a meeting with the teaching staff, I knew I would be devastated for at least two days by everything I had to hear. I even warned my family because it never failed. I even asked myself: does my son have any good qualities? Does he do anything right? They would get flustered and start spouting nonsense to cover up their screw-ups. Over the years, I changed schools, and it was completely different. I left crying with happiness; they only had good words and hope for everything. They even told me: “I would love to have a child like yours in every class,” “your son can get two degrees if he sets his mind to it.” The child was the same; the professionals were not. |
| #YNoPasaNada | …cada vez que tenía una reunión con el profesorado, sabía que iba a estar al menos dos días hecha polvo por todo lo que tenía oír. Avisaba hasta mis familiares porque no fallaba. Llegué a decir: ¿mi hijo tiene algo bueno?, ¿hace algo bien ? Se quedaban cortadas y empezaban a soltar tonterías por la boca para tapar sus cagadas. Con los años cambié de colegio y fue completamente diferente. Salía llorando de felicidad, solo tenían buenas palabras y esperanza para todo. Me llegaron a decir: «a mí me encantaría tener en todas las clases un hijo como el tuyo», »tu hijo puede sacar dos carreras si se lo propone». El niño era el mismo, los profesionales, no. |
| #YNoPasaNada | 10 años juzgado, incomprendido, con el resto de familias de clase pensando que era un mal educado y que derivaba de una familia que no merecía respeto o confianza. 10 años sin apenas invitaciones a cumpleaños. 7 años sin saber que era un amigo. Hasta que en la pandemia nos dijo que no quería vivir así, y encontramos varias familias maravillosas con las que hacer piña y encontrar en un pequeño oasis que le mostró poco a poco qué son los amigos. |
| #YNoPasaNada | 15 años de vulneración del artículo 24 sobre Educación Inclusiva de la CRDP (Comité de los derechos de las personas con Discapacidad) —ratificada en España— |
| #AndNothingHappens | 33 years after the LOGSE (General Law of the Education System), our administrations insist that guidance counselors continue to categorize our students with labels, all of them clinical and economicist (some derive resources and others do not), which hinder those who carry them and seriously condition their school trajectory. |
| #AndNothingHappens | 4th Grade. New tutor. Among her ideas, constantly telling children to be quiet with a whistle. My son (ASD) was nervous every day due to the tutor’s shouts and whims. Even the school blamed my son’s “shadow.” One day my son was so nervous that he hit a classmate. Solution: expel my son. They even said they were going to cancel a field trip because of him. In other words, they wanted to turn other parents against us. Until I told them that this was discrimination and that expelling a child with ASD only made the news. About the tutor, they only said that she was like that and that they could do little, that they told her to do things a certain way, but she didn’t listen. It was a horrible year for us. |
| #AndNothingHappens | 6 years old. Attention problems without a diagnosis. The teacher locked me in a dark classroom for hours. |
| #AndNothingHappens | My daughter with Down syndrome, after several years in high school. When she reached the fourth year of ESO (Compulsory Secondary Education), she had a teacher who, in the middle of class, said: “I didn’t study to teach these children. There are other alternatives for them” (as told by her classmates). Today she got the position for Education Inspector and is practicing… If there are many inspectors like her, what kind of inclusion can be achieved. |
| #AndNothingHappens | They had my daughter adding numbers and she didn’t know the number line… What a great teacher, what a great school and great administration!! And what happens? Nothingggggg. We file a complaint and nothing happenssssssss!! This has a name: school abandonment by the administration. |
| #AndNothingHappens | The physical education teacher doesn’t let my young daughter use her noise-canceling headphones because he says they are a “toy.” She explained to me that she has been in a corner, overwhelmed by the noise and crying. And all he did was tell her to keep doing the exercises. This same teacher once said that a family is a dad, a mom, and the children. This in front of my older daughter… No sir! We are a family with two moms here!! |
| #AndNothingHappens | My daughter, at 11 years old and after a suicide attempt as a result of bullying… in a state of high anxiety, with sleep problems. She is prescribed treatment. No one at the school helped at any time. On the first day of psychotropic medication, the teacher throws her out of class for falling asleep. Everyone was aware. I never received a word of support from the teaching staff. |
| #AndNothingHappens | When my daughter repeated a grade, her former classmates in 4th year of ESO made a corridor for her to applaud her because she wouldn’t be with them, with some teachers as witnesses. |
| #AndNothingHappens | My daughter, in the second year of ESO [Compulsory Secondary Education] halfway through the term. The teachers threw her a farewell party, without informing me. According to them, because she was missing a lot of class and they didn’t want her to leave the institute without saying goodbye to her. All this in a USEE [Special Education Support Unit] classroom. |
| #AndNothingHappens | My son, at 4, 5, and 6 years old, was constantly punished, left without recess, and made to sit still while the other children played. They told me he hadn’t evolved at all since he was 3, that he was very far from this world, that he wouldn’t get past second grade… Every day I picked up my son crying from school, EVERY DAY!! I changed his school, and now my son is happy. He’s in 5th grade and leaves with a smile every day. |
| #AndNothingHappens | My son with autism was excluded from participating in the end-of-year festival at the Special Education school because “he couldn’t tolerate the journey or sustain the event.” Over the weekend, he had been able to travel with me on public transport for an hour and visit the Barcelona aquarium. I offered to accompany my son on the journey so he could participate, and the school refused. |
| #AndNothingHappens | My son with autism was not wanted or accepted anywhere. They would pass him around so he wouldn’t end up in their class. He was just another piece of furniture at that school. Now, at 24, he’s still alone, nobody wants to be with him, not even his closest family. Only his parents and sister are left, and we will be by his side always. That thing you always say so well: social death. Thank you for so much, Belén. |
| #AndNothingHappens | At my son’s school, despite providing papers recognizing his disability, they denied him a curricular adaptation and support because, as he was doing well academically, he didn’t need it. |
| #AndNothingHappens | My son was left bored at the back of the class, and when he had crises and left the classroom, they left him wandering alone in the hallways screaming. And then, they sent another student to find him. |
| #AndNothingHappens | My son was left bored at the back of the class, and when he had crises and left the classroom, they left him wandering alone in the hallways screaming. And then, they sent another student to find him. |
| #AndNothingHappens | My son was bullied when he was 4 years old. Since he was 3, always, always, in the playground and they did nothing. I took him inclusive playground books that I bought to the teacher and the EOE (Educational Guidance Team), and they didn’t look at them. They said it wasn’t fair to the others. Without reading them. |
| #YNoPasaNada | A mi hijo le trataban como si no se enterara de nada, como si no entendía lo que le decían. ¿¿Perdona?? Su disca es física, le falta media pierna y está acostumbrado a tratar con médicos desde los 5 años (ahora tiene 15). |
| #YNoPasaNada | A mi hijo TEA (entonces no diagnosticado), cuando estaba en 2° Primaria le castigaron varias veces expulsándolo al aula de Infantil donde, por carecer de silla y mesa para él, debía sentarse en el suelo a hacer la tarea que no había logrado terminar al mismo tiempo que sus compañeros porque era un «niño pequeño». En el colegio no informaban de dificultad alguna, su tutora solo decía que era un «vago». Dos años después y conociendo ya su diagnóstico se atrevió a contárnoslo. Corroboramos con compañeros que esto había pasado. Los profesores a cargo nos habían ocultado estas expulsiones. |
| #YNoPasaNada | A mi hijo, con TEL Expresivo, casi le suspenden lengua en 2º de primaria, porque en los dictados no escribe las palabras bien. |
| #YNoPasaNada | A mi hijo, uno de sus acosadores le dijo que vivíamos del gobierno y le mandó el enlace de los beneficios fiscales por disca. 14 años tenían. Mi hijo amputado por cáncer desde los 5. |
| #YNoPasaNada | A mí la orientadora me dijo: «la inclusión es muy bonita, pero cuando tu hija no pueda más, para la especial.» |
| #YNoPasaNada | A mí llegaron a decirme que era mejor que fuera a especial porque estaría allí todo el día y que, así, me ahorraría dinero porque tendría todas las terapias. ¿Y quién te dijo a ti que a mí me «estorbaba» mi hija? ¿Y que no quería gastar en terapias? |
| #YNoPasaNada | A mí me dijeron en preescolar 1 era Nivel: «Rosaura, y tú ¿¿por qué traes a Alexandra para el preescolar, es que no tienes quien te la cuide en la casa??» Mi hija tiene condición síndrome de Down y ya tenía 4 años. Hoy día continuamos luchando para escolarizar. |
| #YNoPasaNada | A mí me dijo ayer la maestra que mi hijo miente, antes de darle a mi hijo la oportunidad de explicar una conducta inadecuada. Porque, según ella, si mi hijo no miente, mienten los docentes y eso ella no lo admite. Le expliqué que los maestros no ven el 100 % de lo que pasa en el aula justamente por lo que ellos usan como argumento cuando «no saben nada», que tienen 25 en clase. Y no, no quiso escucharlo y me dijo que miente delante de él. Mi hijo se alteró y empezó a gritar, que él no es un mentiroso. Y ella me dijo que, venga, que esas no son horas (porque ha terminado su trabajo, eran las 14.00). Me fui a secretaría para hablar con la directora sobre lo mal que lo ha hecho llamando a mi hijo mentiroso delante de él, sin escuchar siquiera lo que iba a decir, y la sorprendí hablando de mí con tono despectivo y gestos de desprecio con el logopeda de mi hijo y alguien más. No se dio cuenta de que estaba allí. El que se dio cuenta fue el logopeda. Lo miré a los ojos y me fui. Nada que hablar… |
| #AndNothingHappens | Something similar happened to me when my daughter was little, at summer school. When I told the person who called me that I thought it was discriminatory to go after her because her guardian wasn’t there, they replied that, on the contrary, she was being given preferential treatment for looking for someone to be solely responsible for her. |
| #AndNothingHappens | A teacher even referred to the child’s stereotypies as his “eccentricities.” And that luckily his classmates had already gotten used to them and tolerated them. |
| #AndNothingHappens | From the beginning, Special Education for me. He attended a public school for 2 hours when he was 2 years old (his birthday is in October) and they already determined that he couldn’t be in public school. |
| #AndNothingHappens | At the beginning of the second term, we went to talk to the tutor, last year, [para saber] about what they were working on with my son, and she told us that they hadn’t done anything yet, that the counselor had a lot of work and they hadn’t prepared the appropriate material for her. In other words, he lost the entire course last year. And this year we are following the same pattern. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Adán, a 5-year-old boy with ASD, is failing most subjects, including English. Curiously, he’s brilliant at this language. The teacher says that if she asks a question and the boy doesn’t answer, he fails instantly, it doesn’t matter if she tells him half an hour later, it’s no longer useful. He is always failing. |
| #AndNothingHappens | During lockdown, my child learned to write and read because he didn’t even know how to hold a pencil. We saw how my son was completely neglected and was in a mainstream classroom with 8 children. They say that with a low ratio they work better. If they don’t have the vocation, aptitude, and desire to work, nothing will happen. |
| #AndNothingHappens | In 2nd grade, my child was punished by missing his favorite field trip because he behaved very badly at school. ASD + ADHD. |
| #AndNothingHappens | A student with ASD with communication difficulties who, at 7 years old, begins to show minimal communicative intent, using echolalic phrases and sentences of two or three words at most. The teacher makes her do copying exercises as punishment. The copies consist of repeating “I must not talk in class” 25 times in the notebook. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Alumno autista de infantil que sacan de clase cuando las jornadas de puertas abiertas para que las familias vean todo maravilloso no vaya a ser que en ese momento esté con una rabieta y, claro, «eso no da una buena imagen». |
| #YNoPasaNada | Alumno con discapacidad intelectual. Lo sientan al lado de la estantería donde hay los colores y los gomets. Así el niño se entretiene y se está quieto un rato mientras la profesora da la clase. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Alumno con TDAH en clase ordinaria y le dice la ¡Pt! (Pedagogía Terapéutica): «Uy, a tu madre hoy se le ha olvidado darte la pastillita». |
| #YNoPasaNada | Alumno de 9 años con disgrafía consigue brillar y ser elocuente en cuanto se le libera de la escritura manual y se le permite usar un teclado. Los padres se ofrecen a pagar el ordenador. Pero, ay, se le niega la adaptación sin argumentos. Que se joda. |
| #AndNothingHappens | The principal cancels an official document, such as enrollment, registered through the virtual office, for a minor with special educational needs. And by phone, they inform you a week before school starts that you are out of spots. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Last year, we had a month where we had changed countries, and the girl didn’t speak Spanish. First day of classes (first grade). The counselor calls to say they have removed the girl because they don’t understand her, that the teachers don’t speak Italian. First meeting with the tutor, he tells us she’s Italian. That she doesn’t speak Italian, only English and Spanish, that he sees the girl very poorly, that the girl isn’t meeting objectives, that this year they can’t make her repeat by law but next year they surely will. He never let her take an exam, never integrated her, never taught her anything. Fortunately, we have the means and could afford a private tutor every day, 3 hours daily, otherwise, I don’t know what would have become of my daughter. Oh, and fortunately, we have also changed schools. Thank you, Belén. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Here, the only ones who lost were us; no education official was dismissed. Tell me about a case where they are dismissed. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Here’s another FC (Problematic Family) because we refuse to believe that our son with a physical disability due to cancer has to assume and accept “that they will always pick on him because of his condition.” This was stated by the management team and the district inspector. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) classrooms in the Community of Madrid that students call “the class for dummies”. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Yesterday I went to the meeting and today I haven’t been able to take my child to school. Here we’ve been, the two of us, hugging on the sofa. Today I was only able to take him to arrive for recess (without brushing my hair and in my house slippers, no one will see me). I just dropped him off inside and I’m still here, in the car like a lost soul, looking at my phone and without the strength to drive back home. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Yesterday my daughter was left behind in class. But what hurts me the most is that no one missed her. Sometimes I’m afraid, but I will never stop fighting for her. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Belén, here’s one of many. After fighting incredibly hard to transfer my son from Special Education to a mainstream school, even with the recommendation of the special center, the first thing the counselor told me in the first meeting was that, for the transition to Primary school, my son would go back to Special Education. They didn’t do any work. When the transition to Primary school came, she tried to fulfill her prediction, falsifying reports with the help of the tutor and the Special Education teacher (PT) of the preferred classroom. Among other nice things, “he will never be able to write or read.” They didn’t succeed. I recommended she buy a crystal ball and open an office. It was the beginning of the ordeal they put me through, and it was only early childhood education. They gave him a significant curricular adaptation in second and third grade of Early Childhood Education to pave the way for special education. The transition was to another preferred center where they did give him the opportunity to show what he knew. In September, he was writing in capital letters and reading short sentences. Thank you, Belén, for giving us a voice. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Belén, I wanted to ask you, if you think it’s a good idea, to create a Telegram or WhatsApp group with mothers whose children have suffered the same as our daughters. This would allow us families to support each other and share resources, and also to establish relationships between the children. For them (those who want to and can) it would be wonderful to share the isolation and everything they have felt. My daughter suffers every day from being completely alone. Her last suicide attempt was on August 22nd and it was very serious, she almost succeeded. I need to find a group, at least one person, around her age, to give her a reason to live. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Boy with ADHD in 6th grade. The PT (Therapeutic Pedagogy) teacher told the parents at the end-of-year meeting: ‘You must be prepared, in secondary school children change a lot, and it may be that your son is the subject of ridicule because, well, since he doesn’t behave like the others…’ |
| #YNoPasaNada | Boy with ADHD, with ASD traits. Throughout preschool, connected to the teacher’s computer in class watching YouTube while his classmates did the lesson. |
| #YNoPasaNada | School with ASD preference, but with an intensive support classroom full with 5 students. My 4-year-old son has daily meltdowns that the classroom professionals couldn’t attend to because they can only attend to the 5 children in the classroom. Mine, in that state, it’s better to lock him in the infirmary so he doesn’t hit the mats and have him in meltdown for 50 minutes. Five teachers tried to hold him. ASD preference school, ASD child with ARFID and because of this, the school’s administration tells me it’s better to hire someone to pick him up and feed him at my house because there’s no way… (Without being attended to by the classroom professionals.) I could add so many more from this school. 4-year-old ASD girl continuously at the Robinson table because she misbehaves. |
| #YNoPasaNada | As educators, it is our duty not to accept the shortcomings of the established system with resignation. Teachers have a lot to contribute, not only in terms of knowledge and resources but, fundamentally, in terms of attitude. |
| #YNoPasaNada | I’m very concerned about dyscalculia; no one mentions it, as if it didn’t exist. Yet, problems with math seem widespread. It hasn’t even appeared in #YNoPasaNada, as if it didn’t exist. |
| #YNoPasaNada | I know of a similar case in a subsidized school, where the tutor said that the child with ASD raised his hand to say “incoherent” things, so he was not capable of continuing, recommending that he be “enrolled somewhere more suitable for him.” The most outrageous thing is that the head of studies, the coordinator, and the counselor engaged in corporatism, supporting the tutor to very painful limits for the student’s family. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Conversation with an inspector about task learning classrooms: -So, where are you going to enroll him? -Nowhere. -But keep in mind that there are different “intensities.” Segregation within segregation. First, they label them, and once segregated, they reclassify them. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I think it’s one of the most effective and toughest initiatives you’ve undertaken, Belén. I read, I think, and I remember all the situations that, as a mother and a teacher, I’ve had to live through, and I’m filled with indignation and anguish. I’ve spent all day reading the posts with this hashtag, and I can’t seem to sort out my emotions. I hope to be able to do so soon. Thank you, Belén. It hurts, but it’s necessary. |
| #AndNothingHappens | When bullying is vertical. Bullying is systemic and exercised horizontally, but also vertically. When the person who is supposed to defend you is the one who facilitates, supports, or perpetrates violence and discrimination, the victim is doubly so, and the psychological damage is much greater. |
| #AndNothingHappens | When in 6th grade, the Speech-Language Pathologist and the tutor on duty tell you that your son is repeating because he’s repeating! When the worst grade he got to pass the course was 8.75. It’s the best solution for the impact he has on executive functions. But they chose the wrong family. We took him out of there immediately because we already knew they weren’t going to support him there. |
| #AndNothingHappens | When they tell me I’m crazy for demanding my son’s rights, I think yes, I’m very crazy, but crazy with pain and frustration because with my other son, who doesn’t have autism, I’ve never had to demand anything, they’ve never called me crazy. They want us to be quiet, but that’s over. Thank you, Belén. |
| #AndNothingHappens | When my daughter attended mainstream school, her tutor told me one day: ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t have time for her’. |
| #AndNothingHappens | When my son cries silently in bed because his classmates reject him for being different from the rest and they don’t like him because he doesn’t know how to play soccer. Or when something that is not important to others is very important to him and his way of expressing it is so powerful that they focus more on the behavior and the outburst than on the continuous rejection. Because he feels invisible at school. |
| #AndNothingHappens | When I moved to Primary school, they bullied me quite badly, they even broke my wrist, pushed me down some stairs… So I no longer had any safe place. Mental health support was useless, it only led to me being medicated. |
| #AndNothingHappens | When an inspector tells you that the outrage ‘only happened once’. What? As if more than one instance were needed to give it relevance. |
| #AndNothingHappens | When I go to the park, the children say: ‘look at the girl who is always in the office.’ I go to pick up the girl from school mid-morning without notice and I find her with a different, smaller group than hers, in Early Childhood Education, in speech therapy, as if she were a bother in her group. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Blaming the victims reassures the witnesses, as it frees them from judging the aggressors and rejecting the social values and customs that foster abuse. Victims blamed for their defeat suffer twice: the original aggression and the lack of solidarity from the spectators. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Daniel (SW) right at the start of 5th grade (in a mainstream school). The first week. his tutor already started making excuses. And after two weeks she told me that Daniel ‘had other needs’ (a school with all the support, physical therapy, and nursing included). Daniel was going to give her work. She couldn’t give her master classes for children who learn ‘on their own’ and also make adaptations in subjects. If it weren’t for the PT (Therapeutic Pedagogy) and AL (Hearing and Language) I don’t know what would have happened… because Daniel was in her way. What a year she gave us… The support staff are there to support in the classrooms, not to do the tutors’ work!! |
| #AndNothingHappens | They used to tell me about my child: ‘it’s not that he doesn’t know how to do things, he doesn’t do them because you spoil him too much’. |
| #YNoPasaNada | As a child, they said I was lazy, that I didn’t want to do anything because I didn’t understand what was explained in class. The teacher forced me to look her in the eye while she said I was ill-mannered. They always compared me to my sister because she got excellent grades and did everything perfectly. I was the weird one who didn’t play with anyone and stayed alone, the one who would never amount to anything and only liked to get attention. Now, at 38 years old, I’ve been diagnosed with autism thanks to my daughter, who is also autistic. I fight so that she and no other child has to go through what I went through. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Saying the terrible things that we, as families, go through, and finding it easier to stay silent and label us as problematic or difficult rather than listening to improve is what brought us here in the first place. Many of us cry with our children’s pain and know we are not alone. Keep going, please. This was needed!! |
| #YNoPasaNada | Since I enrolled my daughter with ASD in the educational center, every few days I was summoned to the Principal’s office to be invited to keep my daughter at home because ‘it was best for her’. |
| #YNoPasaNada | After 11 years of marginalization throughout my childhood, in high school, the principal-teacher maintained a harassment campaign against me as well, after reading, one day without my permission, pages in my desk that were my personal diary and in which I criticized how we were already being mistreated. During high school, I averaged grades of threes, betrayed because they deliberately lowered my overall average. And in the university entrance exams, I was the only one who raised the average of the grades with eights and nines. I developed paranoia as a result of this harassment for the next 10 years, from which I miraculously escaped. Although I still have panic attacks towards people I want to trust. They destroyed my life. And, furthermore, I am awaiting a diagnosis. |
| #AndNothingHappens | After seeing that they couldn’t do anything judicially, they enrolled my son in 4th grade for an hour + recess. It was going to be flexible, but it wasn’t extended all year. One day there was Golden Age theater, I think… They modified the entry and exit times to be there, I waited downstairs. An hour and a half later, the PT brought him down because his “time” was up. I asked if the work was finished and she said no. That if I wanted to take him up, but “what for!, anyway, he doesn’t understand anything.” |
| #AndNothingHappens | They say about crazy women that we transmit strength, courage, the desire to fight and to finally live, without fear. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Difference between “accepting” and “abandoning.” A simple example. If a girl is non-verbal, “accepting” is to implement an AAC system, “abandoning” is to do nothing. Isn’t that crystal clear? Families do accept our children’s disabilities. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Difference between “accepting” and “abandoning.” A simple example. If a girl is non-verbal, “accepting” is to implement an AAC system, “abandoning” is to do nothing. Isn’t that crystal clear? Families do accept our children’s disabilities. |
| #YNoPasaNada | El alumno con TEA e hipersensibilidad sensorial que sufre un ataque de ansiedad cada hora cuando suena la sirena de cambio de clase, pero a pesar de los informes médicos aportados por la familia. El centro no toma la decisión de sustituir el terrible sonido propio de una fábrica por una megafonía musical más amable, menos agresiva y acorde con nuevos tiempos. |
| #YNoPasaNada | El alumno con TEA en Primaria que tiene pánico a los globos, porque su ruido al explotar le hace daño, y no puede asistir a la fiesta de la clase con sus compañeros porque está todo el colegio adornado con globos, a pesar de estar todo el profesorado informado de su hipersensibilidad acústica. |
| #YNoPasaNada | El alumno con TEA que no puede realizar trabajos con otras personas porque tiene dificultades de relación social, problemas en la organización y ejecución. Entrega de tareas. Tiene dificultades en la comunicación y en la interpretación de la mente de los otros, grave ansiedad social, baja autoestima y riesgo de acoso. Pero, aun así, se le obliga a hacerlos porque «tiene que aprender a tener amigos.» Discapacidad social = discapacidad invisible. |
| #YNoPasaNada | El alumno con TEA que se autorregulaba en clase de primaria haciendo bolas de papel y lanzándolas porque estaba horas y horas en el aula sin intervención. Como esa conducta molestaba el estudio de sus compañeros, el profesor se ponía a hacer bolas y lanzárselas a la cara al alumno TEA para que así entendiera que estaba molestando. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Ableism is the most repugnant form of segregation and discrimination. |
| #AndNothingHappens | The day I went to enroll my eldest daughter in the assigned educational center, because it was the only school with the educational resources the girl needed, the principal told me if I was sure about taking her to that school. That it wasn’t a suitable place for herbecause there were 250 other students. |
| #AndNothingHappens | My son’s school principal, in the second year he was at the center, received me on the first day with the “happy” news that he had already found a suitable school for my son… |
| #AndNothingHappens | El hashtag #YNoPasaNada es previo a lo ocurrido en Jerez. Denuncia maltratos cotidianos ante los que no se actúa. Las consecuencias de eso son muchas. Una educación pobre y pervertida para toda la comunidad educativa; escuelas que están lejos de ser lugares seguros, amables para todas y todos; críos y crías que se educan en la indiferencia y normalización del maltrato a sus iguales; como poco, niños y niñas maltratados, ignorados, solos y que sufren consecuencias graves física, social y psicológicamente. Muchos niños con diversidad son maltratados cada día en escuelas y se invisibiliza, se normaliza, minimiza, niega. Esto puede derivar en automaltrato, depresiones, suicidios… sigue invisible. Cuando el maltrato continuo y la falta de reacción de los responsables adultos lleva a esta forma de respuesta de autodefensa y de poner límites de forma. |
| #YNoPasaNada | El més increïble és que hi ha profes empipats fent servir el hashtag per dir «doncs les famílies també fan coses malament». Un #notallprofes. Si veus això com un atac personal, serà que alguna coseta t’has de revisar. |
| #YNoPasaNada | El muro de la vergüenza. |
| #YNoPasaNada | El niño no tiene autismo, es su madre que está empeñada en que lo tiene. El niño solo necesita que le pongan límites. (La tutora) |
| #YNoPasaNada | The worst moment of the school day for E is recess. She is alone. She tries to approach groups of children, without success, who form circles and scorn her with laughter and mockery. The adults in charge of the playground are neither present nor expected. E gets nervous and starts spinning around, running in circles, or flapping her arms. |
| #AndNothingHappens | The pilgrimage I go through with doctors, specialists, therapists… and for them to ask me what I need a diagnosis for. If it’s for the benefits. I don’t want a diagnosis, my daughter needs it to receive adequate treatment. You can shove your benefits up your ass. |
| #AndNothingHappens | In the first year of Primary school, my daughter didn’t have PE with her class. They took her to a kindergarten classroom. I found out in May because I arrived early to pick her up and it happened that they had gone to the park to play sports. When I didn’t see her, I asked about her and they were forced to tell me. |
| #AndNothingHappens | The school year begins, 1st year of Secondary Education, a boy with ADHD. ‘You need to know that he will be here in 1st and 2nd year of Secondary Education, after that you should take him somewhere else, he won’t be able to pass any grade…’ |
| #AndNothingHappens | In the 1st year of ESO, he suffered school bullying, and the school always denied it with the support of Educational Inspection. He suffered an assault that led us to a criminal proceeding, and the words of the Counselor were ‘it was an accident, and accidents happen’. |
| #AndNothingHappens | In the 3rd year of ESO, they put on a ‘play’ in my daughter’s class: ‘What would you do if a classmate were bullied?’ My daughter’s bullies played their roles perfectly: good friends, supportive, defenders of the victim. They almost got an Oscar. But that’s in the classroom. During recess, in the street, they take off the mask. |
| #AndNothingHappens | In the 3rd year of ESO, they put on a ‘play’ in my daughter’s class: ‘What would you do if a classmate were bullied?’ My daughter’s bullies played their roles perfectly: good friends, supportive, defenders of the victim. They almost got an Oscar. But that’s in the classroom. During recess, in the street, they take off the mask. |
| #AndNothingHappens | In the 3rd year of ESO, I got tired of silently suffering the bullying my daughter had been experiencing since she was little. I made it public, and at school, they blamed my daughter. They said she was the one who wasn’t adapting to the group. Typical of bullying: blaming the victim. |
| #AndNothingHappens | En 5° de Primaria, tanto el tutor como algunos compañeros de clase se burlaban de las dificultades de mi hijo. Director: «Has tenido mala suerte con el tutor que os ha tocado», y no hizo nada. |
| #YNoPasaNada | En el cole de mi nieto. En 4°, hacían las salidas por el entorno el día que él iba a terapia para no tener que llevarlo. En 3°, las hizo todas sin ningún problema. |
| #YNoPasaNada | En este hashtag la gente habla en primera persona y con toda su verdad. No necesita rumores, como alguien dijo, ni que lo usemos contra [el profesorado], ‘creo recordar’. El asunto es suficientemente serio como para invalidar los testimonios de las víctimas con inexactitudes. Sin acritud. Gracias. |
| #YNoPasaNada | En la clase de mi hijo llegaron a decir las mamás de otros alumnos y alumnas que la clase iba mal por mi hijo. |
| #YNoPasaNada | At my son’s school, just two weeks after the school year started, they told me that if I didn’t pay the 100 euro fixed fee, my son couldn’t go on the field trip. In other words, they punish the child for doing nothing. It’s a Special Education school. Unbelievable. |
| #AndNothingHappens | At my son’s graduation, all the children wore jackets except mine. Besides that, no one wanted to go in with him as a partner to the auditorium. Who did he go with? With another girl with severe epilepsy problems who, coincidentally, also didn’t have a partner. |
| #AndNothingHappens | At the university, they were signs of aggression —referring to stereotypies—, so [la profesora] said she was afraid and to understand her. Explaining everything to her was like talking to a wall. Her excuse was that she had to protect the class. There were colleagues of that person who disagreed, but I don’t know why no one confronted her and wanted to assign a trainee who had no idea about psychology. Therefore, so that my son could graduate in biochemistry, I, his mother, spent all the hours my son was in class next to the door in those university hallways, just in case something happened. |
| #AndNothingHappens | In my case, NO ONE invited my son to their birthday during the 7-year-old school year (nor any of the ones he had invited at 6). His marginalization among the other families was such that I had to tell him that 7-year-olds don’t celebrate birthdays to avoid his pain from rejection. |
| #AndNothingHappens | In my school, teachers used to make students do exercises in pairs when the number of students was odd. One child would always be left out, dying of shame and sadness. Those of us who have been teachers know that this is never done by mistake. |
| #AndNothingHappens | In the first person. I enrolled my son in the municipal nursery. The city council and the nursery pass the buck, telling me: “He can only attend from 8 to 10 in the morning because the caregiver can’t handle him, he escapes.” In a classroom like all the others in the nursery, with a high latch on the door. Excluded and abandoned. |
| #AndNothingHappens | In a meeting with the counselor because the tutor wasn’t giving us information about what was being worked on with our son (3 years old, Down syndrome), he told us: “I also have a delayed son and these things happen. But you can always change schools. Don’t go to Education or the courts, it’s a waste of time and they won’t do anything.” The counselor, by the way, had a speech therapy clinic to get rich off the children who were neglected at school. He advised us not to apply for the MEC scholarship (fewer papers for him). We didn’t listen to him, we applied and we’ve always received it. |
| #AndNothingHappens | In a 3rd-grade meeting, the school counselor told us: “you have to understand that this is as far as he’s gotten, I think you have too many expectations.” We got up and left. |
| #AndNothingHappens | En una tutoría de 1° Infantil la tutora afirmó, sin ningún tipo de pudor, que la ATE (Auxiliar Técnico Educativo) tenía que inmovilizar la cabeza del niño, con síndrome de Down, para que atendiera en clase. |
| #YNoPasaNada | En una visita del alumnado de 6º de Primaria a un IES, acompañaba a una alumna con una enfermedad que le dificultaba la motricidad, entre otras afecciones. Guió la visita el equipo directivo del IES. Al llegar al ascensor, dijo que no se podía usar a no ser que se tuviera un defecto. ¿Un defecto? La orientadora del IES me preguntó que qué problema era fulanita. No, fulanita no es un problema, fulanita es una niña y no tiene ningún defecto. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Es injusto de lo que nos acusan a las madres, sobre todo cuando evidenciamos la discriminación que reciben nuestros hijos en las escuelas. Suelen tacharnos de locas, de querer cosas que no le «pertenecen». «Que no aceptamos la discapacidad de nuestros hijos.» Es hiriente que sean justo estas personas, las profesionales, que deben formar a nuestros niños… A muchos les vendría bien un tratamiento de choque contra su propio capacitismo. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Es mucho más fácil ponerse en el perfil el lacito de la efeméride de la dificultad de aprendizaje de ese mes que luego atender esas necesidades en el aula. |
| #YNoPasaNada | It is very difficult, extremely difficult, to be in a place where you are not wanted. It is painful. |
| #YNoPasaNada | It is a problem of pure and simple ableism with the AACC. How can they need support if they don’t have a disability? This also happens a lot with autistic profiles, like my son’s, formerly Asperger’s, where it’s not understood why he “doesn’t seem autistic”. |
| #YNoPasaNada | A school that invalidates an Autism diagnosis. There are many things to tell… He entered at 5 years old and is now 11, more than 5 years of suffering. I think it’s outrageous… and nothing happens… it’s very sad. The psychiatrist hints that I shouldn’t keep complaining because it’s the child who is at the school and they might turn against him. I reply: “I’m not asking for favors, these are his rights. And if they turn against him because of it, that would be a crime…” |
| #YNoPasaNada | Being on the beach lying down, behind a group of mothers who are trashing your daughter at the top of their lungs, talking about her as if she didn’t have a disability and were a delinquent in the classroom. Getting up to explain to them that she has autism, a disability that is without intervention in the classroom, neglected and without resources. Asking for their collaboration and support. And that 7 months later they themselves organize a strike to expel her from school. And they report the situation in the press, presenting her as a violent student, again ignoring her condition, her disability, and the school’s lack of resources. |
| #YNoPasaNada | I have also experienced this. This is another classic. Blaming you because others cannot do an activity that legally should not be scheduled because it is not accessible to all students. I schedule an exclusionary activity and I also make the excluded student’s family feel bad. |
| #YNoPasaNada | I am in a high school where they have not adapted anything for him yet because they see him as ‘happy’. ALL of us should give the names of schools, counselors, and teachers who look the other way. Point them out just as they do to our children. |
| #YNoPasaNada | I am reading certain tweets about disability that, as a disabled person myself, are leaving me stunned by how eugenic and Nazi they are. Apparently, according to certain people, people like me have no right to live and deserve to be aborted. And those of us who do live, should be locked up in special education centers, compulsorily, simply for being different. It doesn’t matter if we need it or not. |
| #YNoPasaNada | I am out of strength. The last attempt with a professional to get my son to stop being alone in the playground wandering under the sun, and no, the school doesn’t care. The same day as the meeting, [estaba], alone under the sun, and so it went on the following days. Every day my son tells me: ‘Mom, don’t take me to school,’ ‘Can I be absent today?’ ‘It’s hell,’ ‘I’m sick of school.’ I don’t know what to do anymore… |
| #YNoPasaNada | I was on the phone with my daughter’s school principal for an hour because he couldn’t see me in person. And I had to wait two days for him to see me after the aggressor grabbed her by the neck. And he limited himself to saying: “we want the girl to feel good.” And he hung up. They never helped my daughter and we had to leave the school. Her tutor simply said that if she hadn’t found her place there, he thought it was great that she would be happy somewhere else. Just like that, while my daughter, day after day, got in the car when I picked her up and cried. She said, “Mom, Monday mornings arrive and I’m miserable.” Meanwhile, the aggressors of my daughter and that tutor, plus the whole gang that makes it up, have remained there. And we left. There is no justice, nobody helps. This is shameful. Never stay silent about anything, ever. |
| #AndNothingHappens | They excluded “minorities” from all kinds of representation for so long that now any inclusion seems forced to them. |
| #AndNothingHappens | After-school activities, organized by the Parents’ Association in Early Childhood and Primary Education, segregated for students enrolled in special education classrooms in mainstream schools. |
| #AndNothingHappens | End of the first evaluation of the second year of ESO and I find out that the Spanish teacher hasn’t spoken to my daughter all year. She is there every session, still, without tasks, silent, staring into space… day after day. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Thanks to those of you who are professionals, decent people and do not look the other way and get outraged by this that degrades us as a society. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Thank you [Belén] for sharing and making it clear that many parents are not alone, whether in Seville, Andalusia, or all of Spain, they do not want to help or inclusion for our children. Thank you for doing all this and making us feel more united and fighting for them. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Thank you for helping to spread the word. The worst thing about these behaviors is that they are not only confined to the school environment. The contempt we suffer in healthcare too, “psychiatric patients” (as they call us) is endless. Immobilizations, overmedication without being able to ask what it’s for. While pregnant, for example, the gynecologist recommended that since the weeks for abortion had passed, I should give the baby up for adoption, that I couldn’t and didn’t know how to be a mother. This has to end. I’ve been doing outreach through talks for 10 years and people don’t believe you. They think you’re either lying or exaggerating… There are thousands of us who can’t take it anymore. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Thank you for this great thing you are doing by giving a voice to so many families who have suffered for the same reason. My story and my son’s are horrifying. I still find it hard to express it because it’s very recent. My son was abandoned by the education system and I was psychologically mistreated for months. I speak up for colleagues and teachers because they have always been up to the task, although it is true that in this story, the majority decided to look the other way. The center’s version was that I was a hysterical nonconformist. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Two days ago: “literally, my 16 diversification students are 16 amoebas.” And absolutely nothing will happen. |
| #AndNothingWillHappen | A few days ago, crying with a mother in my office. Apologizing on behalf of the entire school institution. Acknowledging and supporting the harm. |
| #AndNothingWillHappen | There is a very common acronym used in reports between teachers and administrators: “FC”, Problematic Family. |
| #AndNothingWillHappen | I have greatly thanked people for doing their job and, even, not doing it for fear of consequences for the child. The consequences came with a rushed invitation to move to Special Education. The parents were the last to know about this unilateral decision. Mainstream education that lives up to its name. |
| #AndNothingWillHappen | I have even read that it is to receive handouts. How can there be so much malice. Some mothers lose their jobs or even their health. And not because of our children. It is the injustice, the mistreatment received that you cannot assimilate. And in that time, children are expected to act and behave like neurotypicals. When they collapse or get sick, it’s only us left supporting them, desperately asking for help. And nothing happens. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I have witnessed the mistreatment of students and families by a management team. In reality, by the entire educational community. Who suffers most from this mistreatment? The students who are targeted at that moment. Towards one student in particular, it has been very, VERY SERIOUS mistreatment. Physical and above all psychological (which is not seen), to the point of causing school phobia. Isolation and labor coercion for professionals who do not go along with the status quo. All reported to the Ministry of Education. And nothing happened. An educational center where one cannot live. Where one cannot coexist. Where criticism is not accepted and a fuss is made. Where initiative is stifled. Where there is a work environment that, any resemblance to that of an educational center, is purely coincidental. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Semi-verbal son at 4 years old. The speech therapist at CAIT gives him an IQ test: borderline. 2 months later, he takes other tests. The school counselor: normal intelligence. It wasn’t my son, but the type of test, and thank God, we got a good counselor who wasn’t influenced. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Hello Belén, although I don’t know you personally, I would like to thank you. Thank you for making public some of the bad practices that occur in schools. This only highlights the need for the Education System to change towards a more humane and just perspective. I believe it is an ethical issue that committed teachers be drivers of change in our schools to prevent these kinds of things. This is the only reason why this year I have run for director of my center. Changes start from necessity, but also from the will of certain teaching staff who do not agree with the current status quo. It is hard to fight against the obstacles of some colleagues and the administration as a management team, so I cannot even imagine the walls that families have to encounter. I am aware that changes are slow, although unstoppable. In my opinion, the key point is the union of students, families, and committed teachers. Great things can come from this in schools. Belén, you have all my admiration, keep making people blush, exposing and denouncing intolerable situations. A hug. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Hello Belén, thank you very much for your account. I am autistic. From age 4 to 17, besides being completely alone, it seemed that my peers weren’t satisfied with that and I received death threats, pins in my chair. They cut my hair, spat on me, hit me. They even broke my arm so I couldn’t participate in a competition. They insulted me, stole from me, or locked me in the bathroom… The teaching staff simply ended up not letting me go to recess, so I was without recess until, literally, university. The few times I defended myself (by shouting) I was punished. Over time, I ended up thinking I deserved that mistreatment and I also ended up in an abusive relationship. Now I have a son who is also autistic, almost 2 years old, and I am simply terrified that he might go through the same thing. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Hello Belén. I’ve been reading you since you started and I finally see myself here, writing to you. Because we are tired. Teacher of the old school who doesn’t adapt the material for my 7-year-old ASD son. A school that claims to be inclusive, but then no child is explained what autism is. There are no talks, awareness days, nothing. Punishments in the playground watching his classmates play, depriving him of a right (to play) and a need (to move). Reading books without adaptation. Homework without adaptation. He has to do the tasks in the same format as his classmates. No images, no pictograms. All text. She made problems for him to use his noise-canceling headphones. I really don’t know if he uses them, because my son also has a language problem and doesn’t talk about what happens inside. He complains. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Hello, Belén, good evening. Even in special education schools there is discrimination based on the degree of disability. Today they did an activity about trees and only asked “from here to there water the plants,” leaving 2 people, a boy and a girl with multiple disabilities, without doing the activity. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Hello, Belén. Here’s mine. My son with cerebral palsy, 7 years old, his first epilepsy. His tutor and the secondary school integration classroom teacher, his witness, received me. They were taking my son out of the mainstream classroom even though he had a personal assistant paid for by us, and we refused. They didn’t want the Personal Assistant. The tutor picked up the phone to tell me that she would call any center to change my son’s school. He thrashed around and climbed onto the table to almost assault me. The same teacher, his tutor a year earlier, summoned me and I went with my son’s private psychologist. Her appointment was to tell me not to talk to mothers outside of school, that she prohibited it. I was three months pregnant. I had a miscarriage the next day. At 16 years old, the integration classroom teacher received him and it was bitter for many years to kick him out as they did. Today I am calmer, but with a lot of pain. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Hello, Belén. God bless you. I wanted to comment on a post, but I’m actually afraid that someone will see it and they’ll go after my son again this past year. |
| #AndNothingHappened | Hello, Belén. Thank you for making visible the reality we live. It’s sad and shameful to read the hashtag. When my son with ASD was 4 years old, his tutor changed. He had to adapt to her and to the environment of a mainstream school; we had moved and he had a new baby brother. The first week, after picking him up, the conversation he had with me was: ‘I have 25 students to attend to, of course he was the 26th.’ Your son today is ‘soaking wet’ from all the crying he did. If a new person comes here, she’ll take sick leave, among other things. The one who was ‘soaking wet’ that night and many others was me because of how badly we went through that stage. Luckily, there were professionals who did have empathy, but we have to rely on that, on having ‘luck.’ A hug and thank you. |
| #AndNothingHappened | Hello, Belén. I learned about your movement through a friend. I have a son with generalized developmental delay and Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Two years ago, he suffered bullying from three classmates. They would count to three, my son would run, and they would kick and punch him in the head. One day, a punch to the kidneys knocked him down the stairs. His teacher told me that my son was very ‘provocative’ and, to top it off, she made a scene in front of the whole class, telling him he was lying. Even today, tears fall… and sadly, nothing happened! A hug. |
| #AndNothingHappened | Hello, Belén. Mother of 3, with autism. The middle one goes unnoticed, I’m absolutely crazy. I suffered a lot from abandonment with my eldest son, until everything became evident… In 5th grade, I found a teacher who was a true professional, but 8 years of suffering, playing alone in the yard, bullying… Loneliness, loneliness, and more loneliness were enough. Secondary school is a daily challenge. The story repeats itself. My youngest son, in early childhood education, they say ‘I don’t set limits,’ ‘he only has a language problem…’ Always alone in the playground. Today, in 2nd grade, they have adaptations (ACIS). ‘He doesn’t have the level of the class,’ ‘he brings books from 1st grade, but buys the 2nd-grade books,’ ‘he’ll have them next year because he won’t be promoted.’ Again, alone in the playground: ‘he likes to be alone or with those who dominate him.’ ‘Your son will never stand out…’ And it’s me who doesn’t let him advance. Absolute sadness and demoralization. |
| #AndNothingHappened | Hola, cuánta razón llevas en todo. Yo tengo un hijo con autismo leve. Me presionan en el cole para que vaya medicado. No lo aguantan si está muy nervioso. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Hola, gracias por tu campaña. Yo he vivido por parte del cole casi todo lo que escribe la gente. Acoso, expulsiones hasta que la tomaron con el niño. Ese fue el peor momento y, sobre todo, en el que más sola me encontré. Y siempre me formulaba la pregunta que os formulo ahora a todos: ¿por qué no existe un sindicato que proteja a estos niños, cuyos derechos están por encima de la Constitución Española? |
| #YNoPasaNada | Hola, mi hija tiene Asperger, 14 años y 2 años sin poder ir al cole por TOC y TEA. Recomendación de incorporación paulatina, dejarla salir cuando lo necesita. El 10 de octubre, día mundial de la salud mental, la tutora se negó a dejarla. Le dijo: «no te voy a cumplir tus caprichos». La llevó a tal extremo que el nivel de frustración y ansiedad era alto. No me llamaron en el momento como madre, se negaron. Llamaron a la ambulancia, policía local y nacional porque mi hija intentó defenderse. Abrieron un expediente disciplinario y la quieren echar del cole. Necesito vuestro apoyo, quiero denunciar el daño hecho y no sé por dónde empezar. Toleré demasiado y se acabó. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Hola. Cuando mi hijo tenía 3 años, la profesora de 1° de Infantil me dijo que, en sus 35 años de experiencia, nunca había tenido un hijo como el mío. Que es como cuando una espera tener una rosa y, finalmente, tiene un cactus… Nos hizo mucho daño esa señora. Hicimos bien huyendo de ese colegio. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Today they were choosing a class representative in my son’s class (fourth year of ESO) and the tutor ignored my son’s vote. Details like these at this stage crush me. 🥹 |
| #YNoPasaNada | Today they told me again that my daughter “cripples” a lunch monitor. That when she’s like this —a child with ASD who gets frustrated if you don’t let her move where she wants— they’ll call me to come pick her up. That they don’t have the resources to attend to her… A PREFERENTIAL CENTER FOR ASD. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Today I have a meeting at the institute (first year). School bullying for the past 3 years. They don’t leave her alone in this new stage: “bitch, take her stuff and ruin it, clown, you have no right to look at us or laugh.” Pushing, pulling her ponytail, you’re a lesbian, as if saying she’s a pariah (it’s okay if she were). Hard paper balls directly at my daughter… |
| #YNoPasaNada | I insist, I’m not against anyone, but everyone has come against my son. I haven’t found any support until they saw the atrocities they were committing. I’m not generalizing, but you have to be realistic. It’s funny that they call me a “fighter” when I’ve never conceived this as a war. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Trying to give visibility to the systematized mistreatment that some children suffer from the education system and that some teachers feel alluded to and find that offense more important than the original message is also adultocentrism and child-phobia. |
| #AndNothingHappens | The self-care of caregivers is unfeasible when we have to fight every day for rights and for disastrous and cruel management of the most vulnerable. Our mental health hangs by a thread. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Last year’s Speech and Language therapist hinted to me that I shouldn’t worry about books in first grade, that they could “adapt” the material for her. Not only have I not paid attention to her, but the visual material I brought they want to use for all the 6-year-old children in the class… If I have to wait for someone to make visual adaptations, I’m screwed. |
| #AndNothingHappens | The student with ASD who has reduced hours and enters every day at 10:30, but the AMPA decides to take the class photo at the end of the year at 9:30 so that she doesn’t appear. #BlessedPhotoshop |
| #AndNothingHappens | The principal of my daughter’s previous school, when signing the report in disagreement, told my husband to sign that it was possible. After leaving the room, she had an anxiety attack. |
| #AndNothingHappens | My son’s school principal told me they were all going on a trip in an adapted bus. The day arrived, and there was one bus and one adapted taxi. Guess who went on the trip alone. |
| #AndNothingHappens | The school principal told me that if I found any school that guaranteed they would “put up with” my daughter throughout Primary school, I should ask for it in writing. |
| #AndNothingHappens | The additional provision 4 of the LOMLOE is dormant, and governments (central and regional) do not lift a finger while the right to education is violated. |
| #AndNothingHappens | The teacher’s favorite phrase to the kids: ‘you wouldn’t be any dumber if you didn’t train.’ He daily bullies a 7-year-old boy who changed schools this year for this reason. The entire teaching staff knows and does nothing. I think they sleep soundly. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Learned helplessness. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Mine: waiting for the bus, the kids are playing hide-and-seek. My 6-year-old daughter (ASD and ADHD), when she comes out of hiding, they had all left. They blamed the monitor, and from that day on, they had to wait for the bus in a line, pressed against a wall. |
| #AndNothingHappens | The night before, I can’t sleep due to the stress that going to parent-teacher meetings generates. And then I spend several days distressed and crying, feeling powerless, not knowing what else to do to help my son. |
| #AndNothingHappens | The counselor on duty tells me in a meeting that my daughter has a very, very severe condition. She had only been with her for 3 days, 1.5 hours a day. Apparently, she’s a mind reader. |
| #YNoPasaNada | The school counselor… ‘Oh, so you refuse to have your daughter in modality C. Well, the bargaining chip for her to be in a mainstream classroom is for you to get her an in-class assistant. We have many resumes from people who have done internships and don’t charge much. But your daughter can’t be without supervision,’ (three weeks after starting first year of Early Childhood Education). |
| #YNoPasaNada | The counselor told me: ‘Ugh, all the teaching staff are on edge, they’re furious. Why don’t you consider putting her in a subsidized private school, since they are priests and will welcome her with more compassion? You’re in a very bad situation here.’ Me: ‘We don’t want compassion, we want inclusive education.’ |
| #YNoPasaNada | The Early Childhood Education teacher forgot about my son and spent more than 30 minutes in the bathroom, not knowing what to do and extremely disoriented. INCLUSIVE School… |
| #YNoPasaNada | The psychiatrist at the CSMIJ of Mollet Vallès: (after listening to my daughter for 3 minutes and IN FRONT OF HER): ‘Your daughter has a very mild ADHD. If things go badly in two years and she fails, come back.’ |
| #AndNothingHappens | School segregation is, like racism and Islamophobia, structural. It affects any institution and we all become segregating agents sooner or later. We wouldn’t tolerate a lack of resources as an excuse for sexism, would we? |
| #AndNothingHappens | The loneliness of the students, the kind that permeates every schoolyard around the world… Thank you, Belén. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Loneliness. Loneliness because no one understands you. Loneliness because no one likes you. Loneliness that you long for in the crowd. Loneliness that comforts. Loneliness that lives anchored within you. Loneliness. |
| #AndNothingHappens | The 4th-grade teacher told me exactly like this. “What is your son doing here? This is a school.” !!! |
| #AndNothingHappens | My son’s autism teacher, in a meeting. I kindly ask her to help the boy so his classmates don’t leave him out. Her response was that she had no obligation to tell any child to hang out with my son, that she couldn’t do anything. |
| #AndNothingHappens | The teacher, in a meeting, tells parents to buy some math workbooks. To a mom with her daughter with Down syndrome, in front of the whole class, she says it doesn’t matter if she buys them for her daughter. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I told the counselor that I disagreed with the psychoeducational report and she told me that she wouldn’t assess the girl until after 2 years. It wasn’t worth it before because she wouldn’t progress enough, even during summers or months, to be evaluated. |
| #AndNothingHappens | He has had depression for 4 years, takes Abilify, it has nothing to do with school, but rather a combination of education and healthcare. They don’t give him antidepressants because there is a high risk of suicide. Is this how we families should be? Our children have no rights in any area. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I have been requesting a tutoring session since the second week of school, they were supposed to start in October, but there’s no sign of it. They don’t conduct an initial interview. The teacher responds via the app once every four times. Meanwhile, my son is having a hard time because I haven’t even been able to say that loud music scares him. |
| #AndNothingHappens | They used to do the same to my son, at 8 years old they wouldn’t let him be in his classroom, they took him with the 4-year-olds to play with toy kitchens. |
| #AndNothingHappens | What you are doing with your initiative is so great that you can’t imagine, because you are making visible everything that happens in schools and that has always been hidden away. I am a teacher, I am with you. Thank you very much, Belén. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Proudly crazy. Crazy defending our children. They drive us crazy when they close doors on us. This is POL. He is autistic and tried to commit suicide in March because he didn’t want to live in a world where the bad guys win. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Teachers also have to change the system from within and denounce these bad practices and lack of humanity. It’s not acceptable for corporatism to weigh more than the lives of the people being humiliated by such treatment. Families need support, not judgments/excuses to justify what the system fails to do. We have to change this together. We need to be brave, as our children show us every day in their personal struggle, which shouldn’t be this way. It should be enjoyable and positive. Let’s be brave. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Parents, really, cannot imagine the extent of the feeling of helplessness of a teacher who observes everything that happens in a school. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Teacher shouting in class: ‘Can’t you just be ‘normal’ like the others?’ For him, it was just an outburst. For our family, much suffering and many therapy sessions. ADHD is so misunderstood. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I enrolled my son in the same mainstream school as his brother. They told me they didn’t have the resources and that I should take him to the school with a special education classroom. When I refused, they said they would report it to social services ‘because the family wasn’t looking out for the child’s best interests’. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I enrolled my daughter in the grade corresponding to her age through the virtual secretary. The school principal called me on September 1, 2022, to tell me my daughter was not enrolled, that she had canceled the enrollment I had sent her in modality C. She told me to come to her office or she would be left without a spot. My daughter with special educational needs was unenrolled for over a month. From the Ministry of Education, 3 weekly calls, pressuring the principal to open a truancy case. Nothing, it’s standard practice. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I’m filled with panic, terror, by everything I’m reading. My son is 5 years old, diagnosed with ASD by the school’s assessment, and cerebral palsy with a motor impairment. You have to trust every day that your child is okay because he goes happily with the technicians, but is that really the case? He talks, but he doesn’t have functional language, nor does he understand what’s right or wrong. He doesn’t tell me anything about school, and we’re in the dark, not knowing how he really is there. Nobody says anything. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I was diagnosed with Asperger’s at age 6, but at school, for my classmates, it was just a reason for them to interpret it as me being sick every time a teacher or someone talked about my condition. There were always jokes and bullying, which worsened twice in my third year of high school. They hid my school bag. Their mockery was so intense that I self-harmed, and I still live with the scars on my skin. |
| #AndNothingHappens | First, I would like to congratulate you, and then, contribute with two situations I experienced when I was a student teacher. In one of the classes, there was a girl whom the tutor considered the best in the class. As the grades were announced aloud, when she got a 10, the tutor made her classmates stand up and applaud her while she stood on her chair and enjoyed the applause. |
| #AndNothingHappens | It has happened to me that teachers come and tell me: ‘If only you knew what they did to your son. I wish there had been a camera to record it.’ Excuse me!! And why didn’t you report it? Corporatism? And they tell me this almost 3 years later. And I have many more stories like this to tell. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I used to go to work with my heart in my hand, wondering what could happen each day. It was torture. They left him trapped in the school bathroom, and he had to crawl under the door. His glasses were broken several times over the years. They poured food on him, they opened his backpack on rainy days and scattered everything in the yard… ‘It was just kids being kids.’ When I had meetings, the answers were: ‘You decided to send him to a mainstream school.’ After investigating and going to the competent authorities, I studied a lot to protect my son and to educate myself… We are not alone!! My son has ASD. |
| #AndNothingHappens | They even told me that they couldn’t handle him without medication. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Rehabilitative Doctor to have physiotherapy in a special school (to this day, it still harms families). Your son doesn’t need physiotherapy (at 4 years old, with muscular hypotonia). What your son needs is to be here, in a special school until he’s 21 years old. |
| #AndNothingHappens | “Adapted” methodology for all students: making them copy the entire Natural Science textbook (torture for ADHD, dyslexia, and, frankly, for everyone). |
| #AndNothingHappens | That was always my label, ever since my son returned to school after overcoming cancer and an amputation. He was 6 years old when he rejoined classes. We refused to accept that they would mock him, that everyone would treat him differently, and I didn’t want to stay silent when he was beaten so badly during recess that he developed a clot in his stump and was hospitalized for several days. Well, CF (Conflictive Family) and proud of it!! |
| #AndNothingHappens | My autistic daughter started secondary school with incredible levels of anxiety. I requested a meeting to warn them that she was getting worse with more stereotypies and worrying behavior. The institute’s response was that it was all in my head, that the girl was very happy because she smiled. We finished the school year with an unsigned Individualized Education Plan (IEP), without curricular adaptations. The consequence of all this: school absenteeism, anxiety, physical pain, phobias, and fear of the outside world. But, hey, the girl smiles! |
| #AndNothingHappens | My daughter with special needs has to have an adaptation throughout the month of October. She is perfectly adapted to the school, but the school is not yet adapted to her (it’s been a month since the start). The explanation they give is that they don’t have enough support and that the teacher finds it unfeasible to be with her and 20 others. That she is very dangerous, that she is restless, that she doesn’t sit down, that she doesn’t see danger, that they are afraid… You go home with such helplessness… I had to hold back tears of pain. |
| #AndNothingHappens | My daughter cries every day when she leaves class. I go to talk to her tutor to see what’s going on, and she tells me: ‘Your daughter just needs a good slap.’ |
| #AndNothingHappens | My daughter with ASD, at three years old, after the pandemic. They only let her stay at school from 9 am to 12 pm because she didn’t adapt. She spent the whole course sitting alone at a table because, as she screamed and sometimes bit, she could spread COVID. She must be the only child who screamed, cried, and bit in early childhood education… We called the Inspectorate and do you know what happened…? They did nothing. |
| #AndNothingHappens | My daughter with ASD has gone from third to sixth grade ALONE in the schoolyard, no teacher ever noticed, and when they did, their response was that my daughter wanted to be alone. All her jackets have been cut with scissors in class by her classmates. She pooped herself out of fear (at 10 years old) and no one noticed either… |
| #AndNothingHappens | My daughter with ASD had behavioral problems in the specialized classroom because she was being worked with below her capabilities, logically. They informed me, and since I told them that she only behaved that way there, that it wasn’t a generalized behavior, and that something was happening at school for the girl to act like that, they decided to hide from me for months that the girl was crying in pain (she has an illness that causes severe pain). I found out from school staff that this was happening, and they denied it at all times when the girl was experiencing daily pain at home. That is mistreatment. |
| #AndNothingHappens | My daughter with ASD, on the first day of kindergarten. They returned all her books to me because she couldn’t do secondary school. At the end of the school year, we had to bring a bag for assignments, and I didn’t need one because she brought only 4 worksheets from the entire year, literally. Later, I found out that the girl was kept in the sandbox in the playground all morning so she wouldn’t bother her classmates. |
| #AndNothingHappens | My daughter, at the final event closing the Primary school cycle with her classmates. 7 years together. One of them presented each of them with an award. My daughter was left waiting for hers… |
| #AndNothingHappens | My daughter, diagnosed with autism in 2nd year of secondary school, was in the noisiest classroom in the center. She spent most of the day covering her ears and drawing cats because they didn’t work with her, except for her PT (Special Education Teacher). When I requested a change of classroom, they denied it because it could set a precedent for other parents with children without any diagnosis to ask for the same. |
| #AndNothingHappens | My son (diagnosed with ADHD) suffered so much at school that, at just seven years old, on a Sunday night he told me he would rather be dead than have to go to school the next day. |
| #YNoPasaNada | My son, 12 years old, has been at the same school since he was 3, without problems. When he started to become aware of injustices and insults he didn’t like due to his age, he rebelled against them, suffering bullying and harassment from a teacher. He started to miss school, and Education and Children’s Services came down on us. I finally got a diagnosis from Social Security. They didn’t do the tests; he had such a bad time in class and was treated with such contempt that he locked himself in his room and wouldn’t leave the house. To end this confinement, they came to the house and admitted him to child psychiatry, taking him to the hospital in Santiago without parental visits or calls, not even ours, by court order. All of this led him to have a trauma that, to this day, at 20 years old, he is unable to be in a classroom. He is doing everything remotely. The child bothered the center, so it was perfect that he stopped going on his own initiative. And they made his twin sister’s life impossible so that she would also stop going to that center. They destroyed my son’s life… |
| #YNoPasaNada | My son is autistic, 6 years old. One day I arrived early to pick him up from school and saw him walking around the playground alone while his classmates were doing Physical Education. When I got home, I asked him, and he told me that it’s ALWAYS like that. That “since he doesn’t understand the teacher’s explanation and doesn’t know how to do anything, she lets him walk around the playground so he doesn’t bother anyone.” This happened for an entire school year, and NO ONE EVER SAID ANYTHING! I immediately reported it at the school, and now they give him the lessons in advance, and he does PE like everyone else. |
| #YNoPasaNada | My son is 4 years old, ASD. His first year of school, we got a tutor who wasn’t very qualified and didn’t understand my son’s behaviors, like being a bit slower in his studies or being more restless. [Me dijo] That I pay for a shadow so she can be more at ease, if I could medicate him… very barbaric things. But thankfully, that teacher is no longer there, and this year my son is happy to go to school. |
| #YNoPasaNada | My son with autism, during the last days of school last year, didn’t even want to go to class anymore; it was hell for him because his teacher treated him very badly. On the last day of school, his dad and I went to pick him up because we couldn’t stand any more contempt towards my son, and the school principal had nothing better to say to us than that it was my son who had to change his attitude… Seriously, can you tell a child with autism to change his attitude?? I told her that my son wasn’t the one who had to change his attitude, but that she, as a school principal, was the one who had to change and understand once and for all that he is a child with special needs. Oh, Belén. If I were to continue… We have a book to write. How badly my son’s teacher behaved last year, and the worst part is that the administration supported this ‘lady’… How hard it is to see how they treat a child who only gives off love and affection so badly. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Last year, my son attended school for two hours and was expelled from school, despite it being special education. He was expelled from the cafeteria; he could no longer stay for lunch and, as a result, he didn’t go to the cafeteria for two years, nor did he attend school much. If he had a crisis one day, they would call me and say: ‘it’s better if he spends a few days at home.’ |
| #YNoPasaNada | My son is in a school for the integration of deaf children —a deaf child with other pathologies— and he is moving to Primary school (under Article 33, without a formal assessment). In Primary school, the teacher is bothered in class because he makes echolalias and doesn’t keep up with the pace, and she sent him to the hallway with the PT (Therapeutic Pedagogy) for 4 months, until I found out, of course. |
| #YNoPasaNada | My son has ADHD, and at school, they always told me the same thing: he’s bad. I heard mothers whispering at the door every day because he always ended up being punished. In 4th grade, he was expelled twice, and in the note the teacher wrote for the neurologist, it said: ‘he leaned out the window as if to jump, to which his classmates encouraged him to do so.’ But the problem was my son. |
| #YNoPasaNada | My son is in 3rd year of ESO and this course he has been suffering bullying since day one. After trying to get them to leave my son alone, yesterday the head of studies and the management told me that part of the blame for what is happening lies with my son for not understanding the jokes. My son has autism. |
| #AndNothingHappens | My son has suffered rejection for a few years (we will never know exactly how long). As parents, we realized it at the end of fourth grade. Those who were supposed to be his classmates spoke ill of him behind his back and didn’t let anyone play with him. My son wandered around the playground alone. His tutor never did anything. He spent recess alone, completely alone. His psychologist, after years of therapy and with sufficient social skills tools, recommended that we change schools. His tutor’s final attitude was cold and false. |
| #AndNothingHappens | My son, 2 years ago, at school. They had to ask for 3 Christmas wishes. He wrote these two. 1. I wish to die. 2. I wish they would stop bothering me and stop picking on people. |
| #AndNothingHappens | My son is often alone in the playground. While the rest of the children are in the classroom, he is there without supervision. It’s special education, the playground faces the street. I don’t work and I stop by there and see him there alone. It makes me very sad how they are treated. |
| #AndNothingHappens | My son is always alone at recess and nobody ever does anything. I cry every day, all the time. |
| #AndNothingHappens | My daughter never went on any field trips. |
| #AndNothingHappens | My son with autism. The teacher, who also claimed to have a psychology degree, told me that my son’s problem was that he had too much imagination, that he didn’t have autism and that he was just very lazy. Regarding his autism diagnosis, she and the school psychologist laughed in my face. They called it an inclusive school… |
| #AndNothingHappens | Thank you very much for your initiative. We continue to fight. My son with ADHD, in early childhood education. A teacher, who also claims to have a psychology degree, told me that my son’s problem was that he spent too much time with his grandparents. Not a single adaptation. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Many educational centers are hermetic and closed, where many things are covered up and hidden. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Girl with dyslexia, second year of ESO. She gives an oral presentation in English, her classmates laugh, and the teacher completely ignores it. The girl has an anxiety attack. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Girl with ADHD and emotional difficulties. She needs accommodations that are legally mandated. Years fighting to get them. Years without accommodations. Until one day I threatened to go to the Inspectorate, and only then, finally. |
| #AndNothingHappens | A child who, because he doesn’t fit in the ASD classroom, will not be evaluated for intensive support needs at that time. After some time, I receive an email saying they cannot meet my son’s educational needs and that he should be attended to in another school. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Niño autista de 6 años. Primer contacto con su profesora. Me dice que le dé media pastillita, que así le facilitaré la vida y a ella, el trabajo. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Niño con autismo 7 años… día sí, día también. Intenta entrar al cole como los demás. No entiende por qué la maestra siempre lo coge, lo aparta y se lo lleva al final de la fila. Nadie le ha enseñado cómo se entra en cole, qué es una fila y para qué sirve. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Niño de 10 años con autismo. Una de sus estereotipias es hacer un ruido con la nariz y garganta. Se incrementa cuando está nervioso. El profesor lo amenaza si no para. Al ver que no para, le vacía el vaso de agua en la cara delante de toda la clase, mojando su mesa y libros. La familia se entera por los otros compañeros de esta situación y de otros más, perplejos por la humillación. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Niño de 10 años con dislexia, discalculia y TDAH. Sin adecuaciones en inglés. Como mamá, voy a plantearlo a la profesora y esta me responde (de muy mala manera) que el niño debe poner de su parte porque tiene una negación y una muy mala actitud hacia el inglés. Yo me pregunto, ¡¿cómo no va a tenerla si no está recibiendo una sola adaptación?! ¡Se niega porque no tiene forma de entenderlo! Bronca. Impotencia. Indignación. Mucha. Gracias por dar visibilidad a estas prácticas tan poco inclusivas que se dan día a día en los colegios y que hacen tanto mal a los niños y a sus familias. ¡Gracias! |
| #YNoPasaNada | 10-year-old boy. The tutor takes him out in the middle of class and says in front of his classmates: “You’ll be nobody in life, you’re worthless, crying is for cowards, you’re a nuisance” (grabbing the boy firmly by the chin to force eye contact). He sends me an email: “The boy will remain outside of all cooperative groups, working alone, because he cannot and will not (the teacher). This is why I will not consent to it and, given this situation, the boy will remain outside of all cooperative groups working alone until he can have the conviction and certainty that his situation is rectifiable. It is not something that pleases me, I like it, or I want it because at all times I have tried to integrate him into group dynamics, but I can no longer tolerate these types of situations. Aside from the learning/teaching gap that your son is experiencing because he does not want to work properly. I want to maintain proper order and control of coexistence in the classroom above all else. Classroom with 18 students This is a summary of what I wanted to convey to you. Kind regards.” |
| #AndNothingHappens | 8-year-old boy with Down syndrome. His teacher gives him two blue balls in English class, while his classmates do curriculum-related tasks. On the third day, he throws the balls at the teacher’s head… The disruptive one is the boy. |
| #AndNothingHappens | 8-year-old boy with ADHD who can’t sit still. He is punished by being kicked out of class, and they boast about being of new pedagogy and free circulation (projects). Wow, they used to do the exact same thing to me (I was just like him) 40 years ago!! |
| #AndNothingHappens | 8-year-old dyslexic boy, who is subjected to recurrent English dictations where all his spelling is graded. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Child in foster care, in the first year of early childhood education without having turned three, with significant sequelae due to the early adversity suffered. He shows restlessness in the classroom. Meeting with the counselor: “I understand your role is to pamper him, but… a timely spanking…” I still don’t understand why we didn’t report it. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Deaf child, 3rd grade. In the “read aloud” class, they don’t let him read in his turn because “He reads syllabically,” and in the “silent reading” class, they tell him to be quiet because he bothers his classmates… #ItHappensInArgentinaToo |
| #AndNothingHappens | Child with ASD, gifted. At school, I felt like I was talking to a wall; they weren’t willing to make any kind of adaptations. I felt ignored. Fortunately, at the institute, we’ve been lucky, and they are open to dialogue and learning. They are already adapting to his needs. |
| #AndNothingHappens | He is not allowed to go to the end-of-year party and is left alone in a classroom with a lunch monitor while all his classmates are in the playground, playing and eating together with the teacher. His mother finds this scene when she goes to pick him up. |
| #AndNothingHappens | No somos pocos, pero no importamos. Nuestros hijos son «caros» para el sistema. |
| #YNoPasaNada | No todo el profesorado es así, pero una gran parte sí lo es. Ven a niños con diversidad como un exceso de trabajo, es la realidad. El de educación física nos recibió un año con esta frase: «han venido más niños mal. Chica, en mis tiempos no había esto, no sé qué hacéis ahora». |
| #YNoPasaNada | No, no es profefobia. Aunque en el primer colegio de mi hija hubo docentes que sí tenían fobia a mi hija y su discapacidad. Todo denunciado a Atención a la Diversidad. Por suerte, desde hace 6 cursos está en un centro con un profesorado fantástico. |
| #YNoPasaNada | No, we are not few. Although at first it is a relief to know that what has happened to you continuously has not happened only to you and that you are not crazy, it is very sad. It’s like punching a wall. It’s institutionalized. It’s child abuse and nobody cares. It’s worse than sexism. The exaggerated and defensive reaction, considering themselves victims when we tell anecdotes of mistreatment, is inconceivable. I don’t understand how someone dedicated to teaching doesn’t have their stomach churn. |
| #AndNothingHappens | We, those of us with special educational needs, are annoying and they don’t want us, we are inconvenient and we are surplus everywhere. This starts in schools and then projects outwards, into society in general. Although I don’t think it will change much, you are doing important, just, and very necessary work. It is already echoing around the world, like the words Lucia could not say. |
| #AndNothingHappens | They never told me anything good about my son, everything was bad… |
| #AndNothingHappens | I wish for a #YesItHappens from all the teachers who DO see that it happens. How many times have I had to be brave as an SLP (Speech and Language Pathologist) and confront tutors or the management team. Because yes, it does happen. |
| #AndNothingHappens | School counselor. This morning. I receive a psychoeducational report from the previous school for a new student. 6 years old. Diagnosis of ASD level 2. It states: “he does not voluntarily participate in any classroom activity. He has to be FORCED.” It doesn’t clarify how they were doing it. Families, always ask for a copy of every report prepared about your child. Request a copy of everything in their school record and their orientation and notification record, and copies of new reports. Full transparency regarding formal communication and information about your children. |
| #AndNothingHappens | School counselor. Visit from the ASD specialist from the Specific Orientation Team. Interview with the mother in my presence. There are no integration difficulties in the classroom, no crises, no aggressive or self-harming behaviors (and even if that were to happen, pay attention to where it points, to overstepping boundaries, to intrusion, to the lack of ethics and professionalism that continues). They set a goal for the school that he not get out of his chair at any point during the sessions and urge the mother to go to her neuropediatrician to be prescribed risperidone to correct the “situation.” What there is is scarce joint and sustained attention and a profile of a sensory seeker who, when needing a break, usually moves around the space exploring with their senses and seeking stimulation. Nothing that could be considered a “problem.” |
| #AndNothingHappens | Pandemic. Last year, my daughter with ASD, at 4 years old, was not allowed to participate in a dance event. An assistant held her while she cried and tried to go with her classmates. They didn’t want her to ruin their wonderful dance. When we got home, the girl told me crying. The rest of the school year, she would start crying when going to school… my blood boils when I remember it. I wish I had said something to the teacher at the time. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Pandemic. When I received the homework assignments at home, I saw that the activities for the group could be done by my daughter with some simple adaptations. She did the tasks, and I received an email from the teacher quite annoyed because if I made the adaptations, she wasn’t going to dedicate another minute to the girl… |
| #AndNothingHappens | Pandemic. Hello, Belén. We are three Roma girls from the poorest neighborhoods in Madrid. We’ve heard about you and your campaign and wanted to tell you that no one expects anything from us Roma girls. If we want to study, we have to constantly prove that we can. We are not allowed to make a single mistake because then “you are Roma” and Roma girls don’t study. Thank you for what you are doing and give your Lucia a big hug. |
| #AndNothingHappens | For students and their families, there are too many expressions, comments, behaviors, and discriminatory attitudes (let’s call things by their name). A mother told me the other day: “my son can’t always be last,” because her son doesn’t count, only the top 20 count. No, there are 21, not 20+1, there are 21. There are many things, many expressions and attitudes that we have to change. |
| #AndNothingHappens | It seems that after the pandemic, we are going backward. Our children suffer bullying #AndNothingHappens, autistic individuals are denied protection for their disability whenever possible, with 85% unemployment. What do they expect? That we disappear? Condemn adults to homelessness? |
| #AndNothingHappens | They seem to be condemned from birth… |
| #AndNothingHappens | I asked for the answers to the Batelle test mentioned in the psychoeducational report, and they never gave them to me. These tests are full of biases and low, segregating expectations. We want detection of barriers so everyone can learn together. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Asking for a meeting to submit the ASD diagnosis (in 5th grade) and the tutor saying: ‘Well, it doesn’t seem that way to me.’ The entire school year without the necessary adaptations, to the point that she moved on to 6th grade with a failing grade in Language. That tutor is now the principal of that school. |
| #YNoPasaNada | I asked for a copy of my daughter’s psychoeducational report, and they first asked me to sign an authorization to access her medical data. This was from the counselor. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Why do we have to re-request the adaptations each school year that were already decided upon (after diagnosis, psychoeducational evaluation, accumulation of failures, etc.), even when the teachers don’t change. For the student (and family), the academic and personal cost is brutal. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Fourth grade, my son with ASD had no support or designated person for the first three weeks of the school year. Completely disruptive behavior. The tutor came out and in front of the other mothers told me: “he’s causing trouble again.” I kindly said: “Well, if you don’t assign him a permanent point person and keep passing him around like a hot potato from teacher to teacher, and don’t anticipate his tasks…” Her response: “This is not the place for your son, this is a school.” |
| #AndNothingHappens | My son, who has severe non-verbal autism, was in a center that specialized in ASD for years. With teachers and classmates who included him as one of them. But despite everything, we felt terrible because we had to pick him up from the designated classroom, and the teacher barely stopped to talk to us to tell us how the child had been because the ASD classroom teachers already wrote to us. I don’t doubt that the teacher treated my little one wonderfully because I loved her very much, but how the teachers treat the parents of ASD children and the little information they exchange with us, knowing that our children don’t tell us anything about school. It’s very tough. |
| #AndNothingHappens | That a student with ASD who has a phobia of wasps has to suffer a panic attack because his classmates tell him there’s a wasp on his back, and they do it solely to laugh at him and disrupt the class. And that as a teacher, you can’t do much more than issue a written reprimand to the bullies and try to calm the victim. Because violence in classrooms is normalized and systemic. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I am astonished at how violence is normalized in most educational centers, public and private. And there is NO body representing minors in any context because discrimination, violence, and mistreatment sadly reach anyone. Regardless of race, color, social status… It can happen to anyone, and it condemns your entire life!! |
| #AndNothingHappens | Queremos que venga Ione Belarra a hablar con las familias que han sufrido la VIOLENCIA ESCOLAR. No encontraréis huesos, encontraréis niños rotos. Y un mar de violaciones de los derechos humanos. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Querida Belén, te estoy siguiendo estos días con tus posts y tu hashtag, y de verdad que estoy alucinando. Por otra parte, este hashtag sería extrapolable a cualquier otra situación que sufrimos las personas con discapacidad, cualquiera que sea esta. Y no pasa nada con el incumplimiento de la normativa de accesibilidad. Y no pasa nada con la vulneración del derecho de igualdad de oportunidades. Y no pasa nada si las aceras se llenan de veladores y otros obstáculos. Y no pasa nada si se abandona cualquier proyecto de asistencia personal. Y no pasa nada si no podemos entrar a cualquier bar o restaurante por el escalón en la puerta y, si entramos, no existe un baño adaptado o este sirve de almacén al local en cuestión. Y no pasa nada por tener que colocarnos en primera fila en los cines. Y no pasa nada si la discafobia aumenta día a día. Y no pasa nada si, aun denunciando estas situaciones, las distintas administraciones ni siquiera se molestan en responder o, si lo hacen, las respuestas son surrealistas y por supuesto no solucionan nada. Y no pasa nada si se conceden subvenciones ingentes al amigo de turno, mientras los más vulnerables se pudren o se pierden en los laberínticos vericuetos de la burocracia para solicitar cualquier ayuda o para reclamar algo que por justicia les corresponde. Las leyes y normativas no sirven para nada si no se aplican, porque el papel tiene la capacidad de aguantar todo lo que le echen. Un abrazo grande. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Recibir un lunes una llamada diciéndote que «hoy no podemos recibir a [nombre de mi hija] porque faltan dos de las asistentes de la clase» y no poder hacer entender que es algo que simplemente NO PUEDE PASAR. Ni una vez… que te lo dibujen como quieran. Eso no se justifica con ningún porqué. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Recibir una media de 4-5 llamadas por semana del instituto porque no saben cómo gestionar el comportamiento disruptivo de mi hijo adolescente. |
| #YNoPasaNada | It turns out that today I found out from a classmate of my son (thanks!) that in physical education, my son is made to sit in a chair the whole hour watching the others do gymnastics. Yesterday he wanted to run, the aide didn’t let him move and with the fuss he hurt himself on the chair. They called me because he got hurt in physical education. He has an IEP (Individualized Education Program) for physical education. If it weren’t for this girl, I wouldn’t know that my son spends his physical education hours sitting down. Why do they make me bring the school tracksuit and why do they make me bring clothes for him to change into, and he comes changed? My goodness, how many things we won’t know. |
| #AndNothingHappens | According to Article 31 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, it is illegal to miss recess. Doing so would constitute an abuse of power over the child by the teacher. |
| #AndNothingHappens | If no one from the family goes, the child cannot go on the excursion. That’s what they told me, and I kept asking for days off work until I was fired… |
| #AndNothingHappens | I am still shocked by the figures that 90% of autistic students suffer bullying in our classrooms #AndNothingHappens, @DeAutismo. And as @AsperAndalucía points out, this has been known for almost 20 years. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I am autistic and I study Early Childhood Education, my notes are full of ableism. |
| #YNoPasaNada | I am from Venezuela, Bolívar State. My son has mild autism and goes to a regular school, and for them to accept him, I have to go with him and stay in the classroom. They see him as a strange child, the lack of empathy is not easy. |
| #YNoPasaNada | I am a teacher and autistic. General Directorate of Personnel: if you can teach, you don’t need adaptations to your job. They do the same to autistic students: if they can behave well, they must behave well; if they don’t, it’s because they don’t want to. Pure ableism. When I tell some of my colleagues that I have been diagnosed with autism, they look at me as if I were an alien. This can give us an idea of who neurodivergent students are in the hands of. |
| #YNoPasaNada | I am a teacher and a mother. I believe that those who don’t understand don’t want to understand… it’s not a problem of ignorance, but of ableism and ideology. |
| #YNoPasaNada | I am a school counselor, last year I worked in an open classroom. The teachers in the classroom and I never stopped fighting for the rights of those children, for them to have more transitions to their reference classrooms, for them to go on excursions, for them not to be doing meaningless worksheets in their classes, but rather the same content as everyone else, adapted to their needs, etc. It is very sad to say that they did not feel they were “their” students; they were from the open classroom. I often went home crying. Thank you very much for your initiative. |
| #YNoPasaNada | I also focus on the positive side. We were fortunate to have teachers and professors who were deeply involved in my son’s illness and collaborated on his adaptations. I will always remember a phrase the head of studies said at the graduation party when he handed him his diploma: “It has been an honor to take this journey with you, and on behalf of the entire teaching staff, thank you for all that we have learned from and with you.” I will never forget those words. |
| #YNoPasaNada | It took me 7 years to get his diagnosis because the school counselor sent a report to mental health stating that my daughter and I had a toxic relationship. For years, I was treated as a “crazy mother.” |
| #YNoPasaNada | I appreciate your integrity in bringing visibility to the reality in schools and in life when facing diversities. As an adult with ASD, I still have to mask to fit in or distance myself from many experiences to avoid getting hurt. As a teacher, I have worked to heal the experiences of my students who were rejected or excluded from many places; however, I still see many colleagues who resist observing, listening, accepting, and learning new ways so that we can all exist in my country. When we have been negligent, the first question the authorities ask us is: What did you do to protect the minor? And under that premise, we must be vigilant and not allow abuse and mistreatment. Many complain about a lack of preparation or resources, and I think, what parents have all the resources they need? And yet, they haven’t given up. |
| #YNoPasaNada | I confirm it, same case, my son. He is 27 years old now, he doesn’t forget anything. He was dying to make himself understood, to understand his peers, to be with them. The rejection destroyed him. |
| #AndNothingHappens | They sell you that it’s a super inclusive, wonderful school (for show), and then, when he has to move on to 2nd grade of Primary, they tell you that they don’t think they can teach the child. My son has an academic delay of 5 years: 3 years because the dear kindergarten teacher said he was a dog and 2 more years because the primary school teacher didn’t want him to get overwhelmed and didn’t teach him anything. Solution, we left that school. It continues with SUPER INCLUSIVE advertising… |
| #AndNothingHappens | We have a communication agenda between family and school because my son is non-verbal ASD. Throughout last year, they didn’t write anything in it, despite our insistence on knowing what our son does at school. They even claimed it wasn’t fair to the others, because they don’t write anything in the agenda for the others (neurotypical verbal children). I ask them, where is equity? But they don’t even know what it is. This year they try to please us by writing once a week phrases like: ‘this week he has worked very well and has been very connected in physical education class’. And nothing else. |
| #AndNothingHappens | Having a support possibility from another administration and needing the approval of the counselor, who thinks that, under control, everything is fine. And my son with weekly reports and weeks of expulsion every year. Controlled? |
| #AndNothingHappens | Tiempo de COVID. Le mandamos a la profesora de inglés las tareas de inglés de mi hija y me llamó por teléfono muy molesta porque a ella no tenía que mandárselas, que quizás la PT (Pedagogía Terapéutica) se las revisaría. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Toda la vida jugando sola en el recreo. Siempre elegida la última para los equipos en clase de Educación Física. Acoso escolar directo y claro en varias ocasiones. En los bailes de San Isidro tuvo que bailar con el profesor. Jamás intervino nadie ni nos apoyó nadie en el centro. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Todas las personas hacemos las cosas como sabemos y como podemos. Lo importante es que en la vida (personal y profesionalmente) hay que reconocer las limitaciones, analizar por qué cometemos errores y qué facilita nuestras buenas prácticas. Ser un poco humildes e intentar mejorar. Y no pasa nada por reconocer lo que hay que mejorar y mucho menos por pedir perdón si nos equivocamos. Es muy peligroso echar la culpa a las familias… y muy absurdo y negligente. Tampoco toda la responsabilidad es del profesorado. El sistema no funciona. Analicemos por qué y miremos a donde hay que mirar: el problema es estructural. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Todos los cursos de Primaria la orientadora te hace la misma pregunta: «¿¿no la mandaréis a secundaria, no??» |
| #YNoPasaNada | Group work that has to be done outside of school, and no one intervenes when a single girl is left out of the whole class. |
| #YNoPasaNada | One day I arrived to pick up my daughter (she was 4 years old) and found her walking around the playground alone. During recess, she had gone into the bathroom. When she came out, recess was over and everyone had returned to class. I went to talk to the teacher and she told me: ‘I had already noticed that your daughter wasn’t in class, but I thought she hadn’t come today.’ |
| #YNoPasaNada | One day he grabbed me by the neck so I couldn’t lower my head, to look him in the eye. For 10 minutes. And I told him not to touch me. He continued, ignoring the sensory and anxiety crisis I was having, hitting myself and crying. And the teacher I had at 17 told me: ‘that’s how you learn to be normal.’ Then she opened the door, dragged me out, left me on the floor, and closed the door. Telling me: ‘if you kill yourself, that’s your problem. I’m not going to give in to your tantrums like a little child.’ And at 20 years old, I confronted him about it. He told me that women are hysterical, that we make things up, and that he did it to take away my autism and educate me. It was a Special Education school, where they later publish articles about having zero tolerance for bullying and discrimination. That never happened when I was there, from 13 to 21, suffering bullying and discrimination. |
| #YNoPasaNada | A student with Autism Type 1 who received the diagnosis at 12 years old and spent all of Primary, Secondary, and High School isolated, without the opportunity to socialize. |
| #YNoPasaNada | A girl with dyslexia, a classmate of my daughter in her 3rd year of a degree at the University. Today they are given a multiple-choice test and all students have 15 minutes to complete it, including her. She failed the test because she needed more time. Time flexibility is a measure that must be implemented for students who need it. My daughter told her to tell the professor. Her response: ‘I have written an email to all the professors and they are supposed to be informed about all students who require access accommodations… I am very tired of having to fight all the time. My whole life like this.’ |
| #AndNothingHappens | One of the excuses given to families to reject their children is the well-known issue of resources (which are needed, no one doubts that). Another is ‘we are not prepared.’ Can we imagine going for a medical appointment and being told they are not prepared? That they don’t have resources? Or any other profession. PROFESSION. |
| #AndNothingHappens | A disgrace, the complicity of the school and the Inspectorate. And yes, they give advance notice of visits to the management teams because they cover for each other. This didn’t happen before. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I live in Vilanova i la Geltrú (near Barcelona), I am the mother of a 6-year-old boy with ASD and ADHD. We have been to 3 different schools! The Educational Guidance Team keeps recommending changes. It’s easier to move the child than to adapt the school. My son is traumatized. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I reported the school inspector of my son, who was 10 years old at the time. My son was talking about suicide due to the bullying he was receiving. The inspector responded that Asperger’s is a behavior that is cured at home. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I didn’t see it at school, but at daycare, he would walk around the building all the time and play alone, while the others listened to a story under a tree on the lawn. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I was a ‘hallway child.’ For a year, they had me sitting there, with a desk and everything. My mother found out from another mom. I talked a lot, but I never said anything about those things because I was terrified. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I have this reflection. If, when teaching math (or any other subject), examples are given for children to learn and internalize better… why isn’t the same done with functional diversity? If a person with functional diversity is ignored, set aside, excluded… what are we teaching the rest of the students? It’s clear there’s a pending lesson… |
| #AndNothingHappens | I have reported many atrocities to the head of inspection and those responsible, provincial directorate, even shedding tears I couldn’t hold back. The answer was always the same: “that already happened, let’s look to the future!” Neither families, nor the AMPA, nor associations, our helplessness is always total. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I cry every day because I have to take him where they don’t want him. And it’s not about classmates and their families; I have a lot to be thankful for there. It’s about the management team and teachers in general. Does my son really never do anything good? Does my son really not deserve to be among his peers? I cry from Monday to Friday. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I found out from the parents, after 4 years of bullying and after their children’s interviews in the protocol, about the ATROCITIES my son suffered. They called me crying, asking for forgiveness. BUT THERE WAS NO BULLYING according to the school. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I have spent a lot of money on books and courses, but I have learned the most from adult autistic groups. You have to open your mind a lot to understand our children, and you have to respect them and not force them to do things that harm them. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I left the parents’ WhatsApp group because of something like this. My autistic son can keep up with the class if he works on the computer. He has dysgraphia and struggles to write. They asked me: ‘Why if the other children don’t use a laptop, does yours?’ The teacher herself told me: ‘it’s better not to discuss how he works with the others to avoid misunderstandings.’ |
| #AndNothingHappens | I am autistic myself, and in one of the schools I attended, they wanted to report my mother for abuse. Because they assumed I could only be autistic due to mistreatment. If it hadn’t been for a psychologist who came to defend her, I would have been taken away from my home. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I know of places where they have collected signatures to pressure a family into sending their child to Special Education. And I now recall a terrible case of a student in Rincón de la Victoria where families went on strike and stopped bringing their children. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I am old now, I still have dyslalia and no one makes fun of me anymore. When I was little, the nuns would punish me in the playground on my knees with books in my hands, having to say ‘the dog of San Roque, etc.’ It didn’t matter if it was hot or raining… All they achieved was my tears and my stuttering and excessive shyness took away my youth. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I am also a teacher and I have seen and suffered these situations in my professional life and as a mother. Does this mean that all teachers have these behaviors? Does this mean that all teachers tolerate them? I am not saying that. Because there are wonderful people who comply with the law in teaching. But how many students can suffer these abuses without reporting them? If it only happens to one child, does nothing happen? If it happens to five, do we not report it because it is not representative? For me, it cannot happen to any child, because it is a basic right. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I have had difficulties with gross and lateral psychomotor skills since I was little, which at the time was translated as: ‘your parents overprotect you. You are clumsy, you are underweight.’ This was joined in my adolescence by atopic skin with eczema and oozing sores. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I have a hearing problem and I never thought I was being bullied until now that I read hundreds of cases. In EGB (primary school) teachers made us change rows for weeks so as not to always be in the same one. But I only rotated up to the 3rd row to be able to read lips well. This made my classmates protest because it separated them from their friends and they ostracized me. In the playground, they told me they didn’t want to play with me because I smelled bad and that I was ‘weird.’ They ostracized me. No teacher ever intervened, and I never knew how to explain it to my parents. When I moved to BUP (secondary school), specifically to 1st year, I repeated it twice in the same school. When I took the recovery exams, they called me to go to school alone to get my grades. When I arrived, they had prepared a vocational training brochure for me, telling me to become a street sweeper because I would never pass BUP due to languages, being deaf. ‘You can’t aspire to more,’ they told me. Fortunately, I called my mother before going, and when they were telling me this, she appeared. I was very lucky that my parents changed my school and encouraged me to continue studying. This allowed me to get my BUP and early childhood education degrees. But to this day, I have many insecurities because of that and because I realized years later what it meant. Thank you for your initiative. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I had twin daughters in Primary school who were born prematurely, and their mother, exactly as I write it, was told these words verbatim: ‘you have to take the girls to another school because here there is no teacher or place for them.’ And how does that woman deal with that. Well, it doesn’t matter, so ‘nothing happens…’. |
| #AndNothingHappens | I had to teach one of my children to read at home because at school they removed him from the literacy support group “because he bothered the others” and in class they put him on the computer “so he wouldn’t bother anyone”. |
| #YNoPasaNada | I had to bring a medical certificate so that my 3-year-old daughter with autism and severe feeding disorder would be given pureed food in the school cafeteria. They refused to make her a soft food diet. The only thing I managed to get was for them to puree her macaroni. Of course, I brought my own blender. The cook (it wasn’t catering then, they had a kitchen) refused to make the diet even with a medical certificate. My daughter went a whole school year without eating. I could never enroll her in a cafeteria again and had to change my work schedule to be able to take care of her meals until today. She still has difficulties with food and restricted foods and textures at 18 years old. |
| #YNoPasaNada | Me: “I’m worried like any mother/father about the transition to Secondary school, that in the playgrounds and during exchanges, situations might arise where he gets picked on.” Counselor: “Don’t worry, if that were to happen, he wouldn’t notice. He won’t be able to interpret the teasing.” |
| #YNoPasaNada | Me: “My son can’t be alone in the playground, something needs to be done…” Principal: “Your son is not aware that he is alone. Don’t worry. It doesn’t hurt him.” 33 years later, we affirm that we guarantee an inclusive school when the only barriers analyzed in reports and in the school placement reports, whose covers contain the personal data of students (even if euphemisms like socio-psychopedagogical evaluation or technical evaluation for educational inclusion are used, for example), are those attributed to the children or their families, who are held responsible for not learning. |
|
33 years later, we continue to generate learned helplessness in children to whom we subject them (even if unintentionally) to experiences of failure from the age of three. 33 years later, we continue to read with horror how mothers report institutional violence and neglect. 33 years later, we still fail to identify or make visible the barriers to presence, participation, and progress, or at least these are not recorded in any official document. 33 years later, we remain stuck in the model of waiting for failure, where we wait for students to fail, knowing they will, even though we have scientific evidence that allows us to design and implement preventive programs in classrooms even before schooling begins. 33 years later, we are still assigned the role of accountants for specialized resources, where we add hours and divide sessions to fit the spreadsheets of educational inspection services because funding is allocated based on students with special educational needs (SEN) and not on the total student ratio, as with any other specialty. In another case, a teacher punishes her entire class every day by making them miss recess and leave school 10 minutes late. There is a boy whose family cannot pick him up, and he takes the city bus (6th grade). He misses it every day and has to wait alone for an hour for the next one to go home. He tells the teacher, and she replies that it’s not her problem that his family cannot pick him up. |
|