For a 6 year old having a bit of a temper tantrum.....
Wow..
When did children stop being allowed to be children?
Well, look, she knocked over bookshelves and actually injured the principal. It was quite a bit more than a temper tantrum. Note that I'm
not agreeing with how they handled it, only that they really are limited in what they can do without fear of civil litigation. Should what can get them sued be their primary concern? Perhaps not, but that's a different story.
The police have stated she was not charged with a crime (
see #31); there is some dispute over whether the police put her in a holding cell or not. This whole thing is an absolute mess. I mean, my daughter's elementary school has a properly educated and certified student counselor; I'm guessing that the school in Milledgeville doesn't. Still, though, much along the lines of
Bells' point—"
if adults can't handle a child having a tantrum, then said adults have no place trying to teach them"—I wonder how it is a community can end up with an elementary school faculty that is unable to deal with children being children.
Thanks, I overlooked that post previously. Okay, so she wasn't charged. But she was still handcuffed and taken to a police station, which is unacceptable.
I would like to hear the rationale from the school. Have they commented yet?
While of course possible, but even well after the event the Mother is not making that claim, and no one there apparently thought it was a medical issue, so why would they treat it that way?
It may not have been a medical issue, but the fact that no one is saying it is doesn't mean it wasn't. It just means that nobody recognized it as such. But if a child is going as apparently batshit crazy as this one was (I've seen temper tantrums, but tearing posters off walls and knocking bookshelves into people like in the movies) is not something I've ever encountered. My first thought would be that this child is perhaps missing a dose of something.
Well wasn't the meeting room at the police station a safe place?
Perhaps, but wouldn't also an empty classroom be a safe place? Would the teacher's lounge not be a safe place? I see no reason why the child needed to be taken to the police station, least of all handcuffed and put in the back of a patrol car.
Typically the police have rooms where even grown men can't do any harm to themselves or others and they can watch someone in one of those rooms without having to be in the room with them.
There are no such places. Even the most spartan room (not including a cell) in a police station is going to feature a table and chair, probably some glass as well. Unless the police station literally has a padded room--which they don't, and certainly not one in such a small town--there is no place where someone is entirely free from harm.
And according to the link Tiassa posted, she was NOT arrested and she was NOT charged with any crime, but she was in fact given something to drink.
As I said, I missed that post. But she
was put in handcuffs and brought to the police station. That's already too much. I have to wonder what kind of sociopath has no issue with a six-year-old being handcuffed for essentially having a fit? Just because there is a loophole that theoretically allows for the handcuffing of a child doesn't mean that such a loophole should be exploited.
Possibly, but you need to remember that this was in a fairly small town (~18,000 people), they couldn't get in touch with the child's parents, the police say they tried but couldn't calm her down and she was reported to be doing things that put her safety and other's safety at risk, so there may not have been a better way to handle this. The meeting room at the police station may well have been the best location for her to stay at untill her Aunt showed up to collect her because clearly the Principle's office, where she was throwing/beating/jumping on things, wasn't a good place, and no one has pointed out another safe place that was available to them.
The hospital would have been a kinder, more humane, and much more logical solution. I'll even say this: Had they
not handcuffed her, this situation would have been less egregious. But even the act of taking her to the police station was a step too far. I've seen kids get into brutal fist fights in 8-foot-wide hallways with fifty students stampeding between classes, and those kids got sent to the principal's office. I see no reason why this should have been different.