Hi everyone, we’re the Sabatinos. We live in Osio Sotto (BG). At first glance, we’re just another family, but up close, we’re something special. Our team consists of me, my dad, Lucio, Thomas, and Mattia.
I am Carol, I am 37 years old and I work as a healthcare assistant in a hospital. Among the many things I am, I am the mother of Tommy and Matty.
Lucio is 42 years old and works as a warehouse worker in a pharmaceutical company.
Tommy is 16 years old and studies at a human sciences high school, and Mattia, the blond curly-haired one of the family, is 14 years old and attends the second year of middle school.
Our family was born twice because when Mattia was 9 months old we realized that something was wrong. Matty could not sit up, he could not support his trunk and we had to ask a neuropsychiatrist for help. That is how it all began. The end of the first life of our family and the beginning of our new life.
Visit after visit, a thousand different specialists, exams of every kind, but no answers. Everything was normal.
We arrived exhausted at the geneticist who pronounced two words that would change our lives forever: FRAGILE X. Here was the answer to our questions, here was Mattia’s diagnosis.
FRAGILE X is a rare disease characterized by intellectual disability, developmental delay, learning difficulties and behavioral problems.
There is room for improvement, there always has been and we have always worked hard to help Matty live to the best of his abilities.
Psychomotor therapy has been fundamental, he has learned to manage the space around him, to feel more secure and therefore to feel calmer in familiar spaces.
What really made the difference and seemed impossible was the ability to communicate. Speech therapy has allowed Matty to pronounce a few words and for us to understand him. Along with these two building blocks there is also the psychological therapy, for now only for him because the costs are high, which is teaching our blond curly-haired boy to look inside himself, his behavioral reactions have improved.
Being a boy with Fragile X is not easy especially for Matty because in addition to psychomotor and language difficulties, he also suffers from ADHD which leads him to be hyperactive and sometimes aggressive.
Mattia is giving us many satisfactions, he is a boy who makes himself loved and who enters the hearts of the people he meets on his journey.
At school the teachers are very proud of him, he relates well with his classmates and they are a guide for him in the tasks and activities they carry out. I am sure that his classmates are making a difference in my son’s life, just as he does and will make a difference in their lives. He likes swimming and playing soccer, he would spend hours and hours at the park behind the house playing with friends and with his brother who is a fundamental point for him.
Mattia, like all children and young people in the world, deserves a life worthy of his dreams and this fund was created for this reason, because we do not want to stop at the first difficulties.
We have always tried not to let our children lack anything, like all parents sacrificing for them is the order of the day. But precisely because we are a family like many others, we cannot do everything.
So do we give up? No. We ask for help. Hoping to be an example for our children, hoping they understand that when facing life’s challenges one must roll up one’s sleeves and try, but before giving up one can look around. Because alone one can go fast, but together one can go far.
Opening this fund has allowed us this year to return to Padua to the phoniatrics center twice.
These visits were fundamental and very important for him.
We gained many strategies and much advice on how to manage Mattia’s crises.
From the outside he appears to be a clever boy who seems capable of managing difficulties and waiting on his own, but in reality these are precisely his difficulties.
In Padua he underwent an intensive course of speech therapy and psychology where he emerged approved and tired but with many improvements.
Improvements that we are continuing with professionals here in our town.
From now on Mattia will be followed by a speech therapist for language and a psychologist for behavior which is proving to be very complex given his age as well.
He will be followed both at home and at school
In addition to these therapies we have in mind many other projects for the afternoons when he is at home and for the school breaks which are really very long
Projects that unfortunately here in our area for children so young and with these difficulties there are no suitable facilities and we would like to create something tailored for him.
This is why we turn to you, your donation, large or small, will make a difference.
We are opening this fund and asking for a hand because thanks to the Hol4All project of Fondazione Allianz UMANA MENTE we have learned to ask for help, to open ourselves to the community and still believe in humanity. We are a family like many others, we are a family like you.