Police handcuff Georgia kindergartner for tantrum

I didn't see this story while doing a quick search. Please nuke if it is a db.

http://www.news-sentinel.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120418/AP01/304189986/1057/AP01

Holy Hell. This is a six year old kid.

 

Parents need to start making sure she switches to decaf.

 

There are few things in this world that unsettle my emotions more than an out-of-control child. It's gut-wrenching for me, because I can't even imagine how awful it must be to be that young and that upset and out of control.

And then to get handcuffed ... I know a lot of people here get upset about stories of mutilation and mayhem that come across the wire from time to time, but for whatever reason, this is one that just stabs me in the heart. This and the story about the girl who died when her mom and grandmother made her run laps until she collapsed. Perhaps it's a desensitization thing, but these tales hit me even harder than the child molestation ones, which I intellectually know are awful, but don't provoke the visceral reaction that some others do, at least in me. Perhaps because I know that there are plenty of others good and angry and making sure that justice is done.

 

If you go by the story, they're handcuffing her in part to prevent injury to herself and others. That's an argument of a kind, I suppose.

More interesting to me is that a) the school's own administrators can't handle a tantrum and b) that there's no intermediate step - like a school nurse or psychologist - before they call the cops.

 

They must not have a good neighborhood watch group or student patrol which necessitated calling the police.

It's how it works in today's world. Schools concerned with liability issues kick the can down the road.

Let's say the principle try's to restrain the child and in someway the girl breaks her arm. What happens then is that the principle and school system is sued.

 

You guys are right. There is just no good way to handle that kind of situation. It's ugly and jarring and, for some of the kids also present, probably scarring. You just try to do the right thing and pray that the situation ends at some point.

 

^^ This, unfortunately. It's where we are at now. To a point, it is the school's responsibility to try and remove this kid from the classroom, it's the school's job to teach kids and that can't happen when a child is being disruptive. Until stuff starts getting thrown or torn off the walls. Then it's well beyond something the administration is expected to handle. And you know darn well there is an 80 percent likelihood of the school being brought into question if security guard even just restraining the kid and carrying them out of the classroom.

 

Handling kids would seem to me the central mission of the administration.

 

I don't necessarily disagree, but what do you propose they do, knowing any kind of physical reaction is likely going to get magnified and called into question?

 

If the kid is black the Georgia authorities will probably give them the chair.

 

While I understand how quick to sue American parents have become, is there no one in the system - again, like a school nurse or psychologist - trained to deal with this stuff by talking to the kid? By managing them? By letting them wear themselves out?

Again, the failure here is that of the adults, not of the child. How do you get a job running a school without being trained to handle a disruptive 6-year-old?

 

You would think that is their role, Az. But administrators have been mishandling school kids for as long as I can remember. My nephew was confronted by four punks a couple of years ago. One of them grabbed him and he knocked the punk out with a martial arts chop. The four tough guys went whining to the principal and my nephew got suspended for two days - for defending himself.