Police handcuffing 5-year-old

Aren't corporal punishment, and putting hands onto a violent child really two entirely different issues?
 
I guess that depends on your definition of the term. Usually I've heard it used differently than the textbook definition....
 
I agree that restraint and separation of unruly children in school is certainly necessary - it seems to be the only workable and viable solution. Of course, it's the same at home (well, should be). Surely variants of this must ring around the world: "Go to your room right now, young lady, and only come out when you are willing to talk civil!!!"

However I'm not a huge fan of corporal punishment as part of that mechanism. As with others here, I can see potential for abuse by the punishers. It's the instilling of discipline by sheer terror - it works, but it perpetuates a social pecking-order mechanism that carries forward into the rest of their lives. We have laws about physically abusive parents; but this could be where their behaviour was learned and reinforced.

That said, I can definitely see the difference between corporal punishment and necessary restraint. Athon, a teacher himself, has related an instance of what I would call necessary restraint, as has Eos. I have seen it done many times in my own school days, as, I suspect, have most of us.

Relating back to the subject of this thread, as I said before, I saw this instance as being the inability of the teachers to apply necessary restraint on the child, with the police having to perform that task instead. The obvious question was "Why?" - and the answer, as pointed out above, is that the law in this case had been so structured that the teachers themselves were so restrained in their responses that they simply could not enforce any form of necessary restraint at all, the child was given a totally free rein, and so the situation simply escalated to its ridiculous lengths.

I cannot blame the teachers in this - they were restricted by law. Nor would I suggest that, if the law allowed, they should have paddled the child into submission. And neither do I suggest that the police should never be called in at all (in some cases, they will be very necessary). Each situation is different, so teachers need the ability to evaluate and apply suitable discipline, within community-acceptable standards (i.e. the law). In this case, it appears the laws have been framed to appease the most NON-parental parents. To that extent, I repeat: that law is an ass.

I won't get into the issue of cuffing being physically harmful - there wasn't evidence of it that I could see in this instance, however cuffs CAN be used and misused to seriously harm people.
 
I can see (deamons) arguments in favor of this and similar laws. Instead of leaving a choice up to individual teachers as to what a reasonable physical response would be and allowing for the possibility of a human teacher smegging up royally and hurting a kid a community opts to remove this possibility. But this leaves teachers and faculty open to a similar situation as this.
 
Maybe every school should have a small rubber room with gas port holes in it. They carefully escort the unruly child into this rubber room where they can't harm themselves. Then, turn on the laughing gas. That should do it. In the meantime, call the parents and have them come to pick up their (now laughing) child.
 
Bumped for CFLarsen.

I see he is posting on the forum again....but not in this thread.

Gee.....
 
I asked my 13 year old daughter about this and she gave what I thought was a very thoughtful answer.

She felt that the kid should have been directed out to the playground to burn off a little steam. I asked her what she would have done if she'd started flailing around in the playground equipment. It was her view that kids in this condition are too uncoordinated to even get on the playground equipment and what they need is just an opportunity to blow off a little steam with some room to do it in.

She was thinking of a kindergarten type playground which is small and thoroughly fenced in.

It was interesting to hear her go through her thought process on this. She actually talked about the concept of loco parentis and how teachers have rights to control children in place of their parents. Then she thought about her babysitting experience and lastly she is young enough that she remembered her own tantrums and how she felt when they were going on.

One thing for sure, that police department better hope that nobody that thinks like she does gets on that jury. She was mighty fired up to see the cops sued and she wasn't too happy with the principal either who she thought should have understood to get the kid outside. Her view was when a kid is acting like that being tightly constrained is tantamount to producing trauma in the child and it is exactly the opposite of what needs to be done for the child.
 
davefoc said:
I asked my 13 year old daughter about this and she gave what I thought was a very thoughtful answer.
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This is a common school policy. 'Cooling Off' is often used by behavioural management teams to control kids who are quick to express their anger. It can work well, but in practice it becomes a ready excuse for a lot of kids who are too ready to demonstrate how they have the ability to 'lose it'.

It would work better in combination with teaching the kids how to deal with their emotion whilst actually in the situation. I often see a tiny little argument (often somebody taking something without asking) which rapidly accelerates (often because of the anger problem) to end with the angry kid thrusting a note under my face that essentially tells me I have to let them out of class to cool off. It turns into a daily event, with no sign that the problem is resolving. Sure, there's no explosive fight, but...

I like the concept, but like all good concepts it cannot work in isolation.

Athon
 
davefoc said:
I asked my 13 year old daughter about this and she gave what I thought was a very thoughtful answer.

She felt that the kid should have been directed out to the playground to burn off a little steam.
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Hmm, it seems to me you are rewarding the child for bad behavior.

"Oh, you're having a tantrum. Why don't you go outside to the playground?"

I like the blowing off steam portion but the playground?

Lurker
 
OK, as most of you probably know I'm a police officer in London. I've had my share of unruly children to deal with, but I've never been called to a school to deal with a 5 year old so I can't claim to have experience of an incident quite like the one in the video.
FWIW here are my thoughts
  • What was the school doing taking the kid into an office with all those opportunities for causing a mess?
  • Why was only one adult left to restain her, when there were obviously others there?
  • Calling the police looks to me like avoiding responsibility in this case
  • The male officer obviously had previous experience of the child and seems to be making good on a promise to her mother that he would handcuff her
  • That said, I don't think the handcuffs were justified because they were not necessary to restrain her
  • They certainly wouldn't justified be under English law

On a practical note, I don't think my 'cuffs would be small enough to prevent a 5 year old slipping out of them.
 
> Why would they leave a violent child in the classroom with scissors, windows, and other children? And as repeatedly pointed out, overcrowded US school do not always have these convenient 'Time Out' rooms down every hallway.

> According to the reports, there were other adults working with her.


> As mentioned, the avoidance is usually the result of politiains making it a policy requirement to call the police for things that would have been handled inside the schol a few decades ago.

> I'd need to see some evidence on that. Why is the mother talking about lawsuits, if the child was cuffed pursuant to her request?


> As already pointed out, US police do not use cuffs only when they are necessary...they are legitimatley authorized, and in fact, often required by policy to use them as a precaution, *before* it becomes a matter of neccessity. Legally, their use doesn't even constitute an arrest under the right circumstances.

> Modern equipment, such as the cuffs used by those officers, is widely distributed in the US
 
crimresearch said:
> Why would they leave a violent child in the classroom with scissors, windows, and other children? And as repeatedly pointed out, overcrowded US school do not always have these convenient 'Time Out' rooms down every hallway.

Granted, still seems a poor choice, though. If there really was no better room the child should have ben confined to one corner - which leads to the second point -

> According to the reports, there were other adults working with her.

Perhaps, but they weren't helping much in the video clip


> As mentioned, the avoidance is usually the result of politiains making it a policy requirement to call the police for things that would have been handled inside the schol a few decades ago.

No doubt - we have the same sort of problem in the UK with the fear of litigation etc. It is still IMO often an abrogation of responsibility by the education authorities

> I'd need to see some evidence on that. Why is the mother talking about lawsuits, if the child was cuffed pursuant to her request?

Listen to what he says just before cuffing her - I'm not sure if was he talking about responding to a request from the mother or warning her what would happen

> As already pointed out, US police do not use cuffs only when they are necessary...they are legitimatley authorized, and in fact, often required by policy to use them as a precaution, *before* it becomes a matter of neccessity. Legally, their use doesn't even constitute an arrest under the right circumstances.

Understood. We can use them without arrest too, but not, I think, in these particular circumstances

> Modern equipment, such as the cuffs used by those officers, is widely distributed in the US

As it is in the UK. Rigid cuffs are the norm, of the same pattern that is, I believe, standard in the US.
Link
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Edited to add the bit about the corner of the room
 
Zep said:
Smart girl, your daughter, davefoc.
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I agree up to a point, but I see one problem with davefoc's daughter's answer.

She was fired up to see the PD sued.

She is growing up in America, and has bought into the idea that anything that goes against what you think is the right course of action is the target for a lawsuit.

The real problem in this case is that there was a five year old girl misbehaving, and everyone involved had to stop and consider the legal implications of their actions.

Which brings us back to what Zep said earlier, "Their law is an ass."
 
Personally, I thought, suing or theatening to sue the police in this situation was disgusting and harmful to the child so I agree with you meadmaker. However, my wife agreed with my daughter on this one also.

My daughter's at school right now but I hope to get a better idea on why she didn't think kids would just throw tantrums so that they could get taken to the playground. I asked about this but I don't remember the answer exactly. I think her thought was that this was an extreme situation and that kids wouldn't put themselves through the emotional pain of such a tantrum to just get taken out to the playground to stand or run around alone. I wasn't so sure.

Being a parent who was involved with tantrums by their kids, I really sympathize with everybody involved. The one difference between this tantrum and the ones we dealt with is that our kids were loud and non-cooperative during their tantrums but they were never physically active so isolation in their rooms and a cool off period worked.

I remember one tantrum my daughter had when she was in our car, she was just wailing at the top her lungs non-stop. We tried just getting out of the car and leaving her alone. This didn't stop anything, I'm afraid that if we'd kept up this plan we were going to have the cops called on us for child endangerment as people came by and saw this kid alone in a car wailing away.

ETA:

Another difference between our children's tantrums and this girl's tantrum was that our children never had one at school to my knowledge. Our older daughter had ended the tantrum phase by the time kindergarten came around so this wasn't surprising but our younger daughter continued to have tantrums until she was about six but she never had one at school. We would get reports about how well behaved she was, somehow in her mind, it was ok to have a tantrum in front of your parents every now and then but it just seems it would have been too embarassing for her to have one in front of the teacher and her classmates. I think this is indicative that she was beginning to get enough control of her emotions by the time she was six to be able to not have a tantrum but at home she just didn't always feel like exercising that control.

One other thought about tantrums. I came to see them as useful behavior to a degree. It was a method by which a child could demand greater freedom. We never gave into a tantrum, but we did pick our spots carefully before making an issue of something because we wanted to be willing to take it to the mat so to speak. So we gave in to the small things a little more readily than we would have without the threat of tantrums.
 
Still no evidence from CFLarsen.....

Rather amazing, isn't it? CFLarsen throws out some pretty hefty accusations, but doesn't have the guts to back them up with evidence.

Or perhaps the evidence is simply not there.
 
clk said:
Still no evidence from CFLarsen.....

Rather amazing, isn't it? CFLarsen throws out some pretty hefty accusations, but doesn't have the guts to back them up with evidence.

Or perhaps the evidence is simply not there.
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It's old news, he abandoned the thread pages ago rather than confront the point. No amount of prodding is likely to bring him back to it. But it's there for others to see.
 
Bumping for Claus, who is now insisting, in other threads, that people provide evidence for their claims. I think it only fair that what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.


One more time:

What was the "definite physical harm" that the little girl took from being handcuffed?
 
TragicMonkey said:
What was the "definite physical harm" that the little girl took from being handcuffed?
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If larsen provides the evidence I'm going to go out and buy a lottery ticket.
 
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