Police handcuffing 5-year-old

jj said:
She was taught (most likely "once again") that physical behavior is the way to deal with a problem.

Next question, please.
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Ah yes...

The famous harm caused by the 'physical behavior' of an inanimate object...a pair of handcuffs.

:dl:
 
jj said:
She was taught (most likely "once again") that physical behavior is the way to deal with a problem.

Next question, please.
Click to expand...

You're reaching something here... using force on a child does set expectations, if it is overused the child will learn to use force when it is not appropriate also.

However, I don't think it's a harmful expectation for the child to learn that violently acting out will be met with force. That's something that's very true and important to be aware of both as a child and as an adult.
 
By the lime in the Coke, eleven pages?

Firstly, I apologize for misunderstanding your post warheit. Secondly, I have to give jj for giving some kind of an answer to the question.

Once upon a time, when I was about 15, I worked at a day camp as a junior counselor. The counselors in my group were lazy and foisted as many of the kids off on me as possible and lacked any kind of desire to discipline. They once abandoned me with an unruly kid who thought it was hilarious to sit down and refuse to move in the middle of the woods. You can not touch this child. You can not walk away. I sat down with the child and simply waited. After a while, the counselors told another group we were missing and they came across me and the kid and informed us that we should go now and then just left, even though I said I needed help. After a longer while, I started yelling at the kid to just "Go" because I was going to get in trouble for "not being there to my job," which also included "snack gopher." All in all, this was about 45 minutes of a 15 year old with a 9 year old who thought this was all very funny until I was being punished. Then it was scary.

I'm willing to bet RandFan can tell me what was needed in that situation, while CFLarsen will ask me a "Have you stopped beating your wife" question.

Once upon a time, when I was 12, I was babysitting a newly-adopted, yet still neglected girl of 4. Generally it involved putting on Barbie clothes and watching far too much Nick Jr. One day, the girl flipped spontaneously, throwing things, hitting me. I reached to restrain her and after getting slapped and kicked a few times, found myself just hugging her. She stopped immediately and just cried. She wanted her real mommy. I never had a problem with her afterwards. Unfortunately, our families lost contact and last I heard the girl was lashing out even more because she was still being ignored and considered, "bad."

I got lucky on that one.

Once upon a time, one of the usual kids at the arcade starting having a tantrum. His father simply picked up the mess, put the kid under his arm, and wished me a good day as he took the kid out, screaming.

That is how a parent should deal with a temper tantrum.

Most of my good child discipline stories come from the arcade. Most children, when spoken to politely, will behave. Some won't and I was allowed to call the cops if need be. Sometimes, they need an active demonstration of consequences (see: number of times I've taken a skeeball to the back).

The girl in the video has a behavoir problem and I would have called the cops, considering it's a recurring case. I'd have called them in the hopes that they'd launch an investigation. I have serious questions about this child's home life.

ELT, would you call the police moral cowards if they had not restrained the girl because it's "wrong" and she managed to seriously injure herself? Which is more moral?
 
All of this, and

"Handcuffing a 5-year old girl is physical harm."

is the best Claud could do to provide evidence of actual harm???

Claus, some advice: stick to something you're good at. Avoid debates.
 
jj said:
She was taught (most likely "once again") that physical behavior is the way to deal with a problem.

Next question, please.
Click to expand...

If you were following along, you'd know that the teachers tried non-physical means first by asking the girl, then calling the police. Only then, and probably because it was promised from a previous incident as an article hints, the cuffs were put on by the officers.

jj, you are deluded if you think that physical behavior doesn't solve some problems. In the case of restraining violent and destructive people using their hands and feet for damage, cuffs, applied by officers to the hands and feet, do solve the problem.
 
Actually, I take issue with the idea that handcuffs are a "physical action". Handcuffs, contrarily, are passive restraints. They are designed to prevent physical action on the part of the handcuffed person. They are not designed to inflict pain, they are not physically harmful. They just hold the person's hands.

An example of "physical action" would've been a police officer actively restraining the kid with his hands. I would rather see a child passively handcuffed than being actively manhandled, getting welts, bruises, and who knows what else as she struggled against a person's grip. The message here is not that "physical force" is necessary. It's the opposite: if you cannot keep yourself from trying to use physical force, you will lose the ability to do so.

I'm surprised to see some of the blatant arguments from emotion people are using here. I'm also surprised to see this situation, of police restraining somebody with a history of physical violence, so ridiculously compared to that of a child abuser who locks his victim up to keep him/her from escaping and getting to the police. Unbelievable.

Yes, it's true - if the kid's only 5, any adult should be able to restrain her without too much difficulty. OK, so you've got one guy holding the kid's arms, a guy who's unable to do absolutely anything else now. How is this practical? The cuffs do the job, freeing the officer to do other things - like ride in the front of the car or fill out paperwork.
 
This is one of the craziest things I have ever heard of.

You mean to tell me that some grown adults can't handle some unruly child without *traumatizing her for life* by calling in the police? This is irregardless as to whether or not the handcuffs were even used!

What do *parents* do when their own kid refuses to cooperate or gets a tantrum? Call the police? I don't think so.

All they would have had to do is lock her in some room, alone, long enough for her to scream and cry it out of her system, and/or until her mother could come get her..or, tell her that if she didn't stop right now, that they would be forced to take her to the zoo and throw her in with either the snakes or the gorilla. And then when night came they would lock her up in a dark closet with the boogie man.

But cops...handcuffs..at *5*! *FIVE*? Cops? Get real.

And it's also a waste of tax payers dollars to have cops have to report to subdue some weakling 5 year old ...*girl* no less.
 
CFLarsen said:
You can lead a horse to the water, but you can't make him drink.
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And if you lead a horse to an empty through, you certainly can't make it drink.

Claus, you are not stupid. Claus, we are not stupid. Don't think that we accept your opinion as a proof of anything.

Now, my own opinion is that everything is not right if the situation becomes such that a 5-year old has to be handcuffed. But I still can see that you have absolutely refused to defend your claim that the girl was physically harmed. You have only continued to assert that. Don't you realize that every time when you try to use proof by vehement assertion, you hurt your own credibility?

If you are sensible, you admit that you have no proof for your physical harm gain. If you want to take the easy way out, you just withdraw this thread and pretend it never existed. Unfortunately, I predict that you will continue asserting your claims and refuse to offer any proof with more substance that "it is obvious", and continue to do so as long as anyone bothers to answer.

As to my other question, I take your silence as confirming my suspicion that you haven't told anyone about your murderous intents even though you promised to do it. Not that I fault you about it since it is patently obvious (see, I can use that argument also) that it would be mind-bogglingly stupid to issue such threats at an airport and you are way too intelligent to not realize it.
 
Well, Claus, I used to respect you. But you have dodged and dodged, and tried to change the subject. I asked a fair question and you refuse to answer. I don't know how it is in Denmark, but here in America we have more respect for people who are willing to admit they were wrong than for someone who tries to duck the question. Are you that bought into your own hype that you're incapable of admitting to error? It's sad to see you telling other posters to prove this, or prove that. How on earth can anyone ever take such things seriously, coming from you, ever again? You have lost credibility. You're not being a skeptic. You wouldn't take that behavior from Shane, or anyone else, yet you expect us to take it from you?
 
TragicMonkey said:
Well, Claus, I used to respect you. But you have dodged and dodged, and tried to change the subject. I asked a fair question and you refuse to answer. I don't know how it is in Denmark, but here in America we have more respect for people who are willing to admit they were wrong than for someone who tries to duck the question. Are you that bought into your own hype that you're incapable of admitting to error? It's sad to see you telling other posters to prove this, or prove that. How on earth can anyone ever take such things seriously, coming from you, ever again? You have lost credibility. You're not being a skeptic. You wouldn't take that behavior from Shane, or anyone else, yet you expect us to take it from you?
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Ditto.
 
Geez. I posted this back on page 3.
On a more general comment re handling disruptive children, please note that what this girl was clearly looking for is personal attention for some reason, and she wanted it even if it meant generating "bad" attention. This is a situation not limited to the classroom, although a classroom situation does provide a ready-made audience, whether it is the other children or just the teachers themselves. I'd suggest there's an issue at home that relates to this, and some detective work by social services is required to find (and thus address) it.

The best resolution of such negative attention-seeking behaviour (aka, a tantrum) is to remove the intended audience completely. The child will rapidly learn that the behaviour gains nothing, and will stop soon enough (unless there are more serious problems involved). At home, this is the "time-out" method, and as has been mentioned before in this thread, it can be used equally effectively at school.

I saw the video, and my very first thought was that the school teachers let the behaviour continue for far too long by simply "being there" and letting the girl have an audience. She was not hurting herself or the teachers in her mini-rampage, and would be highly unlikely to do so. In their situation I would have let the girl simply bash my hands and arms as I walked backwards to the time-out room (5yo kids don't hit that hard!) - easily possible because the girl was far too preoccupied in hitting stuff to see where she actually was.

Once in the time-out room, a quick exit with the door shut to leave her there, and she is both comfortably confined and has lost her audience. She could then be picked up by her mum an hour or so later - no mess, no fuss, no "manhandling" or "carrying", no police necessary at all, and the girl will have learned that she got precisely nowhere with those tactics. It would also be a good opportunity to do some discussion with the parent to explore why this happened in the first place.
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I would have thought that the situation is patently clearly obvious - it was a five-year-old's temper tantrum, that's all! The "why" of her problems should have been sorted out through the usual mechanisms that all children's behavioural problems are sorted - I have no idea what they might have been in this location, but I will allow that they do exist.

But I remain staggered, absolutely jaw-droppingly STAGGERED with DISbelief, that it took a whole bunch of grown-up teachers, presumably with training in dealing with unruly children, and five police officers to simply remove the child from the situation. Not even deal with it, just to remove her. And that only under restraint of handcuffs.

But it appears that the primary reason why this occured was that no-one of those adults wanted to be involved in any litigation that would be detrimental to themselves or their school, etc. So they delegated their responsibilities to the only authority that COULD deal with it without reasonable fear of litigious action being brought - the police. Who dealt with the situation "as per regulations".

All I can say to that is THEIR LAW IS AN ASS.

Really.
 
Zep said:
But it appears that the primary reason why this occured was that no-one of those adults wanted to be involved in any litigation that would be detrimental to themselves or their school, etc. So they delegated their responsibilities to the only authority that COULD deal with it without reasonable fear of litigious action being brought - the police. Who dealt with the situation "as per regulations".

All I can say to that is THEIR LAW IS AN ASS.

Really.
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No Argument.
 
Iamme said:
This is one of the craziest things I have ever heard of.

You mean to tell me that some grown adults can't handle some unruly child without *traumatizing her for life* by calling in the police? This is irregardless as to whether or not the handcuffs were even used!

What do *parents* do when their own kid refuses to cooperate or gets a tantrum? Call the police? I don't think so.

All they would have had to do is lock her in some room, alone, long enough for her to scream and cry it out of her system, and/or until her mother could come get her..or, tell her that if she didn't stop right now, that they would be forced to take her to the zoo and throw her in with either the snakes or the gorilla. And then when night came they would lock her up in a dark closet with the boogie man.

But cops...handcuffs..at *5*! *FIVE*? Cops? Get real.

And it's also a waste of tax payers dollars to have cops have to report to subdue some weakling 5 year old ...*girl* no less.
Click to expand...
You are apparently totally ignorant of the restraints under which the staff of U.S. government schools operate.:rolleyes:
 
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