The article talked about “confining a child in a jail cell at the city’s Public Safety Building” so that’s the allegation. The thing is that it isn’t said what actually happened because the judge sealed the info via court order. Half of the article discussed the dispute regarding privacy laws.
I agree that there is no way the child was formally arrested, but it’s unclear whether they were left in a cell.
I’m a dad and sometimes with a very young kid you have to use simple concepts to explain why something is wrong. Saying “bad people go to jail, so don’t be bad” is something I might have said to explain why a kid shouldn’t misbehave, especially if the kid knows I put bad people in jail. Though taking a child to a jail isn’t something I’d do, not at that age, and if the child was actually locked in a cell and left there for any length of time, that sounds like abuse (of the child and of your position as a LEO).
In September 2020, a janitor turned off a freezer containing 20 years worth of research specimens. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is suing the cleaning company.
“Defendant, by and through its negligent, careless, and/or reckless supervision and control of [the janitor], caused damage to certain cell cultures, samples, and/or research in the Lab,” the university claims…
“The core of the case… is that the cleaning company failed to adequately train their personnel. A cleaner should be trained to not attempt to remedy an electrical issue.”
Given the real stories about grade school children being arrested for acting out in school (behavior that previously would have been handled as a disciplinary matter), I was not unprepared to believe an article saying that a three-year-old was arrested.
That still reads to me like a threat to put a small child in jail for ordinary child misbehavior; which isn’t legal to happen, and which seems to me a bad thing to threaten. Small kids ought to know actual consequences for misbehavior, and those consequences ought to be appropriate for the age of child and type of behavior.
"bad people sometimes grow up to wind up going to jail, so don’t be bad’ would be another matter.
That sounds like threatening a child who has normal child behavior with incarceration, and I consider such a threat to be emotional abuse. It’s wildly disproportionate to the offense. And in the case of potty training a three year old, the child has no control over whether they are ready or not to use the potty. It’s just cruel.
(Speaking as the mother of an actual three year old who is more than happy to sit on the potty as long as we get to count, but has no apparent interest in doing anything other than sit. Readiness is a very individual to the child thing and depends heavily on where they are at developmentally, whether they can control their bladder/bowels etc.)
At my previous school, we had to do this online training thing about Restorative Practices, which the administration told us we’d be using in the school. One of the examples in the training was a couple of kids getting in a fight in school, and a compare-and-contrast of the right and wrong way to handle it. The “wrong way” included the police being called, and I said to myself “What a ridiculous strawman; no school would ever do something as absurd as calling the police over a couple of students fighting”.
The very next day, we had an after-school faculty meeting, and one of the administrators told us about a situation which had developed with a couple of students fighting, “and naturally, we called the police”.
My daughter had just turned three. I showed her panties with butterflies and Baby Bop we had bought for her and explained that once she went on the potty she could wear pretty panties. Boom, she was done with diapers.
My son on the other hand, kept arguing that diapers were great. I assumed he’d be taking diapers to college with him one day.
My granddaughter took what seemed like forever! She was well over three. Her favorite thing was to hide behind something, like the couch, to poop. She knew better, but didn’t want to go sit on the pot!
I noticed one or the other of my brother’s kids would do that; hide behind the sofa when they were toddlers and pooping in their diaper. It may be what all kids do.
It’s not evolution, per se, it’s the fact that advances in medicine have allowed people who would have died in their childhood survive and breed. You can’t cross Gomer Pyle with Barney Fife and expect to get an Einstein.
Let’s be honest. You don’t need to be all that smart to survive into adulthood.
As a species, we have never selected for maximum average intelligence. Just enough to live long enough to successfully survive and to breed. And it shows.
Yes! This is what shocked me so much about the article.
I was bribed with a big, ‘grown-up’ wallet featuring a favorite cartoon character. The panty thing wouldn’t have worked; all of my panties were destined to be plain white, because Mom’s doctor said colorful underwear was a cause of irritation for lady parts.
One issue I should raise right at the start is that this is all partly the fault of the comfortable disposable diaper. In the olden days — say, three decades ago — cloth diapers were the repository of choice. These had the feature that when they were wet, everyone knew it. Parents knew it, but the child also felt the discomfort.
As the child grew older, the discomfort grew with them. The causal link between what they were doing, in a bodily function sense, and the discomfort was felt early and often. Thus, not only did parents want their child out of these things quickly, the child was on board too.
The disposable diaper has changed that relationship.
But for the child, it is comfort that can continue forever. When they are told it is time for the diaper to go, the expression on their face says it all. They appreciate the beauty and functionality of the design. Perhaps they also suspect they will be wearing one again in 70 or so years’ time. Why deny them in the interim?
The unintended consequence of the disposable diaper is that it changed the ‘‘toilet or not’’ cost equation for the child. Incentive issues arise from a misalignment of interests. The disposable diaper was something both parent and child wanted, but when it comes to taking it away, their relative benefits are quite different.
It really sounds like something that originated with old suspicions surrounding dyes, but in my experience the material matters much more (cotton, or a blend that’s breathable, is preferable).
