"I would like my son to reach his full potential, that he will be an independent adult."
It is this determination which led Pauline Costigan to take her autistic son Aidan out of a special school in Derry and to put him into a mainstream school in Muff, Co Donegal.
After three years' experience of the education system, she is now moving, with her husband and four children, to the Republic.
Her autistic son was placed in a special school in the North at the age of 5 1/2, after attending a diagnostic centre for a year.
Only one type of programme was in operation at the school and, she says, "my child seemed to be regressing".
Some people's children progressed at the school, she says, but autistic children can vary widely in what they can do, and a single programme cannot cater for all needs.
She became more convinced that a change was needed when her son spent five months in a mainstream school, with a specialist teacher, in Sligo while he was attending a clinic in Mayo for a private treatment programme.
"Within a very short time, many of his autistic features had gone," she says, of the effects of going to a mainstream school.
Surrounded by ordinary, sociable children he became more sociable himself - and lack of sociability is a common feature of autistic people.
When he came back to the North, a clinical psychologist and other professionals backed her opinion that he needed to leave the special school and go into a mainstream school there.
But, she says, the system in the North is "very rigid" and once a child is put into a special school "it's very hard to get them out again."
It was going to take a minimum of a year to cut through the red tape, she says, and she was not prepared to wait that long. She set out to find a mainstream school for her son herself.
"I got into my car and drove around every school in the area."
Again and again schools told her they were sympathetic but their hands were tied because of the pressure of the 11-plus examination on teachers in the schools. One school accepted him but a new principal overturned the decision. Another school agreed to take him but not until late in the year.
She decided to try schools in the Republic, offering to pay for a classroom assistant herself.
"I couldn't get over the change in attitude," she says, "I got three acceptances from the South".
Her son is now in his third year in a mainstream school in Muff, - where he was accepted on an experimental basis - with a classroom assistant financed by his family.
"I can't stress to you the difference it has made to all our lifestyles," she says.
"He is verbalising more and socialising much more. He has much more normalised behaviour all round. His concentration has gone up from 20 minutes to over an hour. He can now do unsupervised work at the table." Aidan continues to have "very delayed learning. He is in a special programme but he is sitting in the middle of the class. In the playground he doesn't need any supervision whatever. They have bent over backwards," she says of the school.
There is a cost to the move, and that's in the poorer financial benefits in the South. "There are more benefits in the North all right. I would say we will lose out financially."
That's putting it mildly: she will lose a disability living allowance of £370 a month and the cost of financing the extra care Aidan needs at school is already a considerable burden.
"We have come to the point where we are wondering how we are going to continue financing it."
Yet she believes the move to the South is better for the whole family.
"I think the education system at primary level is better. There is a much more human element in it than in the North.
"They educate the entire person."