Kindergarten Delinquents

[theivoryqueen]

I heard about this yesterday - Today Show I think - but it really strikes close to home. One of my dearest girlfriends recentlty had her son expelled for overly violent behavior... and he's three!!! I promise there is no dysfunctionality beyond normal living stuff going on there. So what is UP with these tiny terrors? (sorry if this is a duplicative posting)

(from TIME.com)

clip/
Does Kindergarten Need Cops?
The youngest schoolkids are acting out in really outrageous ways. Why?
By CLAUDIA WALLIS

Sunday, Dec. 07, 2003
Temper tantrums are nothing new in kindergarten and first grade, but the behavior of a 6-year-old girl this fall at a school in Fort Worth, Texas, had even the most experienced staff members wanting to run for cover. Asked to put a toy away, the youngster began to scream. Told to calm down, she knocked over her desk and crawled under the teacher's desk, kicking it and dumping out the contents of the drawers. Then things really began to deteriorate. Still shrieking, the child stood up and began hurling books at her terrified classmates, who had to be ushered from the room to safety.


Just a bad day at school? More like a bad season. The desk-dumping incident followed scores of other outrageous acts by some of the youngest Fort Worth students at schools across the district. Among them: a 6-year-old who told his teacher to "shut up, bitch," a first-grader whose fits of anger ended with his peeling off his clothes and throwing them at the school psychologist, and hysterical kindergartners who bit teachers so hard they left tooth marks.

"I'm clearly seeing an increasing number of kindergartners and first-graders coming to our attention for aggressive behavior," says Michael Parker...

clip/

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101031215-556865,00.html

[HERVEPA]

1. My son teaches first graders in the city

Nothing unusual in the behavior mentioned. Suspensions are common. Violence is daily.

[7th_Sephiroth]

2. found the problem

a first-grader school psychologist



Just a bad day at school? More like a bad season. The desk-dumping incident followed scores of other outrageous acts by some of the youngest Fort Worth students at schools across the district. Among them: a 6-year-old who told his teacher to "shut up, bitch," a first-grader whose fits of anger ended with his peeling off his clothes and throwing them at the school psychologist, and hysterical kindergartners who bit teachers so hard they left tooth marks

[theivoryqueen]

6. heh heh

[curse10]

3. I don't remember kids doing that when I was in Kindergarten or 1st grade

man, things have changed

[Gringo]

4. This is the result of overarching rules of physical contact.

In some schools, techers aren't allowed to so much as touch a child. And they "punish" the kids with toothless stuff like "time-outs", and "reward" them for doing classwork with candies. It's absolutely horrible. If my child were to behave like that, he would recieve a slap across his face that he would NEVER forget, and I would give the teacher express permission to do the same. I know many liberals would disagree, but I believe that there is a time and place for some corporal punishment. Most of us received it to some degree. I personally don't think I was harmed by it, and I was spanked maybe 4 times in my life, and paddled once in 2nd grade. I deserved it every time.

[theivoryqueen]

7. yup, spankin's are the new hugs!

if ya love 'em, gotta discipline them or else they will end up outkasts....

[Gringo]

15. I give at least a thousand hugs for every spanking I've given my kids.

I hug them so much it annoys them! I don't think a teacher smacking a kid in the classroom is appropriate, but sending him to the principal for a paddling (like I got in 2nd grade)(with parent permission) should be okay in extreme cases. Bad kids look at a suspension as a vacation from school!

I'm more saddened that teachers aren't supposed to pat or hug the kids. It's extremely unnatural.

[LeahMira]

11. I was spanked...

... a lot more than maybe four times and truthfully, it made not a darn bit of difference. Our kids were never spanked, and they were never really any problem at all.

But I do think that if a child is spanked at home s/he thinks the teacher isn't really serious if the teacher doesn't spank. That's a shame, IMO.

[quispquake]

5. And tying this (because I can!) into the * administration...

...as the news pointed out last week "productivity is up"...and why is this? Is it perhaps because parents now have to work their asses off harder than ever at work? And what kind of 'child-rearing skills' does that leave a parent when they come home?

Kids need time with their parents...and with these 'compassionate conservatives' taking away job security so parents are SCARED to ask for time with their kids, the kids get ignored...

Think we've got some screwed up kids now? Just wait a few years when the full results of the *'s policies appear...

[theivoryqueen]

8. ambitious but successful hail mary!

[qanda]

9. Attention Deficit Disorder...

But not the kind that can be cured with drugs. This is an epidemic that can only be cured by parents giving their children more attention. Kids don't need babysitters, teachers and coaches-- they need parents who will care for them and love them unconditionally.

[LeahMira]

13. Well said!

Attention Deficit Disorder...

But not the kind that can be cured with drugs. This is an epidemic that can only be cured by parents
giving their children more attention. Kids don't need babysitters, teachers and coaches-- they need
parents who will care for them and love them unconditionally.


And right on the money!

[LeahMira]

10. I also saw this...

... on the Today show. I mentioned it to my boss, a sociology professor, who had several thoughts about what might be happening. Parents too busy or too tired to spend time explaining things to a child, more violent TV programs and computer games, the presence of guns in homes where the children know the location of the guns, parents themselves stressed to the point where they argue and shout at one another, a defensive and litigious society, increased expectations set for children at younger and younger ages... any or all or a combination of some of these kinds of things could make children lash out violently in frustration and anger.

I wondered if 9/11 and the climate of fear that has been generated and cultivated since then might be responsible, but after talking about it I now think that there are many possible causes and in each case the individual child is susceptible to any number of influences, each of which might set him or her off.

Mostly, though, coming from my own observations as a teacher, it seems to me that many parents expect school to work some magic that they cannot. I do remember that I would do cleaning chores in the classroom after school for the teacher while at the same time I wouldn't make up my bed for my mother. But just because kids will do things for teachers that they won't always do so willingly for their parents is no reason for parents to assume that the teacher will be able to teach their children good behavior if they, the parents, haven't set down a serious foundation. Next time I hear some young mother in the grocery store tell her screaming child to just wait until s/he gets to school... the teacher won't tolerate that kind of behavior, I swear I'm going to tell her that she isn't leaving the teacher any other choice but to accept it. After all, she's accepting it.

[curse10]

14. I did similar things when I was a kid

my teacher always said my desk was well organized and clean, but my room was a mess. Drove my mother nuts!

[redqueen]

12. Violence is glorified

We present the option of violence as the way to solve problems and get results. What else would you expect?

Also, as others have mentioned... parents work their a**es off, can't spend quality time with kids, are stressed themselves and probably not going as good a job of parenting as they'd like...

But unmentioned that I saw was the effect of chemicals. Development problems in children can be set off by all kinds of pollutants.

We need a better America. A people-oriented America.

We're about to lose overtime benefits for millions of Americans. This will hurt a lot of people. This is just ONE symptom of a sick society, that pays lip-service to caring about families while it really couldn't give a rat's a** about them.