While I agree with everything LHoD said I cannot help but notice the strange confirmation of a trend where little bully gets all the attention and thus any disciplinary action is bound to fail - and, in some cases, compound the problem.
The point I’m trying to make is that school is the place where a child can go without having to endure anyone’s behavioral issues - diagnosed or not. It’s not pandering but more like leave me the eff alone. School is simply enforcing the leave me the eff alone part. I got to know a number of elementary teachers and knowing what I know now about what they have to endure in terms of managing social interactions of kids I sympathize with and support their efforts. It’s actually alarming that in some cases teaching comes second.
In cases like this I ask question heard repeatedly - why do we allow kids to behave in a way that if acted by adults it would be designated as harassment?
Seconding the Love and Logic approach: the orphanage where I worked for a few years based their system on on it. It’s absolutely the best thing I have read.
I agree with LHOD as well, and I wonder what specific consequences they used before the suspension. A suspension is not a particularly useful punishment. It could be, if the parents respond appropriately, but clearly that is not the case and you never have any guarantees.
I would say, the appropriate responses would be as follows:
The first time: take little boy aside and remind that we all like to behave respectfully towards each other. If he would like to continue the game (or whatever), he may do so if he agrees to treat the other children with respect, that means not pretending to shoot them. Because sadly you attend a crap school with wanky rules.
Second time: remind him again. Unfortunately, you have choosen to be disrespectful of other students. Let’s start with a letter of apology (or drawing) where you detail: what happened, why that was a problem, how the other kids might feel, what you could do better next time.
Third time: Letter of apology during break time. Then a choice between 2 further consequences, depending on what the school usually does. A letter goes home.
Fourth time: All of the above & parents come in to speak about the behaviour.
5-50 billion) repeat with added consequences.
50 billion and one) suspend the six year old
I mean, it’s a six year old. They get to take a while to learn and they should get loads of chances. A suspension just isn’t a terribly efficient way of stopping this behaviour. Maybe in this case it was a last resort, who knows? And anyway, if the rule is just never any shooting it’s a crap rule. The rule should be to treat your classmates with respect, then you can judge independent cases independently. It may or may not be appropriate to play at shooting, and children are perfectly capable of understanding the difference.
Their brains are still developing. Their morals are still developing. Their store of knowledge about social conventions and the consequences of breaking them are still developing. Their ability to plan, to reason and to anticipate the results of their actions is still developing.
Are most kids capable of more than we, in this current age, expect of them? Yes, absolutely. Kids of yore were performing complicated mental and physical tasks far beyond what we demand of today’s youth, I firmly believe that. But that doesn’t mean that we should respond to them as tiny adults, but as kids that could do more.
What added consequences are available for a six year old? There’s only so many things you can take away. You’ll run out long before 50 billion. In the meantime, Suzie isn’t coming to school two days a week because she keeps having “tummy aches” at the thought of having to sit next to strangely aggressive Johnny. She’s a sensitive kid who is already scared and sad about Sandy Hook, and Johnny has found out that this is a huge button he can just push and push and push and get a reaction every single time. For him, it’s the funniest thing ever to watch her burst into tears. Suspending him at least gives her a break.
And I wonder about Why Not’s earlier point about suspending being a punishment for the parents, not the kid. If they have called home and talked to the parents, and the parent’s reaction is “Well, those other kids need to get over it, it’s just a finger” and they keep telling Johnny that he did nothing wrong, then they are the ones that need to be made to understand that this is not acceptable: the message is “your kid can’t be part of this community if he won’t change his behavior”.
We don’t know enough to judge, but I think it’s quite plausible that the school is overreacting and also quite plausible that Johnny is taking advantage of a terrible tragedy to torment his classmates, and the school is trying their best to protect those kids.
There is nothing in the article to suggest the existence of a Suzie with tummy ache, and if there is consequences can be adjusted accordingly. From having worked with children with some pretty severe behavioural problems it seems unlikely to me this particular problem with a 6 year old cannot be solved in this manner, without necessitating suspension.
Anyway, giving Imaginary Suzie a break in no way solves the problem. They need to be at school together with Naughty Kid behaving himself and being respectful.
F’crissakes, my BIL opened the car window the other day to play-shoot at a passing acquaintance just the other day. He then realised that he was in my car, so his friend had no idea who was “shooting” him. It never stops being funny
We know the behavior was disruptive enough that they felt the need to escalate it from the teacher to the counselor to the principal. We don’t know every intervention, meeting, or consequence that has been tried. We don’t know how the other kids reacted/were affected because they aren’t going to bring them into the debate. I really think that it’s not possible to decide, based on this evidence, that they are overreacting. They may well be. But I can see how this might be a fairly reasonable escalation.
It’s nice to imagine that children ar around six have the capacity to fully reason through problems, respond to appeals to emotion, formulate a.plan.for future behavior that is just and compassionate while actualizing their own capacity for independent expression of their distinct and fun personalities.
It’s also nice to imagine that teachers have the time to shepherd each child through this process through umpteen sessions.
The reality is that children’s cognitive development is still in process. At around six, they are still at the end of the preoperational stage of development. Their sociomoral development is still very limited. They’re just past development of theory of mind. And this is for typical development, meaning that kids developing somewhat slower than the norm will still be working on these processes.
Children, like people at all stages of development, also vary from one another on their overall capacity for behavioral control, affective regulation, cognitive function, and so on.
It’s simply not realistic to expect teachers to commit their time to delivering repeated interventions that are not going to make meaningful change for many children.
Reinforcing desirable behavior and punishing undesirable behavior is simply the most effective and efficient approach to take.
I completely agree. In my original post I was just wondering what they had done, and a suggestion for the steps I would have followed. Had I been the teacher in this case, we would have gone through those steps and eventually, when all else had been exhausted and the child continued with disruptive behaviour etc, he would’ve been suspended. Maybe that’s what happened, you’re right that we really can’t tell.
Is there anything to suggest that other children were in fear of this kid when he pointed his finger? And even if some were, society has to only curtail behavior that causes a rational fear. If I’m afraid of those scary red cars, society doesn’t punish people who drive red cars. It (if I can’t afford it) provides me with psychiatric care to get over my irrational fear of red cars.
Now, if the kid was doing it in class and disrupting the learning environment I could see an issue (like sticking your tongue out at someone) but without more, I would chalk this one up to another overreaction by zero-tolerance school administrators.
It shows that the people who make our laws believe gestures, however upset a person might be by them, are not an acceptable thing to punish someone for.
We have free speech, but that doesn’t mean little Joey isn’t going to get into trouble if he talks during class or if he says the teacher is a bitch. Attempting to drawand inference from a kid not obeying rules to some sort of grand statement about freedom and punishment is probably not a winning strategy.
No, it doesn’t show that at all. It shows that that particular gesture isn’t against the law and that the judge was competent at doing his job in interpreting and applying the law. Reading much more than that into it is getting so abstract and obtuse that almost any argument you make would be valid. You could just as easily argue that the decision shows that we, as a rational and confrontational society, aspire to tell authority figures to go fuck themselves with impunity.
Is it legal for you to call my mother a bald-headed bitch if we’re out in public?
Is the fact that it’s legal suggestive that a teacher may not administer consequences to a child who calls another child’s mother a bald-headed bitch if they’re out on the playground?
Of course not. How our society handles speech at large is not directly correspondent to how we handle playground speech. A behavior that’s legal on the street may legitimately be against the rules on the playground.
It does not matter whether a six-year-old displays a rational fear or an irrational fear of a pointed finger going “bang.” What matters is whether there’s any good reason to subject her to that fear, and if there’s not, teachers have an obligation to remove the cause of that fear.
The whole question of whether another six year old should rationally be afraid of a pointed finger is a red herring.
I didn’t mean to imply that we should apply the criminal law of society to children. If I called your Mom a bald-headed bitch in public, society would certainly consider that to be terribly rude on my part, but has decided that adult freedom of speech is more important than the feelings of disappointment/anger felt by your Mom. And her disappointment/anger would not be irrational. Nobody likes to be insulted.
Schools are a place where we teach children appropriate behavior. A child’s freedom to insult another is not recognized as overriding another child’s protection from that insult. Further, your mother can disassociate herself from me and/or get a restraining order if I insult her 4 times a day. She doesn’t have to put up with continuous insults. A child in school is forced to be around another child, so insults need to be nipped in the bud.
But here, we are going a step further by outlawing something in schools that should NOT cause fear in another child. This is an important learning point for the second child. That he/she lives in a society where others will do things that you may not like, but you need to adapt. By coddling this second child, he/she will be thrown into a world that she cannot cope.
You’re free to look at it that way. I see it as applying to society in general, and as an indicator that our society is grown up enough to recognise that harmless gestures are not a reason to punish. It doesn’t get any more official than a direct message from the courts.
a counselor? a principal? do you even hear yourself saying these words? He was playing. What’s the first thing a child does when told not to play around? They repeat the behavior and laugh mischievously.
This doesn’t rise to to a level beyond teacher. There is nothing that needs to be brought to the attention of the Principal or a counselor. A suspension is so beyond reason that I would call for a disciplinary hearing of everyone involved. If this is the level of reasoning skills used then I would not want these people around children.
