posted
The problem with this is that when I child is kicking and screaming and such, the best way is to pick them up and put them somewhere and totally ignore their tantrum.
This is difficult at school, but it's not impossible. I've handled sulkies and cryies in a tiny environment with just me and another teenager.
They want attention. Calling the police is attention. It's also ridiculous. The child should have been hoisted out the class room by the teacher or helper, taken away from anyone else- the bathroom, the staffroom, somewhere fairly sterile, told people will wait until she calms and ignored. After she collapses in a weeping heap, and about a thousand "I HATE YOU"s then a quiet conversation, a hug, a make up, a let's try and be better, neh?
The worst children I've had are the ones who want to be comforted the most.
This child is five. A baby. If she's acting that way, she needs to be taught that it's neither acceptable NOR is it going to cause a reaction NOR is it going to make people hate her.
Five year olds just want to be liked, but they also needed to be guided. Calling the police for a five-year-old should not really be an option. Call the parents, definately. Have the gym teacher watch (or hold) her, sure (a commanding but gentle prescence, usually gym teachers project this) but NOT the police. Not for a baby.
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posted
Uh, the quote from the mother said it all for me. She claimed they "set [her] baby up". OMG. Wanna know what her precious little daughter learned from mommy? That the world *does* revolve around her. That she is a victim to evil forces, having no responsibility for her own actions.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
Teshi, not all schools have a full time gym teacher.
I'd like to hope my response would be to clear the room, shut off the lights (lowering visual stimulation), and close the door. Then send someone to call the parents to come pick the child up immediately. A significant suspension would follow, along with a mandatory meeting with the parents to discuss whether this may be a persistant behavioral problem worthy of testing for an IEP.
I can't see calling the police, but I sure don't fault them for it either. Schools really get the shaft...parents say they don't do enough, and when they try to do right by students, they say they do too much. They can't win.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
I was using the gym teacher as the example. "An impressive looking unfamiliar person who the student is perhaps more wary of" is a better discription.
This is why Vice Principals are always the bad guys.
Edit: And I disagree about the significant suspension and the immediate discussion of whatever IEP is. I would have to know the child personally in order to be able to make decisions like that.
posted
A 5 year old who loses control that badly over jelly beans this late in the school year has some issues. It may not warrant needing an IEP, but that's what testing is for.
IEP stands for Individualized Education Plan. It's a legally actionable document that outlines special needs identified for the child that the public school *must* follow, though they have discretion as to the level (number of hours) of special services recommended. Testing for an IEP comes up when a child exhibits a possible need unmet in the standard classroom. This can be a learning, physical, emotional and/or social disability/challenge.
As for suspension, you don't think there should be *any* consequences for the 5 year old??
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posted
If the parents are the problem, suspension is not the answer, especially at age five. This child needs to learn to function in a group situation, not alone at home with Mumsie who will just instill more dislike of participation and ideas of how "injust" school is.
Also, consequences should not be so severe as measures, in this case. This child is five. What is suspension going to make her think?
Also, when she returns, she would be a hero, or least the subject of talk.
quote: A 5 year old who loses control that badly over jelly beans this late in the school year has some issues.
I can't judge, I wasn't there. But perhaps the Jelly Beans were only the beginning.
Teacher: "I'm sorry, but I'm taking your Jelly Beans away!" Child: *Grabs at Jelly Beans* "Nooooo!" Teacher: "If you continue to behave this way you'll have to sit in the corner." Child: I HATE you! *attacks teacher*
This progression is EASY to imagine. Lots of children easily leap from passive silliness to rabid anger. How you treat them afterwards is often what lets them off the scale. Also, how inventive they are in doing things that are Not Allowed.
For instance: If writing on the walls is strictly forbidden either at home or at school, that's the way to wind someone up.
Something like the removal of Jelly Beans can easily escalate into a major standoff, with attack on the part of the child and extremely bad behavior.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote: However, the article notes the student "attacked" two teachers and continued to resist officers, up to and including kicking.
I actually don't see any mention of her resisting the police at all, other than her saying she didn't want to go to jail.
quote: Minutes later, the 40-pound girl was in the back of a police cruiser, under arrest for battery. Her hands were bound with plastic ties, her ankles in handcuffs.
and that level of restraints on a child that small just seems excessive.
Posts: 376 | Registered: Sep 2004
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quote:Also, consequences should not be so severe as measures, in this case. This child is five. What is suspension going to make her think?
Also, when she returns, she would be a hero, or least the subject of talk.
Suspension is one of the only real consequences with teeth still available to schools. The child will know she made a bad choice and isn't allowed to go to school as a result.
As for her being a hero, that might be true of high school students, but the typical kindergartener wants to please adults and be near them, not pushed away or excluded.
Frankly, I'm astonished you'd think that she would be a hero to the other 5 year olds for getting suspended. It leads me to believe you have a very strange notion of what most 5 year olds are like.
The problem almost certainly is the parents if that quote is any indication, but the school cannot punish parents. They can only make the message clear that their child's behavior is unacceptable. This isn't about zero tolerance, this is about the safety of the other students. If I was parent to one of the other students, I would have serious concerns about that little girl ever coming back to class without some testing to see if it is the right place for her.
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posted
I agree entirely with jeniwren. Especially what she said about the mother.
My youngest is 5, and has occasionally behaved in a way that meant I got a call. But wow, this incident is so far beyond the behavior I'd expect to hear about from a five year old!
Let me tell you, at five, the kids who get in trouble are NOT heroes.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Hm. I think I'm expressing myself very badly.
I don't agree with suspension for one so young. I don't think it does any good. If there's nothing else that can be done effectively at school, then perhaps a day suspension. The point goes across. but an extended suspension? Not in my opinion.
(I used the word "hero" far too losely. I mean if a fuss is made, the children will know through the whole school grades kindergarten through six. Anti-hero, subject to looks or comments, hero, one way or another, in my opinion a fuss is going to cause issues.)
I'm basing my knowledge of five-year-olds on myself and my peers, my sisters, babysitting and running summer camps for that age group. I could be widely miscalculating; I'm definately not a mother!
I think overall we generally agree in most principles, except for the suspension issue, but that's totally an opinion thing for me!
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posted
So basicly, any teacher can be an unmitigated brat cuz s/he's the Authority. Cuz that's the appearance to the kid: the teacher decided to steal her candy. I would expect a teacher to have a bit more brains, a bit more self-control, and a bit more in social skills than a 5year old.
posted
It's directed at the teacher involved in the JellyBeanAffair. And at the whole ZeroTolerance approach of every minor anthill having to be blown up into a MOUNTAIN. This is about teaching etiquette -- the good manners of obeying arbitrary rules -- not about stopping a MajorCrimeWave
quote: She first was restrained with steel, standard-issue handcuffs but slipped out of those, he said. She then was bound with plastic flexible cuffs but continued to struggle, kicking at officers as they walked her out of the school to a squad car, Proffitt said.
She was put in the back of the cruiser but continued kicking one officer in the arms and legs, so another set of handcuffs was used to restrain her legs, a police report says.
posted
I would have been able to hold a child that size, even a wild one, in a restraint, but perhaps the teachers were afraid to us hands-on methods due to legal issues.
Posts: 10890 | Registered: May 2003
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posted
"In my opinion a fuss is going to cause issues"
Maybe I'm a jerk, but if my child went to school with this child, I'd *want* there to be a fuss. Though I of course disagree with the fact that the poor kiddo was arrested, she attacked a teacher. That kind of behavior is not appropriate, and I'd be happy to see her suspended not only as a punishment but as an example to her impressionable classmates. Believe me, the kids will talk about it no matter what happens. My daughter comes home most days and can't wait to tell me if someone in her class got in trouble. Though she already knows that attacking anyone is not acceptable, I wouldn't want her to observe a classmate attacking the teacher and then have the classmate back at school the next day with no consequences. To be fair though, I don't think it makes much difference to her classmates whether she's suspended or not at this point since they already saw her taken away in a police car.
posted
Since I wasn't in the classroom, and it wasn't reported (as far as I could tell), I would assume that the jellybean "theft" by the teacher was a result of some very spelled-out rules. Participate without goofing off, and you get to keep them. Goof off, and they are taken away. Five year olds need rules, and breaking rules have (has?) consequences.
I just had to say that.
I have a seven-year-old who likes to break rules in the classroom, and I tell you what, I *want* there to be consequences (he has a very good teacher, and she is consistent with consequences, thank God). If he freaked out to that degree, I don't know if I would want him put in restraints, but again, I was not there. He *has* hit a child in the classroom (he has a particular problem with one child), and as jeniwren (I think?) put out there, he was taken into a darkened environment and counseled. He is better. He is especially better once I related to him that hitting people is Against The Law, but I hope he never has to find out the hard way, like this child.
quote: "She's never going back to that school," Akins said. "They set my baby up."
Yep, this one'll be at CREST before long. I think that's the real difference between kids with behavioral problems and SEDs. With the SEDs, the parents are the problem. They come in drunk swearing up and down the hallways wanting to know what the little s*** did now. My mom prefers the stoners since they're at least quiet.
When the parents are completely self absorbed and have no respect for their children, you get a pretty messed up kid. And they ususally end up in jail for it. Maybe the school or the officer saw this as an intervention to scare them into behaving. Unfortunetly, the parent has has to back the school up for that to work. SED parents are too busy going down to the dam with a case of beer getting in fights to bother speaking to their kids.
What was it Chris Rock said? "Maybe the kid would know something if you said more to him than 'Momma be back.'"
As for the spanking, personally, I'm not sure I'd call it a discipline technique. I usually think of it as an immediate deterrant. There's a dangerous behavior that needs to be stopped now. Quick swat. The danger can be removed while the kid cries. Now we worry about time out and such. I think spanking has its place, but it's never going to replace a bad behavior with a good one, which I guess is my definition of discipline.
Posts: 2283 | Registered: Dec 2003
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That's what i was thinking (looking at my 39 lb 3.5 ft 5 yr old son)
I think the girl certainly has pretty severe problems, and spanking is probably not the solution.
CHildren ARE all different, and some ARE more difficult than others.
Mine throws tantrums pretty easily, and does NOT get away with it. He is VERY sensitive and a bit of a control freak. It is who he is. However people who meet him think he's a cute little angel (he is!) and don't see a discipline problem.
Yes he over reacts too often, but on the flip side recently one of his friends slipped and fell while playing, and my little Snuggy sat next to him and pet him while crying because he was sad that his friend was hurt.
Someone who saw one of his temper tantrums might just assume I'm a lenient permissive parent. What would the same person say when they saw him crying for and comforting one of his hurt friends instead?
posted
SED = Severly Emotionally Disturbed. It's supposed to mean that they're crazy, but since there's a disability check involved, it ususally means their parents are white trash looking for easy money. Nothing's ever the kids fault, the school's always one mistake away from a lawsuit, and if the kids start to behave too much they get coached on being worse so the check doesn't go away.
Maybe this kid won't get that bad. Maybe she has some underlying medical condition or developmental problem. But as jeniwren said, probably time to call in the school shrink and do some testing. However, Florida being what it is, I'm a bit cynical anything useful will get done unless the mother pushes for it. We have a notoriously bad track record of helping kids in this state.
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posted
AvidReader, I have worked with many emotionally disturbed children, but I have never heard of parents receiving a disability check for their children, or encourageing their children to act up. Do you have some links or other data to back this up?
Posts: 10890 | Registered: May 2003
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posted
I decided to read through this just to see what others were thinking. When I first read the news article, I couldn't help but wonder what hadn't been released to the public that would have caused the police to be called. It struck me as being overkill on the part of the school involving the police, unless this child really posed a threat to her classmates or the teachers/staff of the school. I'm sure there's more to the story than we are being told, but at the same time, the quote from the 5 year old's mother about floored me. I'm trying to figure out how attempting to discepline a child who was acting out in class by taking away the source of the distraction (the jelly beans) was "set(ting) her baby up." Im my opinion it seems that this child is one who can do no wrong in her mothers eyes. I also wonder if there aren't some underlying issues with the child, ie: ADHD, or something to that effect.
I am a mother of 3 young boys, ages 10, 7 and 5, the 7 year old being a "special needs" child. He can be the sweetest kid in the world most times, but he can also be a total hellion. He has some learning/speech and fine motor skill delays as well as ADHD. When his medication for the ADHD wears off he can sometimes get aggressive, though it's mostly directed at his "little" brother. Fortunately? size is on my side when dealing with my 7 year old, since he's all of about 45 lbs and can easily be picked up and restrained on my lap if need be.
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quote: Fortunately? size is on my side when dealing with my 7 year old, since he's all of about 45 lbs and can easily be picked up and restrained on my lap if need be.
T -- Be glad of that while you can! My special needs kid is now 6'4" and 250 pounds (17 years old) and he got bigger than I could handle (physically) by about fifth grade!
Luckily, by then we pretty much had things under control.
posted
Farmgirl, I'd be happy if this shrimp would grow a bit... his 5 year old brother already outweighs him, though thanks to the wonders of science and chemistry, things are better with him since starting Adderall a couple months ago, aside from the fact that it makes him eat even less now. <sigh> He's always been tiny, only weighed 5lbs 12oz when he was born, and has always stayed small...
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posted
Ic, such a person would only need to spend about 5 minutes with you and Cor and the girls to realize how not true THAT is.
You and Cor are so obviously excellent parents that anyone incapable of observing it would have to be blind in every sense of the word. Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
Social Security has a definition of disability and they say there's a list of qualifying conditions, but I can't find it. However, SED is a severe, lasting condition that gets covered because of the numbers of meds they're prescribed and the poverty of the parents.
EH is a less severe diagnosis. There are no EHs at my mom's school. They're a whole differnt group. Here's a look at Martin County school district's site.
quote: A severe emotional disturbance is defined as an emotional handicap, the severity of which results in the need for a program for the full school week and extensive support services. SED programs provide for lower adult to pupil ratio than programs for emotionally handicapped and are designed to accommodate. Students determined eligible for the SED program are served in our county at Challenger School. These students receive a highly structured academic and affective curriculum, including but not limited to art, music, and recreation services that are specially designed for the SED student.
See the difference yet? I'm not talking about everyone. Just a small subsection. And no I don't have figures on the kids not getting too better so the families don't lose the checks. It's fraud and if it were documented it would be because someone caught them. All I have are many, many testamonials from SED teachers.
I'm not trying to insult everyone with kids who don't fit the mold. All I'm saying is that behaviors the five-year-old and her mother exhibit look like SED behaviors. And SED has a lot more to do with mom and dad than it does with the kid.
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posted
It's only a difference of degree. You have chosen to draw the line at SED--EH cases are (often, at least) legit, but SED is a fraud. It's not too much to suppose that other people will draw the line further up the "regularity" spectrum. And, for someone already out of step with that spectrum, it's not too much to suppose that probably a lot of those cases you generalize as being fraudulent are, in fact, not, and are people struggling to deal with an extremely difficult situation, in the face of negative societal judgments, as best they can. As far as being able to find a lot of teachers who can tell you anecdotally that these cases are fraudulent, well, I can find a lot of teachers who will tell you that minority kids are all hoodlums, and it says as much about the teachers as it does about the kids.
I don't know. I guess I can see both sides of the issue. It's kind of like how people say that welfare cases stay on welfare because of the incentives to do so. One can certainly make that case, but I bet someone on welfare would have a substantially different point of view on that.
There may well be a flaw in the system that incentivizes disfunction, in which case what you describe would be fairly rampant. But still, it makes me uncomfortable to judge whole groups of people without specific, individual evidence.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
Icarus - I'm not a teacher like you, so I don't have the broad overview that you do - I only know a few special needs children.
But there is fraud in almost ANY organization. Yes, there is fraud in welfare, and I supposed there are cases of fraud in special education.
But there are also kids with true needs being helped. And that makes it worth it. Some people just like to sponge off the system. But others try to actually make the system work toward independence. You can't take away the system due to the people who commit fraud, because the only people hurt will be the ones who were truly being helped.
posted
Farmgirl, you're responding to something I did not say; in fact, my post was making the same point as you are.
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posted
And I was not speaking as a teacher, but as a parent. Specifically, as a parent of special needs kids.
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posted
Icky, I'm sorry if this has felt like some kind of personal attack, but I don't see it as a difference of degree at all. It's more like the difference between Christianity and Hinduism. Yeah, they're both religions, and you have to be religiously inclined to end up one or the other, but you have to pick one. You can't really slide up or down a scale and find yourself in another religion.
SEDs essentially give up control of their lives and behaviors. There's always an excuse for the tantrum. "I didn't take my meds today so I couldn't help it." "It's his fault he made me mad." The biggest challenge to getting a new student (besides seeing he doesn't get the crap beat out of him while the class adjusts its pecking order) is showing him that he still gets to choose how he reacts to life.
These kids are essentially so starved for attention from their parents that they're all giant toddlers. Sometimes jail can actually be beneficial since it gets them out of abusive and neglectful homes. You'd have to see these parents in action to understand what I mean. They don't WANT their kids. They don't like their kids. If deep down they feel some parental love for their kids, they're sure good at hiding the fact from everyone including their own children.
That is why I maintain that SED is distinctly different from EH. And I maintain it's a difference in the parents. I'm not sure what the graduation rate is with EHs, but with SEDs, MO-SPAN says it's 42%. Frankly, I'm surprised it's that high. I think I've seen one SED graduate in the past six or seven years.
quote: •Encounters with the Juvenile Justice System
—22% of students with SED are arrested at least once before they leave school as opposed to 9% of students with disabilities and 6% of all students.
—58% of youth with SED are arrested within five years of leaving school, as opposed to 30% of all students with disabilities.
—Of those students with SED who drop out of school, 73% are arrested within five years of leaving school.
posted
My brother is an SED kid (okay, he's 18 now, but hasn't graduated yet, they're arguing over consrevatorship for him and he doesn't act like an adult), and it's not a question of apathy or anything on my parents' part.
However, they are definitely a big part of the problem. They've been fighting for his custody since he was 1, lying in court, my mom has some weird kind of manifestation of Munchausen's by proxy or something where she got him on adult meds he didn't need when he was 9, which he now does need, he was in all kinds of group homes that exacerbated the problem, both my parents enable him in different ways, and so on, and so forth...
However, I was in a similar situation, and didn't end up the same way. So it's not all them; a big part of it's him, his inborn personality, how he handles things, his other problems (dysgraphia, poor motor coordination, learning disabilities, genius-level IQ...)
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
Icarus - I'm sorry I came across as disagreeing with you - I was kinda trying to agree and chime in with you.
I have been posting much too hastily lately with my busy work -- I'm going to have to spend more time in "preview post" mode because nothing I write lately is apparently coming across the way it feels in my head...
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Though she already knows that attacking anyone is not acceptable, I wouldn't want her to observe a classmate attacking the teacher and then have the classmate back at school the next day with no consequences. To be fair though, I don't think it makes much difference to her classmates whether she's suspended or not at this point since they already saw her taken away in a police car. ![[Frown]](frown.gif)
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