Somebody else’s child & discipline

[Slacker]

I've been a professional nanny and done a fair bit of babysitting.

Maybe it's my attitude, or maybe I was lucky with the parents I encountered, but I've never had any problems or second thoughts about just doing it [restraining or seperating children using my physical body]. I mean, I look back and know I could have put myself at risk for a lawsuit or whatever, but I wasn't and I'm not going to tolerate physically destructive or hurtful behavior from a child, it has to be nipped in the bud, else they'll just keep up with trying to "cope" that way thier whole lives. See, the kids I've actually watched have usually been pretty good, it's their friends that have usually been a problem, or sometimes, siblings together having a physical spat. Thing is, I was trusted with thier saftey by parents, to whom they were the most precious things on earth. If someone was hurting them, or they were at risk of hurting each other or themselves, then I needed to move. It's that simple to me.

You have to remember that you're an adult, remember not to misplace your strength and all, but I never found it hard to draw the line in my mind of using the least possible force to accomodate the maximum outcome. Just restraint, never punishment.

If I see kids in dangerous situations when parents aren't looking, I never think twice about stepping in there either. Saw a toddler the other day standing next to the corner of a door that opened towards her playing with the screws. . . I knew it was just one more customer in the restaurant before she would try to put her little fingers in the door ad get them smashed. I went over to her, knelt down and got her attention, played a little to distract her with funny faces, and led her to the table areas, where her mom saw me, got kind of pissy and came and collected her. But upset or not, I don't really care, it got that mom's attention. What if I had been less well intentioned while her child was out of her sight? She wasn't watching her child, maybe I reminded her to do it from now on.

So end story, I don't give a damn about a lawsuit. Let someone sue me. I'm not going to stop doing the clearly right thing because of that. Being a woman probably helps me a lot here, I'll admit I might not be so brave if I was a man. But that's my two cents anyway.

 

[abecedarian]

This would be a tough call-how far do you let a child, any child, go on a rant and rage? Once, when my 15 year old dd was about 6, we were all at Wal-mart. Dh, me, and 7 kids(including a newborne), shopping for stuff for camp for the oldest two dds. Emily was being very demanding, wanting to get a new hat, but not beig willing to settle for a more practical, visor, that sort of behavior. When we'd start to walk off from the dept. where she'd been offered an alternative..she'd grab something we'd said she could have and throw it in the cart. Then she decided she didn't want the visor, so we took it back. All this time she's getting louder and louder. When she sees that we're heading for the checkout and NOT buying the frilly, too small, and overpirced hat she wanted OR the visor, she really cranks up the volume. By the time we reach the clerk, she's having a total meltdown, with wailing and screaming, and shouts of :NO NO NOOOOOOOO! that could be heard in Oklahoma, I'm sure(we're in KS). I tried to take her out ahead of the rest of the family so she could calm down. All this time people are just looking at us, and I began to be afraid they'd think we were trying to kidnap her or something. So I called her by name, and tried to calm her, but she was totally bonkers at this point, and I don't care what any so-called expert says, there's times when there is NO reasoning with a child. I bodily picked her up and carried her like a sack of potatoes, to our vehicle and waited for dh and the other kids. It took her a good hour to completely calm down.
What I learned was to not judge other parents too harshly. My own little darlings have, or will, pull every trick in the book sonner or later. I think in this case, the mother is enabling her daughter's antisocial behavior. It's too easy to throw a racial prejudice accusation these days, but with the large number of people of every ethnic group in all types of places, it's getting harder to make such accusations stick. I hate to see poor behavior masked by this "well, you're just picking on my child" crud. And that goes for parents and kids of any ethnic group..Red, yellow, black, and white..

 

[Ronny]

Kookamoor brings up a good point, I think the police being called is not really that atrange but that they restarined such a small child that way. Wouldn't just sitting her down in the back of the car of been enough without hands and ankles being cuffed? My Grandfather, Father and Uncle are/were all police officers and I can't imagine them doing this to a small child. Maybe it's standard procedure for an arrest but I think that is what bothers most about the story.

 

[Sar]

Apparantly a new scheme, which is being touted as a success in some parts of England, involve badly behaved pupils being isolated in a "modern version of the prison cooler"

The full article regarding this story can be found at the Times online

 

[RainbowGurl]

Counting in math class... LOL a jellybean... not likely... but handcuffs... good gravey talk about overkill

 

[Motokid]

Well, lets think about this for a minute. A child is on a rampage. Throwing things, tearing things up, swinging fists, scratching, pulling hair, biting....

Review your options.

You can let the child continue the rampage until the child is too tired to do anymore damage, or until everything in the room is broken beyond repair.

You can have at least two, three, or four adults have to continually physically restrain the child by each adult holding a specific limb.

Or, you can use the handcuffs on the legs and arms?

Allowing a child that's way overboard on the rampage scale to be captain destructo is possibly allowing the child to injure themselves or others. Not a good plan. Can you say law suit?

Using adults to physically restrain the child sets the adults up for law suits should the child become injured in the struggle. Those bruises from the adult hands on the arms and legs of the child will not look too good in court. Plus, you need 4 adults.

The arm and leg restraints sort of puts the situation in a light that's not all that bad considering the options. Without personally being at the scene, and without knowing to what extent this child was misbehaving it sounds pretty bad when you first read what they did, but I'd have to say that it's entirely possible the end result of the child in handcuffs is not the worst thing that could have ever happened.

They could have physically harmed the child. They could have spanked her. Suppose in her rampage she broke a mirror or window and seriously cut herself on the glass?

I think it sounds worse than it is.