by Parents with sick children overcome enormous difficulties every day of their lives. It is especially hard for them when humanity has «fallen asleep» in others and they have to «beat their heads against the wall» of official indifference. This happens in different countries of the world, and parents stay at school one-on-one with their misfortune.
Mom of 3 children, 34-year-old Samantha Fleming lives in Chaddesden, a suburb of Derby in England. Her eldest girl Melissa was born at the 39th week of pregnancy. Shortly after birth, she was diagnosed with a strange medical anomaly — microcephaly. Her head was much smaller than normal due to the abnormal development of the fetus in the womb.
Since then, Melissa has had to struggle with disability. She thinks longer than the other children, often loses the thread of the answer. It is difficult for her to perceive oral speech. All this affects the behavior, says the girl’s mother. When Melissa went to the first grade of the local elementary school, problems began.
By the time of her studies, her mother managed to grow her daughter long hair, although they grew very poorly due to illness. But suddenly Samantha noticed that after the arrival of the child from school, the hair is getting shorter and shorter. The woman didn’t understand anything. She managed to get her daughter to talk, and find out the tragic truth. At school, a group of aggressive students attacked the youngest children and cut their hair.
The woman contacted the director and told about it. They sympathized with her and said that the hooligans would be punished. But nothing has changed. It turns out that they were just told that scissors are a dangerous tool and do not need to mess with it. With great difficulty, the hooligans continued to cut their hair every 2-3 months. The woman went back to school.
She offered to remove the scissors from the building, but she was told that the children needed them in class. She asked to protect her daughter. She explained that the child was sick and it was shameful to mock a sick girl. But they didn’t seem to hear her. The woman was simply told that she had cut her daughter’s hair herself, and she was shifting the blame to the school. Samantha was in shock.
Her girl was reluctant to talk about the events at school. She didn’t really understand, but she felt that something was wrong and didn’t always want to go to classes anymore. In complete indignation and frustration, the woman gave an interview to a local newspaper, which put it on its official website. Samantha told me that it was already difficult for the girl to study.
And the hooligans cut her hair for the sixth time. And they do it in shreds. So the mother also has to trim her hair to make it look neat. The public interview received an open response from the school. The management spoke in general terms about the inadmissibility of bullying children, stated that it always conducts an investigation.
Then it was said that this is an internal matter of the school and the problem will be solved. Once again, emphasis was placed on the fact that the school prioritizes not only quality education, but also the safety of children. There was much more humanity in the reaction of ordinary people. In the comments to the article, people called it a shameful fact and actively advised the school director to resign from his position in order to make room for a more competent specialist who could finally cope with school bullies.
They also openly said that it was impossible for a teacher to work at a school who did not want to see a weak girl being bullied during a lesson. They demanded to fire her. Melissa’s mom is determined. She’s not going to give up. And now a public outcry is helping her. «We hope to finally put an end to all this,» the woman finished.
And she succeeded, because she was not afraid to tell about it publicly. This story shows that you should always be attentive to any changes in appearance or changes in the behavior of your children, unfortunately, school is not a guarantee of safety and teachers do not always react properly to these situations, so you can not hush up such cases.
