Of course my speculation is just that, speculation, but I have to assume you have not been a parent of a scared six year old.
I find it more reasonable to expect that a six year old who has heard that someone for no apparent reason just came into a school just like theirs and killed a whole bunch of kids who were just like them to be a bit sensitive when another child teases them and who knows says “I’m going to shoot you … pow!” than a six year old child who won’t stop doing that, after being told by a teacher, a counselor, an assistant principal, and having a parent told that serious consequences would follow if he did not stop.
Is that what happened? We don’t know. But clearly this was not a kid who was playing cops and robbers during recess with friends given one warning and then suspended.
Sevenci,
I assume that you’d be thrilled when your child then grew up to be someone who also didn’t accept traffic rules and ownership of stuff in stores either. Guess what? We live in a society of laws. If you believe a law is unjust and want to protest by civil disobedience, fine. But when you do, do so knowing that you are accepting the consequences for not following the unjust law.
In school our students have to deal with much that they think is unfair. Sometimes teachers are unfair. Oh well. If you want your child to selectively only follow the rules that they believe are fair go at it. I do not think such will serve that hypothetical child (and I highly suspect that with such a belief the child would have to be hypothetical) well.
I’d think you of all people would recognize that sometimes folks do things that cause you no physical harm but nonetheless can cause serious emotional distress; and given that reality, it’s perfectly appropriate for teachers acting in loco parentis to prevent the deliberate infliction of such distress.
Of course, because some rules are harmful when followed. If a teacher tries to engage the class in the humiliation of a classmate, of course a kid should stand up and defy the rule. But that’s totally disanalogous to a teacher asking a student not to do something that’s bothering other kids. It’s a great idea to teach our children to respect other people’s wishes and not act like a jerk toward them.
Edit: the kid served his suspension and is now having it expunged from his record, as the school backs down. I’m not sure this outcome augurs well for the kid’s willingness to obey teacher rules in the future.
Certainly I’ll teach my kids to be critical of inane rules. Naturally they also need to learn that breaking rules has consequences, but it’s for them to decide if something is important enough to be worth that.
In this case I’d remove my kids from that environment because I wouldn’t want them being taught that whenever people get upset, however inane the reason is, you have to stop doing whatever you’re doing. Some kids were getting upset about a damn gesture? They should have been taken aside and told, gently, that it’s silly to get upset about such a petty thing that doesn’t hurt them, and that if it does uspet them, to ignore it. In real life they won’t be able to have a merely annoying but harmless person suspended, so they have to learn that sometimes you just have to deal with it.
Just recently a US appeals court decided a cop can’t arrest someone for showing them the middle finger. Doesn’t that show that we as a rational society aspire to be above caring about such things?
A six year old generally isn’t a person who can determine what rules do and don’t make sense. Parents should be giving their kids a strong ethical core that says don’t hurt people and should be building in the idea that sometimes rules seem silly but you should follow them unless they violate that ethical core or someone is getting hurt.
That’s what I’m saying. In this case, the ethical violation to which I object is punishing a child for essentially doing nothing, to pander to people who’re upset about it.
EDIT: I should say that in addition to explaining to the kid that the school was wrong for pandering to the other children, doing something for the sole purpose of upsetting them, even if they shouldn’t have gotten upset, was bad.
This is actually a very admirable goal in a parent, I believe.
But it’s a goal. It’s something you work up to as a human being as you gain the frontal lobe ability to think, plan, anticipate and discern. First, you have to learn how to follow rules. Otherwise, you’re not a rebel, you’re a monkey.
Great writers break the rules of grammar to serve their art. Great painters do things with paint that art teachers will tell you shouldn’t be done. Great leaders sometimes break rules or social conventions, and we laud and respect them for it.
But 6 year olds, gods love them, are not great yet. They have to learn how to follow rules before they can conscientiously break them.
Unless you are trying to argue that a six-year-old child is thinking, “I shall do this forbidden thing in defiance of the rules because then it is they who are the unethical ones by punishing me!” I think you’re twisting what I said.
Children need to follow rules unless and until those rules are causing actual harm. “I don’t see the point” is not actual harm. Because, again, children pretty much never see the point of moderating their own behavior. That’s why rules exist.
Again, this may have been a silly rule, but I regard any argument that seems to encourage young children to break any rule they consider to be silly as stillborn.
That’s true. Maybe 6 would be too early to introduce these concepts. I don’t know, I’m not a child expert. This is why I plan to take classes in childrearing before I adopt.
Serious suggestion hijack: This is the best parenting book I’ve ever read. I’ve read a lot of 'em, first in child development and psych classes, then as a mom and also as a nanny. This one was recommended to me by my mom, a sixth grade teacher, because she was so impressed with the classroom management version. Parenting With Love and Logic (There’s a wee bit of Jesus-y stuff in it, but it’s readable as metaphor if that’s not your bag (it’s not mine.) )
I’ll second this suggestion. There’s a similar one called Teaching with Love and Logic, and they’re great on the practical stuff, even if the tone tends toward smarmy self-help sometimes. I spend a lot of time both in the classroom and with my daughter using techniques similar to the ones they suggest.
You see the thing is that your “in addition” is the big deal for the kid to know. It does not matter that you don’t see why he or she is upset. You wouldn’t care if someone put a mouse on your plate. You wouldn’t care if someone called you a dirty word. You might not understand why another six year old might be upset by the fact that a whole bunch of other kids, just like them, were just murdered in* their* school and that someone just pretend shooting them is really really upsetting. You might not have enough empathy to do that. You might think that it is funny to see them so upset. Too bad. It bothers them. Stop it. Or get punished.
If you want to think of it as a Golden Rule - you wouldn’t want someone doing something to you that made you cry, don’t do something to someone else that makes them cry - fine. I think of it as the basics of good manners, of being a human being. And of the things we need to teach our kids that comes before the importance of being a rebel. Questioning authority? Six year olds and under are already great at that. Recognizing that the world is not all about them and what they want and want to do? That they still have to learn.
There’s a limit to that “golden rule”. When people are getting upset about absolutely ridiculous things, they shouldn’t be pandered to. Or when people are upset by people doing something they have every right to, those people shouldn’t be expected to stop. But yes, I’ve since agreed that 6 isn’t the right time to introduce those concepts.
Because the kid is six. I have dealt with six-year-olds. Had one myself. My wife is a kindergarten aid. I will go out on a limb and say that entire tribe of six-year-olds at that school has impulse control limitations and that it’s a rare one of them who takes only one explanation for something to sink in. Frankly, I was amused by the school’s account of how carefully they explained the inappropriateness to this six-year-old. I pictured the kid sitting there nodding, hearing Charlie Brown adult wah-wah-wah noises, and thinking, “I have no idea what you’re going on about.” So it is with six-year-olds.
The difference here, I have to assume, is that the offense in question was one they find beyond the pale. Because I cannot believe that their six-year-olds behave differently than the models I have seen, and kids of that age sometimes misbehave, doing the same thing over and over, even when they’ve been told not to. Shocking, I know! So, I think a suspension for a second offense to a six-year-old for pointing his finger like a gun is funny, actually. “We explained the gravity of this quite clearly. Billy even signed an acknowledgement and waiver form.”
And the decision of what is "absolutely ridiculous"for someone else to get upset over is of course yours to make, and, in my hypothetical, a child who is having fun persistently making other kids cry by pretend shooting them in the week that 20 children just like them were massacred in school, should be allowed to do that, because those kids getting upset is “absolutely ridiculous” and their crying over that should not be “pandered to”?
Let’s leave it at that your “absolutely ridiculous” and mine are very different critters. This goes beyond first graders. You, your hypothetical child, have NO IDEA what is in another person’s life experience. If you are told that something is upsetting someone else, something that there is no need for you to do, then it is rude to keep doing it, even if it seems silly to you. And the fact that you cannot understand why six year old kids would be getting upset over being pretend killed in that particular context illustrates to me why your understanding the why need not be required.
Told by the teacher, going to the principal’s office, getting sent to the counselor, getting a parent involved.
Also I think you are confusing a child in the second half of first grade with a preschooler. These are kids who by now know how to sit at a desk and raise their hands. They understand that school has rules and generally they follow them pretty well, better than they follow rules at home.
Indeed. If your first grader is incapable of following an instruction after having it explained under remarkable circumstances four times, you may want to change your parenting strategy. Most first graders suffer from no such difficulty.
That said, I’ve thought a little more about this, and I’m finding myself thinking that there might have been other steps they could have taken. Requiring the kid to spend lunchtime writing a letter of apology; require the kid to spend recess apart from other students or within 10’ of a supervising adult; sending the kid to an in-school suspension room for a day; and so on. Our school generally reserves out-of-school suspension for violent behavior, and using it for insubordination or teasing, even malicious teasing, does seem a bit much to me. I don’t know all the circumstances, of course, but I haven’t heard one that would make me think out-of-school suspension is appropriate.
Maybe I’m reading it wrong. Maybe you are. But if this had been multiple instances, I assume the school would have said so. Describing it as “not a single incident” and recounting the fact that a counselor had a conversation with the kid, is an attempt to put a better spin on it. If this had been a string of incidents, I assume they would have said so. And six-year-olds are not pre-schoolers, but I suggest you visit a first grade class sometime if you believe they are monuments to decorum.
And unless there are missing facts–e.g., this is a disturbed kid, with emotional problems–I think these guys are in the wrong line of work if they think this is the way to deal with a six-year-old pointing his finger. I think someone spazzed and overreacted instead of giving him a time-out or something…but I’ll concede, neither you nor I have all the facts…
