One day when I was 5, the teacher came over… took a look at what I’d been doing… openedthedoortotheothersectiontoldtheotherteachertotakebothclassesgrabbedmeinonehandandthedrawingin theotherandbroughtbothtotheprincipal. My mother was called. The drawing was pointed at, passed around, tutted over. Insults were exchanged in low, tense voices. Adults were Upset with big, capital, neon lights.
I didn’t draw again until we had “drawing” as a requirement in 5th grade. Years later I found out that I hadn’t done anything wrong: the drawing was ahead of my age. “This upsets the adults therefore I must stop doing it” can be very much the wrong message.
I don’t think suspension is that unheard of among young elementary school students these days. As paddling has fallen away, it’s become the “big deal” punishment. There’s also no reason to believe they only told him twice: we just know he’d been told at least twice.
It’s impossible to say if this was appropriate. I can certainly imagine a scenario where it’s an overreaction, but I can also imagine a scenario where some sensitive, six-year old, already upset about Sandy Hook, gets really upset when Johnny does the gun thing at her. Johnny figures this out, so keeps doing it to her: not just on the playground, but in class, constantly trying to catch her eye, and every time he does, “POW!”. She’s breaking into tears in the middle of class 2-3 times a day, he thinks it’s funny, his parents don’t see that it’s a big deal and think the other kid is too sensitive and needs help–it’s not their son’s problem. What would you do in that case?
PSA: Don’t roshambo if you can’t do the time.
These types of.stories are like Rorscach tests. People in this thread are insinuating all kinds of their own material into their retellings of it.
I have much experience.with the limitatioms of school personnel. I also have plenty experience with less than ideal parents. Whenever a parent chooses to go to the media with their story, I’m often dubious.
In this case, apparently the child has been spoken to regarding similar behavior by the counselor and by an assistant principal. That’s already an elevated level of intervention for most kids this age. I don’t have a problem with taking it up a notch. Whether there were alternatives like in school suspension I don’t know, but a one day suspension isn’t the end of the world.
I found the lawyer’s argument that we shouldn’t be concerned about this child because he is skinny and meek to be exceptionally stupid. First, kids of all body types and personalities are expected to comply with classroom and school rules. Secondly, and I am NOT saying this kid is destined to be a school shooter, but skinny and meek is not inconsistent with kids who do such things.
Finally, of course kids of six years of age have the capacity to remember and follow rules! Most do it without any problem whatsoever.
How about instead of “finger pistols” he’s just giving the other kids “the finger”?
Still an overreaction to an arbitrary action as taboo?
I got arrested for doing that!
CMC
Perhaps LHoD can weigh in, but it’s long been my impression that suspension isn’t truly intended as a punishment to the kids as much as it is intended to be a wake up call and punishment to the parents. A batsignal from school that your kid is being a fuckup, if you will, and your assistance in this matter is greatly appreciated.
Obviously, it doesn’t always work.
I don’t see how you could read it that way.
They have a whole school full of six year olds and he seems to be the only one who, after having intervention brought up to the level of sitting down with a school counselor and a letter home warning parents that if the behavior continued there would be serious consequences, kept ignoring the rule.
He’d been disciplined in the classroom by the teacher. He’d been sent to the principal’s office. He’d been sent to the school counselor. His parent’s were informed. He kept ignoring a very simple basic rule that every other six year old in the school was able to follow.
I’m with Hentor here, the parents’ reaction, going to the media over a one day suspension that you were warned was coming unless the child stopped the behavior, is a potential sign of seriously dysfunctional parenting. Now maybe this kid can’t help himself, maybe he has some diagnosable condition, like Oppositional Defiant Disorder or some such, could be. Still labeling him as “just playing” and that his persistent ignoring of the rule should be dismissed is not in this child’s best long term interest.
I hope that’s the real thinking, because other interpretations of motivations behind suspensions can be much worse. One of the punishments for skipping classes at my high school was getting suspended. That’s right, if someone skipped classes they were sometimes punished by making them skip more classes.
That’s the kind of thing that seems really ironic..until you think about it for a second.
This is definitely part of the thinking. It’s really inconvenient to have your kid suspended: you have to arrange child care for the day, which can sometimes mean missing a day of work. Most parents don’t care to have the experience repeated, and they’ll convey to the child that the behavior must not repeat. For this reason I think Karl isn’t entirely right about how it acts to reinforce the behavior: the plan is for it to convey to the child that what they thought was okay really, really isn’t.
Of course it doesn’t always work, but at the point that you’ve had the kid meeting with a counselor and the behavior is continuing, you need to ratchet up the response; what alternatives are there?
There is way too little information in the article to make a judgement one way or the other.
On the one side of the spectrum there could be a zero tolerance policy that makes playing “lets pretend we are police” illegal and after two instances results in a suspension. In that case the policy and the suspension is stupid.
On the other end of the spectrum the kid could be threatening anoter student and saying that after school he is going to get his father’s gun and shoot her dead. He is counseled that this is entirely inappropriate, but later during class he points his finger at student makes a pow sound to reinforce his threat. At that point suspension might be appropriate.
Without more detail we can’t tell what the situation is.
Agreed. I think it was clear in my first post, but perhaps not in later ones, that I’m not definitely defending the school here. It’s very possible that they are dealing with a non-problem, or that they’re dealing with it in a foolish manner. But that’s far from certain, from what I’ve read.
I’m not sure that the suspension itself is necessarily unwarranted. He refused to obey the principal. What I do wonder about is why he was told not to make finger-guns in the first place. Unless he was yelling “bang!” in other students’ ears, or during class, or something.
It depends:
If he was pretending his finger was an assault gun, then throw the book at him.
If he was pretending his finger was a hunting gun, then a stern look should be enough.
You can objectively determine this by the pretend capacity of the pretend magazine on the pretend gun. Also if it had a pretend bayonet lug to attach a pretend bayonet, or a pretend pistol grip or a pretend collapsible stock, then it is obviously a pretend assault gun.
I think every school should have a rule against finger banging on school grounds.
It’s just another silly case distorted by the media. This was an issue of maintaining discipline in the school, whether it involved a ‘finger gun’ or not is irrelevant. I have no way of knowing if the school made a reasonable decision or not, but if not for recent events and the mention of a ‘gun’, this wouldn’t be news.
From the article:
You think maybe he was “teasing” other children who were scared and upset and hypersensitive over what they could not help but be overhearing? That he thought it was funny that he could make them cry?
This does not come off like an sweet innocent kid just playing. And it sounds like he has parents who believe that rules do not apply to their darling child and who want their child to get the message that he should be above consequences. Parents who are accomplishing exactly what they state they want to avoid - would a one day suspension in first grade follow this kid, providing he did not ignore the rules in the future? Of course not. It’s like they believe that threat of things going in his permanent record that will keep him out of Harvard later. But having a reputation for being a family that does not want to work with the school on discipline issues, being the family that sued the school over an earned one day suspension? Yeah, that’ll follow him some.
Maybe the other parents should act like parents and stop raising their darling eggshells to burst into tears at the sight of a finger.
Well, an equally apt (probably more apt considering it’s school) lesson might be “Once you’ve been informed of the rules, you must abide by them or face the consequences.”
Maybe they should change the rule. I don’t know, since I don’t know what rule he broke. But just saying that he (probably) didn’t hurt anyone by breaking it doesn’t tell us enough, in my opinion.
I don’t think it’s a good idea to teach our children to accept and observe rules without question. It’d be down to the parent to decide whether or not to tell the kid making that gesture is wrong. I wouldn’t appreciate a school taking it upon themselves to try to instil such ridiculous values in my kids, if I were a parent.