The Handcuffed 5 Year Old
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When a child is refusing to behave -tearing pictures off the wall, throwing toys in the trash, standing on tables and desks, and taking swings at an assistant principal- What should you do?

What if the mother of this child left written instructions that her child was not to be touched; that the teachers were not allowed to lay a hand on her child... not even a restraining hug?

One school finally gave up and called the police.
When the police officers arrived, the girl calmed down; but the police handcuffed her anyway. Then they took her to a car and let her sit there until her mom came to get her.

The mom is taking it to court, which is the only reason we know about it.

And now for my opinion.
That mom needs to be smacked upside the head.

Ok, not really. But someone needs to sit her down and talk with her until she understands the extreme disservice she is giving her child. Children need to know the rules that govern our society. They need to learn how to behave at an early age, or else their adulthood will be an endless litany of failure.

You cannot stand on a table at work. You would lose your job. You must learn another way of getting your point across. If you go through life declaring yourself untouchable, a lot of people are going to touch you anyway.

Which brings to mind my son's second grade teacher. Early in the school year, her father passed away. Shortly after that, she started abusing the students. It started with yelling and singling out students for ridicule. This teacher and I butted heads at least twice a month. She would tell me some awful thing L did in school -like getting out of his desk and laying down on the floor- and I would ask her, "What is going on in the classroom? L doesn't do this at home, so there must be some underlying factor. Is he being picked on by another child?"
She always said the rest of the class was fine, it was only my child who was a problem. I might give that some credence (no matter how well behaved he is at home) except I'd hear her saying the same things to a different parent the next day. Blah, blah, blah, your child is broken.
Us parents would stand outside and chat before the bell rang, and would you believe that 90% of our kids were ADD? According to this teacher, they were!
At her insistance, we had our children tested. Lo and behold, the majority were totally normal children.

I believed that the way to deal with a grieving, bullying teacher, was through discussion. No matter how much I wanted to be a mamma bear and attack her, I knew I needed to stay calm. Getting angry would only make it worse for L at school.
But one day he came out of the building in tears. The kinds of tears that wrack your body, and make it hard to breathe. He had a nasty red mark on his throat, where his teacher had poked him. I lost my willingness to discuss his behaviour. I also lost my temper.

I laid it out on the table for her. Touching my son was unacceptable, because apparantly she couldn't control herself. She was letting a 7 year old frustrate her to the point where she had to strike out at him. She needed to get control of herself, not the other way around. And. If my son came out of her class with one more mark, I would not sue her. I would break her arms. And then I poked at her throat to show her that I meant it. I didn't touch her, I just came close.

Then I took L up to the principal and said much the same thing. I had tried to keep things pleasant. I had tried to give his teacher the leeway to teach as she needed to. And she crossed the line. Crossed it so far she was in another country.

L really suffered for my loss of temper. He spent just about every recess "standing on the fence". He was not allowed to play with the other students. The students were told not to talk to him.

So I had to intervene again. I cornered the teacher... (knowing how cornered animals behave, but it was the only way to talk to her anymore. She had taken to avoiding me.) So I approached her until she had nowhere to go, and I let her know that I had discussed this with a lawyer. (I hadn't.) And that I had a legal right to sit in on her classes. I told her that I didn't know how that might affect her class, and I didn't much care.

I never did sit in on a class. The other parents beat me to it. There were only 6 weeks of school left at that time, and there were more parents willing to sit in class than there were weeks left in the school year. So thanks to those wonderful mothers and fathers, my son got to spend his last weeks at that school playing at recess and actually learning something in class.

The next year we transferred to St. John the Baptist. I took L there after his first day at the bad school. When I found out that his 3rd grade teacher was the same monster who had "taught" him second grade.

St. John's was awesome. The admitted L that day. Didn't even wait for the paperwork to transfer before they stuck him in a class. And now he's graduating and going to one of the finest college prep high schools in Missouri. I'm very, very proud of him.