Opal Cat, I wish you would at least put in a call to the administrator. It might go nowhere, but it might get the principle a little talking to about over reacting. It won’t help your kid, but it could help others.
You are correct. I should’ve read more closely.
I agree that it was wrong to bring it to school and to use it on the bus. I agree that he was no doubt disruptive on the bus as a result of playing with it. If they had sent him home for the day, or given him a day of in-school suspension or something, I would have totally supported them on it. I have had many conversations with him over the last day about making good choices, and responsibility, and so on. He was punished, but only for one day. I don’t think that what he did warrants more than one day of punishment. And he is well aware that he did something wrong. He also knows that I think the school went overboard in their reaction.
As for my interaction with the assistant principal, it wasn’t the wisest thing in the world, but I was so upset I was shaking and trying very hard not to cry and believe me, I held back 99% of what I really wanted to say. That’s why I didn’t call the school yesterday to talk to the principal, either. I wanted to give myself time to not be so pissed off when I addressed them, for fear of saying something I’d regret.
I understand the point made about “confusing” Dominic, but, and you’ll just have to take my word for it because I can’t prove it to you, I feel confident that he wasn’t confused by it. For one thing, he saw the look in my face earlier and he knew I was mad at him, and from that I’m sure he realized there would be some form of consequence at home (he knows me well). For another, he’s almost twelve, it’s not like he’s four years old or something where they’re in the early stages of forming their logic and so on. I think he’s capable of realizing that some situations are more complex. Now, I agree with the principle of the comment, and consistency as well as following through with what you say are things that are very important to me and that I follow in virtually every instance. This situation just had me so thrown for a loop that I wasn’t prepared for how to deal with it.
I don’t know if that’s true or not. I don’t still have the packaging that it came in. I already stated that it isn’t the same one as the one I linked to–that was just an example.
I had no idea that he was taking it to school and I would certainly NOT have let him if I’d known. It’s not like I search the kid before he goes out the door. It’s small enough to fit in a pocket (though probably he put it in his backpack).
Interestingly, as it turns out, it isn’t forbidden. I thought it was, but the actual rule is that they aren’t allowed to have toys from home in class. From this I had extrapolated to think that they couldn’t bring toys at all, but I’ve since (since yesterday) learned that they can have toys at recess. The toys just have to stay in their backpack during class. They aren’t allowed to bring electronic devices or weapons or drugs… I am calling the school in a little while to talk to the principal and will find out specifically what this was classified as.
Ah. Snap decisions based on ignorance. The American justice system in action.
There are rules. Your kid broke the rules. The punishment for the “crime” was known ahead of time.
Frankly if it was my kid, I would have made him aware in no uncertain terms that it was his fault for disobeying the rules, and not someone else’s fault for enforcing said rules.
He would have been grounded for the next week on top of the punishment handed down by the school. Whether you agree or disagree with the punishment is immaterial. This should have been a good lesson for him. Now he thinks rules can be arbitrarily broken and Mom will agree with his side of the story! Not good IMHO.
That’s absurd.
Those shock _____ items are about as piddly as such things get. They use a really simple piezo-electric generator – the kind used in those lighters that don’t have a spark wheel. I’ve played with those; put the metal tip near your finger when you depress the plunger and you’ll get a neat little electric arc – probably a tad stronger than a static shock, but several orders of magnitude removed from anything that can cause any real harm. Not quite a joy buzzer (which is purely mechanical), but nothing more than a toy just the same. A week suspension for that is beyond the pale, and it’s crap like this where zero tolerance tends to take things too far. I can understand zero tolerance on illegal drugs, for example, or handing out prescription medications, that’s fine. Weapons? No problem – as long as it is a weapon or can be reasonably called one. (A sharpened pencil can stab someone, but you can’t reasonably call it a weapon.) It seems like they’ve been casting further and further afield to classify anything and everything that can possibly be used to hurt someone as a weapon.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Show & Tell must be really boring these days.
“This is my rabbit Trixie. Well, it’s a picture of her, because she has sharp teeth so the principal wouldn’t let me bring her to school in case she thought someone looked like a celery stalk, but isn’t she cute?”
“That’s very nice, Molly. Okay class, Show & Tell is over. Please take out your dulled #2 pencil nubs, because we’re going to have a quiz.”
Zero-tolerance annoys me, too. It’s just a lazy way to implement restrictions without thinking about it–like when I was called into my daughter’s high school because she was wearing “inappropriate” clothing. I didn’t remember her wearing anything inappropriate when I dropped her off, but I drove in and went to the principal’s office. She was wearing torn jeans (there were holes in the knees and thighs), and I was told it was “inappropriate exposure.” The kicker: she was wearing black tights under the pants! If she had been wearing a skirt over the tights, or even if she had just taken the jeans off, it would have been fine. sigh
As to OpalCat’s specific situation, there’s something I don’t understand. In the OP, you compared the shocking pen to a joy buzzer, which is a wind-up toy (no electricity at all). You wind it up, and it unwinds loudly and off-center, startling the recipient with the vibration. I figured that the school’s reaction was beyond ridiculous.
Then I read Words on the Interweb’s link, where it says that kids under 14 shouldn’t even have these pens, and that they do administer electrical shocks.
Which is it?
If it’s like a joy buzzer, then the school was completely and totally in the wrong. They should have confiscated it if he was disrupting class with it, but otherwise no punishment was called for.
If it’s a shock device, like a mini-cattle-prod, then I can see the school taking disciplinary action, but booting him out for the last 7 days of school is way over the top. Sending him home for the day? Fine. What they did? Ridiculous.
Well I compare it to a joy buzzer because when I do it to myself, what it causes is vibration. It doesn’t hurt. I wonder, though, if there are different levels (might even be a quality issue?) of these things, because from the warnings on the ones mentioned in this thread it makes it sound like they’re describing something stronger than the specific pen that he has. Well, had.
I called and talked to the principal. Here are, in no particular order, the things I found out: This doesn’t affect his passing 5th grade. This doesn’t go on his permanent record (so when he goes to middle school next fall in Ohio and the school sends his records, he really is getting a fresh start.) The pen was indeed passed around on the bus and several other students did get in trouble. Due to school privacy policy they can’t tell me what that punishment was. I am not allowed to watch the tape because they would have to get permission from every kid on the bus first to let someone other than a school administrator watch the tape. The pen isn’t qualified exactly as a “weapon”, it is described in the deep down detail level of the rules that students aren’t allowed to have “any device designed to give a mild electrical shock”. So it’s its own category of banned item.
So this could have been considered a level 1 or 2 offense, and they decided to call it level 2. Level 2 punishment can be as little as an administrative conference, or as much as a 5 day suspension. They gave him the 5 day suspension.
I am really tempted to go on and on about how ridiculously wussy we as a society are getting and how this story is a perfect example and how it will eventually lead to our downfall…Oops, I couldn’t help myself 
. Anyway, what I really wanted to share was a story that is exactly the opposite in terms of schools being negligent in the application of appropriate discipline (all in the name of avoiding lawsuits, I think).
During my student teaching experience, there was a day when a kid attempted to set fire to another kid’s hair during class :eek:. The culprit was playing with his lighter (which, by the way, were absolutely banned on school property) and the girl in front of him was flipping and whipping her hair about as high school girls do when there is a cute boy in the desk behind them. Anyway, hair met flame and singed about an inch off of her hair. I think it was only pure, blind, dumb luck that saved her whole head from going up like a Roman candle (especially given how much hair spray those kids tend to use). The culprit got sent to the principal’s office and the girl got to go home for the day (ostensibly, to recover from the devastation -I know that I certainly would have played it that way when I was in high school 
).
Do you know what heinous “zero tolerance” punishment was meted out to arson boy? Two days of in-school suspension!! :smack: :mad: :mad: Amazing! This was an incident that could have ended in serious injury or even death, but the kid got a slap on the wrist because the school was terrified that the parents would sue. OpalCat your son’s behavior is what kids do. I shudder to think of things that happened on the school buses I used to ride. It’s all a part of growing up and, you know, growing up to not be a sniveling coward who can’t handle even the slightest reversal :(. I am glad that you are not overreacting, but I do not know that I agree with the coddling approach that you seem to be taking. I know that you are pissed at the school and with good cause, but I think your son should go back for the last two days of school. Even if he is treated funny, you can’t always shelter him from uncomfortable situations; it is better if he learns early to show up, glean the good that you can, deal with the bad, but definitely finish what you start .
The school said not to send him back. I think that being forced to sit out and watch his friends do fun things would be further punishment. He’s got enough self esteem issues and social problems without loading him up with that as well. I don’t see how following the school’s request not to send him back is “coddling”.
I’s say your projecting because I don’t know what you are talking about. I was just talking about really standard run-of-the-mill bullying. If you don’t know that that is the way bullies work, then you don’t know anything about bullies. No regional conflicts involved.
They gave him worse than that if they’re not letting him participate in any end-of-school events and recommending that he not be there even after the 5 days are up.
Fair enough. I based my statement on your description of the item, the link you provided, and at least four other sites which sell similar items and indicate they are not to be used by children or anyone with a pacemaker. However, lacking detail on the specific toy - I’ll revise and say the toy Dominic took to school resembles those items, and may be indistinguishable from them on casual inspection. I’ll also say again, I believe the punishment in his case to have been excessive and ridiculous; even if the toy was identical to one which carries manufacturer’s warnings, it isn’t exactly a weapon, and wasn’t being used maliciously.
I didn’t mean to imply I thought that it didn’t fit into the same category, simply that for the sake of accuracy we can’t say if his specific one had a warning on it that it was unsuitable for children or not. Actually, I don’t know that I ever even saw the packaging, as I think he got it when he was with his dad. I don’t remember.
The school said not to send him back. I think that being forced to sit out and watch his friends do fun things would be further punishment. He’s got enough self esteem issues and social problems without loading him up with that as well. I don’t see how following the school’s request not to send him back is “coddling”.
“He’s been suspended for five days,” she says. “That means he can come back next Wednesday, but I wouldn’t bother sending him for the last two days,”
Dominic is one of those really sensitive kids who doesn’t make friends easily and all too quickly retreats to being the lonely outsider, probably as a defense mechanism. The last thing he needs is to be quasi-ostracized on the last couple of days of school. I actually think it would be less harmful for him if we just did something fun those days on our own. My boyfriend will be in town, we may go do something.
These are the posts that lead me to believe that not having him return to school may be more about your anger and wanting to protect him. I could be wrong, but you’ve been a bit defensive on this point. Now, please don’t get all riled up at me because I am on your side with regard to the ZT stuff. However, I just happen to think that the best thing you can teach your son is to finish what he starts and to go forward even if the road looks ahead looks unpleasant. It is possible that he might have a really great time those last two days. And, trust me, arson boy’s behavior was never mentioned again, so I doubt anything more would come out of this for your son if he does return.
The school said not to send him back. They didn’t say “when he comes back, it won’t be much fun, so you can keep him home if you want to”… I forget the exact word for word sentence she used; the wording in my OP was paraphrased as I was just trying to get the gist of it out while writing a fairly long narrative. I’ve been trying to remember exactly what was said, and I really think she used the word “advise”, such as “I’d advise you not to send him back for the last two days. If he does, he won’t be able to participate in any activities”. Regardless of the exact wording, the meaning was clear: they don’t want him to return to the school for those days.
Edited to add: they also seem to be acting on the assumption that he isn’t coming back. They even got his stuff out of his desk and brought it to me.