Sometimes a Brat Is Just A Brat

shinypenny wrote:

Nan wrote:
That would depend on the circumstances. Would you want to monitor a
child behaving in that manner for an hour and 15 minutes until the
parent arrived?

Heh. I watched the video, and I have to say I think the teacher could
have been more effective in her approach.

IMO, she did not get down on the child's level and look the kid in the
eye. And her voice wasn't firm - it struck me as more like pleading and
begging, than commanding. I also didn't hear the teacher use the kids'
name once.

The kid wasn't listening - it was all a game to her - reminded me of
basketball with the kid trying to make a basket and the teacher trying
to block her.

If it were me in that position, I'd have struck the fear of God in the
child within the first 5 seconds.
------------------
And that's because you're not too bright.
Steve

Nan wrote in
:

On Wed, 4 May 2005 13:04:37 +0000 (UTC), enigma
wrote:
the poor mom probably needs some serious parenting skills
help, plus some *time*. a single mom with 3 kids under 6 is
probably more than slightly stressed!

Hopefully the mom will be able to focus on parenting skills
instead of just her lawsuit, then.

one would hope that, if she won a lawsuit, that she would use
the money to get proper help for herself & the kid... but i
rather suspect she won't.
lee

In article .com,
"shinypenny" wrote:

Nan wrote:
That would depend on the circumstances. Would you want to monitor a
child behaving in that manner for an hour and 15 minutes until the
parent arrived?

Heh. I watched the video, and I have to say I think the teacher could
have been more effective in her approach.

IMO, she did not get down on the child's level and look the kid in the
eye. And her voice wasn't firm - it struck me as more like pleading and
begging, than commanding. I also didn't hear the teacher use the kids'
name once.

?? I heard her use the child's name repeatedly.

I, too, was struck with the lack of command in her voice, and her
inability to be effective -- but if she was under orders to NOT TOUCH
THE CHILD, other than cultivating a more commanding tone of voice, I'm
not sure what else she could have done.
--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care

Nan wrote:

I've met too many parents that consider the school
free babysitting service and don't have any backup plans.


Realistically, that's the way it has to be for many people. They don't
have the resources to make a back-up plan for something that seldom
happens. Perhaps the back-up plan is something like a relative or
neighbor who will watch a sick kid, perhaps for payment.

For many families, school is when there's some relief from the cost of
daycare for a younger child. It does serve a daycare purpose, in
addition to its educational function.

Rupa

On Wed, 04 May 2005 20:01:14 GMT, Nan wrote:

On Wed, 04 May 2005 15:57:39 GMT, dragonlady
wrote:

Thinking about this situation as I've read more, it strikes me that this
mother and school did NOT have a good partnership when it came to
working with her daughter -- who clearly has problems. There's no way
to tell, from here, if the school is to blame or the mother. The mother
may be in deep denial that she has a child with some serious issues, and
therefore not willing to work WITH the school in resolving those issues.
Or it may be that someone in the school structure is like the asshole I
had to try to work with for a semester. Or some combination of the
above.

This is what I was thinking as well. Somewhere, a breakdown occurred,
and the little girl is paying the price.

Agreed. This child is stressed out and much of it comes from the home
situation (mom dealing with eviction proceedings, dad not present and
unwilling to pay child support and in jail much of the time). It may
not be the mom's fault exactly, but the child is paying the price for
adult problems with her family certainly and the parent didn't like
the administrator so she could not work with her either.

I do hope that the child is in a better situation now.

Nan



--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

On Wed, 04 May 2005 21:29:34 GMT, Nan wrote:

I'm sure the mother has not done the most effective job raising this
child, and the child looks undeniably challenging as it is, for *any*
mother. If there is any kid with ADHD, it's that kid, don't you think?

I would definitely say she needs an evaluation if one already hasn't
been done.

I wouldn't diagnose ADHD from any single incident, but the child
definitely needed to be evaluated to see if there is a specific
problem that can be addressed.


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

On 4 May 2005 19:00:40 -0700, wrote:

Realistically, that's the way it has to be for many people. They don't
have the resources to make a back-up plan for something that seldom
happens. Perhaps the back-up plan is something like a relative or
neighbor who will watch a sick kid, perhaps for payment.

For many families, school is when there's some relief from the cost of
daycare for a younger child. It does serve a daycare purpose, in
addition to its educational function.

Yabbut, even when you're paying for childcare so you can work you
still need to have backup in case your child is too ill to go to
daycare, or the dcp is too ill. Same holds true for school. It may
be 'free daycare', but there is still parental responsibility to plan
for contingencies.

Nan

On Wed, 04 May 2005 11:54:01 GMT, Rosalie B.
wrote:

toto wrote:

On Wed, 04 May 2005 03:31:29 GMT, Nan wrote:

It certainly does not seem that the child needed
to be handcuffed and arrested by police.

I don't understand this outrage over handcuffs. What's the big deal?

Handcuffs are unnecessary with a young child and they are scary
and add to the emotional trauma the child is already giving evidence
of, imo.

Also I don't understand why the child's age has very much to do with
it. If a 5 year old shouldn't be handcuffed, how about a 10 year old?
From the POV of the restraint, what is the difference?.

The physical size of the child is one big difference. If an adult
cannot manage to restrain a child of this age without resorting to
police and handcuffs, it seems to me that they have not learned
much about handling children.

It sounds to me as if an adult interpretation has been put on
handcuffs that is not really justified by just the actual implement
itself. Would Chinese handcuffs result in the same outrage? How
about a strait jacket?

Yes, these would certainly cause the same outrage with me.

I gather you think that these are more humane? I think that anya
of this is terrifying to a young child and should never be used.
I can understand *needing* to use such devices with a big
strong person who is unable to be restrained in any other way,
but I can't see that it is effective or necessary in the case of
a child.

I also understood (without reading the article - sorry Dorothy) that
the mom told the school they were not to ever touch the child. That
sounds as if they had their hand tied (no pun intended) as to what the
school was able to do. If they can't touch her, what other option did
they have?

I did not see anything about the mom telling the school they were not
to touch the child, though that is possible. However, the teachers
were trained in this technique where they do not touch the child by
some recent training session. I thought it was highly ineffective in
terms of stopping the behavior. Aside from that telling a child *no,
that's not acceptable* without being able to back it up with any
action restraining the child from being able to take the action is
just weird. You don't need to be a genius to see that to the child
this was a game and a way to get attention even if the attention was
negative.

If the child had acted like this before (and I understood that she
had), they should have had some backup plan also.

Yes they should have. My suggestion (since they were not allowed
to touch her at all) would be to have a room where there was nothing
she could harm and nothing that could harm her. The teacher could
then stay with her and either ignore her or talk with her depending
upon her attitude and what she did in that room.

Still even that might be seen as abusive by the parent and lawsuits
are made on less.

I still think a restraint hold is the better idea *and* telling the
child positive things about herself while using the hold often
helps. Teaching such a child to breathe anger out sometimes
helps too, but you have to get down on their level and make
eye contact and your tone has to be one that actually carries
love for the child despite her actions. (Hard for a stressed out
teacher to do).



Agreed. However, the principal was ineffective in her approach. When
I worked at the women's shelter, a child that behaved like that would
have been restrained by staff in what we called a "basket hold". It
was very effective in getting the child to calm down.

I agree and I wondered about that myself, but.... I would bet that
the staff was not trained in this kind of technique and/or that there
is some school rule or legal problem with using it on a regular
ed student in a regular kindergarten classroom.

I have used that hold on children in a daycare setting and it
*is* much more effective and usually the children calm down
and want to sit on their own and either talk it out or at least
stop the mayhem. The problem is that if you are not properly
trained on it, you can hurt a child when you attempt it and
that may put the school in line for a lawsuit too. My suspicion
is that the training educators were put through emphasized
not touching the child. I also will say that with the fact that
this incident and others in Pinellas County are being touted
as racism since more black children are put in this situation
than white children, the other problem involved would be having
a white teacher restrain a black child. I would bet their would
be an outcry against any teacher who did that hold with a
child of another race. It can get pretty complicated.

Unfortunately, the mother apparently would not come to get
the child until she got off work so the school personel were
in a situation where they would have had to have a principal
or teacher or aide staying with her and monitoring her until
that time.

I'll play devil's advocate and say I wouldn't want to be in the
position of having to monitor the child for possibly an entire day
just because the mother couldn't be bothered to come get her. I
wouldn't have called the police, but I may have referred the
situation to DFS or a similar agency.

I am not sure that dcfs will come and pick a child up from school
whose mother *is* coming to get her at 3:15 pm which is what
the tape said the mom was doing.

I would not necessarily want to be in that situation as an emergency
contact, but that *is* an option if the mother cannot come - usually
the contacts are other relatives who are available during the day,
though neighbors are also used on occasion.

I wonder about the emergency contacts and why they could
not retrieve the child. It seems that she needed to be picked
up at the earliest time possible and when mom is not available,
every school I ever worked in had other people to call as
backup to pick her up.

Link to a more detailed story about the incident itself he
http://www.sptimes.com/2005/04/22/So...olice_ha.shtml

Archived article he
http://snipurl.com/endu

grandma Rosalie


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

On Wed, 4 May 2005 13:00:51 +0000 (UTC), enigma
wrote:

The admins were trained to use techniques that didn't
involve touching.

then why didn't they?

They did. That's what you were seeing in the video. It just
didn't work very well.


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

On Wed, 4 May 2005 13:04:37 +0000 (UTC), enigma
wrote:

Nan wrote in
:

On Wed, 04 May 2005 21:54:47 +1000, Chookie
wrote:

Of course handcuffing a 5yo is inexcusable. But did anyone
else pick up on the body language? The child sat down
*because she saw the police*, not because she had calmed
down -- she was frightened of them; literally scared stiff.
It seems she had met one of them before (he asked if she
remembered him).

I noticed that. And this incident certainly won't help
foster any feelings of trust in a police officer anytime
soon!

maybe because the police are all the effective discipline
she's ever had/seen?

Probably, since her daddy has been in and out of jail, this is
the only discipline she has seen.

the poor mom probably needs some serious parenting skills
help, plus some *time*. a single mom with 3 kids under 6 is
probably more than slightly stressed!

No kidding. Plus dealing with no child support from multiple
fathers and an eviction proceeding for nonpayment of rent
is pretty stressful too.

lee


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits