HASILUX spoke with Anne Bernabeu, a kindergarten teacher in Luxembourg, about her experiences and insights regarding the inclusion of autistic children in early education. In this comprehensive interview, she shares practical approaches, challenges, and success stories from her daily work in supporting autistic children in mainstream classrooms.
Diagnosis and Support
What steps do you take when you think a child might be autistic but isn’t diagnosed?
First, talk about it with the team. Then approach the I-EBS person (specialized teachers for students with special educational needs) in our building, who then comes to observe the class.
When it emerges with the I-EBS person that a child might be autistic, teachers pass this on, for example to a school psychologist to put parents in contact with professionals. Teachers can’t make diagnoses and therefore don’t discuss suspicions of autism with parents. A professional from that domain needs to intervene.
How do you proceed to offer the best possible support to the child and their family? How do you approach this topic with young children and their families?
It’s important to listen to parents and be there for them. They carry all the responsibility and are the most important reference persons for the children.
It’s also important to talk with parents about alternatives to the traditional school system if we think this would be advantageous for the child. Then parents are aware of the options available after kindergarten. However, we can only accompany parents up to a certain point, and after that, it’s up to other professionals to take over the work.
You also need to be able to adapt because every child is different. That’s why it’s difficult to give universally applicable advice for different situations.
Daily Life in Class
How do you make the school day easier and more understandable for an autistic child?
We work a lot with pictograms because some children don’t necessarily constantly listen to what we say. For example, “we’re going to PE today” or whatever is said about the day’s schedule. So we work with pictograms and also with photos that we then place in a suitable spot for the child, for example on their desk or another place in the classroom. These are references.
Or also to communicate when the child can’t communicate verbally – then they can use their pictograms and pictures to ask for or say what they would like and express themselves this way. That’s something I’ve already seen in many other classes and what works well for children. It also helps to represent the daily routine and weekly schedule.
How do you integrate special needs into the normal class routine?
Regarding the integration of special needs – that’s difficult. As mentioned in another answer, with a second person it works well, no problem. They can then change the child or take them to the toilet individually. But when you’re alone and have to manage the rest of the class, it’s really difficult.
Also morally. Sometimes it can make you feel like you’re not doing your job well. Because it’s difficult, when you’re alone in a class, to address the needs of the autistic child without “neglecting” the rest of the class at that moment.
How do you help the child with social integration in the class?
Regarding social integration – most of the time it goes really, really well. The younger the children are, the somehow more open they are and have more understanding for “being different”. Often they don’t necessarily notice that a child is different. But when they do notice, they show themselves to be very helpful and they help the child a lot.
Sometimes it’s also difficult for the other children when the child throws things across the room, destroys materials, or hits others. While they know that the child is different and that they need to be understanding, some children are also afraid. It also happens that the other children sometimes get ‘short-changed’ and don’t understand why.
There are also books that talk about this, and you can read these as an introduction when you get such a child in your class at the beginning of the school year. We’ve also often used the phrase to explain when that child screams or cries or does things we don’t necessarily understand: “We don’t all see exactly the same movie in our heads – the child feels things and reacts to things that happen in their head and these can be different from what happens in our heads.”
Children have a lot of understanding for this and I’ve had many positive experiences. Children also learn a lot through this – they learn that not everyone is the same, and that it’s important to be considerate of others. And they don’t always feel neglected when the teaching staff spends a bit more time with an autistic child.
So there are many positive things when an autistic child integrates a regular class, but in practical everyday school life, it’s often the case that the child isn’t challenged enough and is too often just “idling” alongside because there aren’t enough (personnel) resources available. This point especially would be very important to improve.
In Part 1 of this interview, Anne shares her experiences with adaptations in kindergarten, discusses the challenges of managing a class with autistic children, and explains how she collaborates with other educational professionals