Although the mother sounds like a pain in the butt, I’m not so sure that her discipline techniques are what is at fault here. The first thing that came to my mind was that the child is truly emotionally disturbed. There might be a physical cause.
I have seen excellent parents with children that just seem to go beserk.
There have been very firm rules about touching students for a long time. I have been retired for 15 years. Once I could not get a high school student to leave my classroom and out of pure frustration (and a good dose of adrenaline), I moved the desk with him (or her?) in it out into the hallway. But I never technically touched the student.
As strange as it may seem, the police were probably following procedures. Those procedures just weren’t written with a five year old girl in mind.
Zoe may be right: it’s entirely possible that the child is emotionally disturbed through no fault of the mother.
Secondly, I think we ought to possibly have a little more sympathy for the mother’s situation. Perhaps she’s single, and doesn’t have a job where she can “drop everything” and run down to the school, even in a situation like this. Perhaps she’s on the border-line of poverty and leaving may mean losing her job, which may mean losing her house/car. Then she could enjoy the criticisms of being a “welfare mom.”
Nor do I think “an ass whoopin’” is the proper reaction. To a child this distrurbed, it would be like throwing fuel on a fire. You don’t hit a growling dog to make it calm down, nor would such a thing work with an out-of-control child.
I’m not a child psychologist, but I’d say she needs intensive therapy, possibly combined with medication. I’ll be the first one to complain that kids are sometimes over-medicated for just being kids, but this girl may seriously need it.
I don’t think there’s anyone who can be “blamed” here. It’s a sad situation which may be no one’s fault.
It was my understanding that the child was disruptive in the classroom and was taken to the Assistant Principal’s office and most of the rampage on video takes place there. I think the A.P. was very calm and reasonable with the child and since the parent was not able to come and do anything with her child and the child was so out of control that she was a danger to herself and others that there wasn’t much choice except for them to call the police. The police officers seemed to be taking extra care not to hurt the child even though she was throwing herself around trying to get away from them. That video seemed to go on forever before the police arrived, by that time I was routing for someone to spanked the child.
Just because she’s only 5 years old doesn’t mean she couldn’t have injured someone else or herself in that tantrum. She was defintely throwing punches at the A.P., she could have just as easily punched harder or picked up something heavy and thrown it at her or bitten her. I seriously hope that the school system or A.P. countersues the kid for assault. I don’t want to see the mother sue either the school system or police department because that’s my tax money that supports them and I don’t want any of it to go to that brat or her mother.
For the first several minutes, I wanted to MURDER that stupid, ineffective cow of a teacher for being so incompetent as to do little more than stand there saying “no” as the child is allowed to destroy things and throw a tantrum.
Then I realized that this is the extent to which our ridiculous rules have neutered the ability of educators to exert any discipline in the classroom.
“She said the administrator has been too harsh with the girl.”
My husband and I just watched this. Just shocking. My question is had this been going on for some time? The school year hasnt just started, its already into the home stretch. If she was having emotional and physical outbursts it would have shown up at least already. If its new then maybe something serious is happening at home. The mothers comment ( see above) is one of pure ignorance. The little girl looks well cared for though; her hair is done and she is dressed appropriately. I would suspect she is being neglected in some respect at home- the parents and school should work together to get her some help.
Someone on this thread stated that teachers are not allowed to restrain a child. Yes, they are. Any teacher worth her salt is well skilled in effectively and safely restraining a young child. I will try to view the video and comment.
Given some of the comments I’ve read here and not having viewed the video. The teacher could have easily picked the child up and moved her elsewhere. There is no excuse for a situation involving a young child to escalate to the point of calling police officers. The teacher couldn’t have known what she was doing. I will be glad to interpret the video after watching it.
On the contrary, I got the feeling that seeing the police calmed her little ass down because she was in her element. As soon as she saw them through the window, she sat right down and started being good. In fact, one of the officers said said her name and then said “Do you remember me?” Methinks this isn’t the first time she’s seen an officer of the law.
Although I do believe the child is emotionally disturbed, I’m afraid I can’t see the mother as an innocent party in this. The fact that she now has an attorney to sue the school when her obviously disturbed child is clearly in the wrong demonstrates clearly what kind of person her mother is. If these educators were abusing her child this would be a whole different story. They were attempting to make sure she didn’t harm herself, the other children, or THEM. She should be THANKING them for making sure her child didn’t do a header off the table and break her neck. She should APOLOGIZE that her child disrupted class and caused such a problem in their school. Only then would I agree that this mother isn’t the problem.
Watching the videos only leads me to more questions. Is the child in therapy? On medication? Has the school (teacher/nurse/principal) been made aware of this child’s condition and special needs? Those things are the PARENT’S responsibility. Any parent has a hard job, the parent of a child with special needs has to be twice as prepared, twice as organized, and twice as diligent in taking care of their responsibilities.
Instead of taking this as a wakeup call as to the condition of her child, and her bleak future if she doesn’t get some help, it appears the mother is taking this as a cash gathering opportunity. How sad for her daughter.
>whew< Man oh man am I ever relieved that you’ll be back to interpret the video for us. Thank you kind widdley, I shall be able to sleep tonight!
Awaiting your solution,
Daisy Mae
If you truly think you can accurately interpret all of the issues at hand with a few minutes of videotape then I have to wonder about your credentials at all. That would be like one of the doctors on the board dishing out a diagnosis after reading someone’s post on a few symptoms.
Without knowing more about the child, her environment, her medical issues/medications, her history of outbursts in the classroom, and many other variables, you’re guessing with (possibly) a bit of experience in the realm of child psychology. That would make you about as qualified as most parents on this message board. To insinuate you’ll be able to “prove” how wrong everyone is (your statement “You’re wrong”) by viewing the tape is about as responsible as the doctors who viewed the tapes provided by Terri Schiavo’s parents and pronounced her responsive.
Listen closely to the tape just before the cops place the cuffs on the kid. It sounds like the one officer asks the child if he remembers him. I swear he says “I told your mother that I would use handcuffs next time.”
Sounds to me like this is not the first time these officers had to deal with this little angel.
Therapy? Drugs? Hah! Is that the cure for everything nowadays? You know what therapy is going to be for Aaron? Exactly what it was for me: a sore backside. He’ll know up front that there will be an adverse penalty waiting for him at home if he acts up in school. Deterrence worked for me, yes indeedy.
Good old fashioned Pavlovian response still works. There’s no need to gum up the works with drugs. What are we coming to when the solution to behavioral problems is to drug our kids into a stupor? How ridiculous.
Rick, I also found the police officer’s statement to the little girl interesting. I heard it as: “Jaisha, (sp?) you need to calm down, and you need to do it now. Do you remember me? I’m the one you told your mom put handcuffs on you.” I listened to the officer several times, this is what he said. That implies that the police have been called more than once to deal with this child, which in turn hints at the idea that this child has had several violent outbursts. It’s less clear whether or not the child was fibbing when she previously told her mother she’d been handcuffed though.