7-Year-Old Accused Of Possible Sexual Harassment For Kicking Boy In Groin

CBS in Boston reports:

A 7-year-old boy is being investigated by his South Boston elementary school for possible sexual harassment after kicking another boy in the crotch.

The first grader’s mother, Tasha Lynch, says she was shocked by the school’s decision.

“He’s 7 years old. He doesn’t know anything about sexual harassment,” she said.

Lynch’s son, Mark Curran, said the boy that he kicked had been bullying him on the school bus ride home from Tynan Elementary last week.

“He just all of a sudden came up to him, choked him. He wanted to take his gloves, and my son said, ‘I couldn’t breathe, so I kicked him in the testicles,’” said his mother.

Read more on CBS.

Once again, it seems, a school may have gotten it so very very wrong – although to be fair, we are only hearing one side of the story.  Assuming that the parent’s reporting is correct, then instead of re-framing this as a “sexual harassment” issue, why doesn’t the school really deal with the issue that a child was left to his own instincts and 7-year-old judgement as to how to protect and defend himself from another child?   What would they have had him do in that situation?

And what would anyone of them have done in the same situation as an adult, if they were assaulted on a street?

Update: The Boston Globe has a fuller version of this news report.

 

The Hidden Potential of Autistic Kids

Rose Eveleth has an article in Scientific American that begins:

When I was in fifth grade, my brother Alex started correcting my homework. This would not have been weird, except that he was in kindergarten—and autistic.

She goes on to discuss how more attention is now being paid to what autistic individuals can do and not just what they can’t do. Discussing the failures of commonly used tests to provide accurate assessments of autistic children, she provides an example from her brother:

… the woman delivering the questions asked him, “You find out someone is getting married. What is an appropriate question to ask them?”

My brother’s answer: “What kind of cake are you having?”

The proctor shook her head. No, she said, that’s not a correct answer. Try again. He furrowed his brow in the way we have all learned to be wary of—it is the face that happens before he starts to shut down—and said, “I don’t have another question. That’s what I would ask.” And that was that. He would not provide her another question, and she would not move on without one. He failed that question and never finished the test.

A test does not have to be like this. Other measures, like Raven’s Progressive Matrices or the Test of Nonverbal Intelligence (TONI), avoid these behavioral and language difficulties. They ask children to complete designs and patterns, with mostly nonverbal instructions. And yet they often are not used.

Read more of this fascinating article on Scientific American.

5-year-old with ADHD handcuffed, charged with battery on officer

All too often, I read something in the news that upsets me with all of my hats on – as a psychologist, a mother, and a disability rights advocate – like the item I posted earlier about using vinegar-soaked cotton balls in the mouths of autistic children or my coverage on this blog of the use of aversives and the  controversial Judge Rotenberg Center.  Other stories that are particularly upsetting to me are those involving the arrest of young children. I’ve posted some of those incidents in the past on this blog, and  in August, I read of another case where Toronto police handcuffed an autistic 9-year-old.  Then this week, I saw a news report from California by Dave Manoucheri of KCRA News involving a 5-year-old with ADHD that was very disturbing:

Earlier this year, a Stockton student was handcuffed with zip ties on his hands and feet, forced to go to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation and was charged with battery on a police officer. That student was 5 years old.

Michael Davis is diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or ADHD. His mother says it has led to fights at school. But when the school district said it had a plan to change Michael’s behavior, his mother says things went wrong.

“Michael is energetic,” Thelma Gray said. “He is one big ball of energy.”

Gray calls Michael a comedian. She says his biggest problem is his ADHD stops him from thinking before he acts or speaks.

“He’s very loving,” Gray said. “He’s a good kid and he’s not the discipline problem that he was made out to be.”

Those discipline problems include fights with other students, even throwing a chair.

Gray says the school, Rio Calaveras Elementary of Stockton, wanted to change that behavior by having Michael meet with a school police officer.

“He could come out and talk to Michael and the kids are normally scared straight,” said Gray, describing how she says the school district proposed the meeting.

But the meeting didn’t go as planned.

You can read more of the news story on KCRA. In this case, the U.S. Department of Education reportedly did investigate and the news station obtained the report under Freedom of Information. I’m not sure why the department released the report and didn’t invoke FERPA like the district did, but the news station summarizes the report:

The report states that the Stockton Unified School District “delayed an evaluation of the student {Michael} which denied the student a fair and public education.”

They added that the school didn’t offer behavioral services to Michael or his mother, because “it would cost the district money.”

The report goes on to say that, whether or not funds are available through state or federal grants, the school district had an obligation to have Michael evaluated, which it failed to do.

The comments under the news story are also upsetting as the lack of understanding expressed by some people reminds me of how much ignorance still exists about ADHD.

But commenters aside, this case represents a total failure on the part of the school district, the building administration, and the state.

What the heck were the school personnel thinking if they thought a 5 year-old with ADHD could be “scared straight?” That they would even consider this approach demonstrates to me that they do not understand ADHD at all.

Would you want these people educating your child? I wouldn’t. This child might have (or may have?) been seriously psychologically harmed by their inappropriate handling.

I have often noted that schools fail to use research-validated or best practices in handling students with neurological challenges.  This is a case in point.  Have the school personnel received adequate training in how to educate students with ADHD (or other neurological disorders, for that matter)?  Are budgetary concerns an excuse for mishandling a student?

I am not a lawyer, but I hope that the family sues the district.  And I hope that as part of any settlement, the district is required to undergo training in best practices for educating students with neurological disorders – and is audited for compliance with I.D.E.A.

In various places around this country, parents have banded together to call for a halt to handcuffing young children. If you have not been involved in such advocacy efforts, you might want to look into what goes on in your area or state lest this happen to your child.

My kids are safe because they are out of school.  Are your children safe?

Carousel image credit: © Richard Nelson | Dreamstime.com

Happy Thanksgiving – and hang in there!

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American readers! This weekend, I’ll be getting this blog caught up on new research and developments, but I wanted to take a moment to share something with parents who may be struggling and worrying about their children’s future:

This week, as my family and I prepared for Thanksgiving, I knew I could count on my children to help. My daughter did the food-shopping and some cooking and baking. My son cleaned most of the house and helped with whatever I needed.

Sounds idyllic, right? You may even envy me, right? But had you asked me 15-20 years ago whether they’d ever turn out the way they did, I would have said a fervent “I hope so!” but knowing how dysfunctional they were from their neurological challenges, at times, I was very fearful for their future.

If your child is young – in elementary school or even high school – what you see now is not what you will see in 10 years or so. The symptoms like tics that may plague your child now will likely be either gone or seriously reduced. With your support, they can and will learn to live with – and cope with – their challenges, and they may become more resilient adults because of their early experiences. Whether it’s OCD, Bipolar, ADHD, TS, or any other condition, they can learn to cope and thrive. Some kids may need the help of doctors and therapists, but there is hope. Lots of it.

So yes, you may be dreading today, but it does get better. Hang in there and remember to schedule some “downtime” for your child – and for yourself. And remember to quit while you’re ahead: if your child cannot handle a long day at Grandma’s with lots of family, make your excuses and leave while things are still enjoyable. Better that than trying to handle a meltdown or behavior problems from overarousal or fatigue.

“See” you on the weekend!

Zero Tolerance Policies: Are the Schools Becoming Police States?

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead has written a commentary on zero tolerance policies that echoes many of the points I’ve made on this blog in my own posts:

What we are witnessing, thanks in large part to zero tolerance policies that were intended to make schools safer by discouraging the use of actual drugs and weapons by students, is the inhumane treatment of young people and the criminalization of childish behavior.

[...]

Things have gotten so bad that it doesn’t even take a toy gun to raise the ire of school officials. A high school sophomore was suspended for violating the school’s no-cell-phone policy after he took a call from his father, a master sergeant in the U.S. Army who was serving in Iraq at the time. A 12-year-old New York student was hauled out of school in handcuffs for doodling on her desk with an erasable marker. In Houston, an 8th grader was suspended for wearing rosary beads to school in memory of her grandmother (the school has a zero tolerance policy against the rosary, which the school insists can be interpreted as a sign of gang involvement). Six-year-old Cub Scout Zachary Christie was sentenced to 45 days in reform school after bringing a camping utensil to school that can serve as a fork, knife or spoon. And in Oklahoma, school officials suspended a first grader simply for using his hand to simulate a gun.

[...]

There’s an old axiom that what children learn in school today will be the philosophy of government tomorrow. As surveillance cameras, metal detectors, police patrols, zero tolerance policies, lock downs, drug sniffing dogs and strip searches become the norm in elementary, middle and high schools across the nation, America is on a fast track to raising up an Orwellian generation – one populated by compliant citizens accustomed to living in a police state and who march in lockstep to the dictates of the government. In other words, the schools are teaching our young people how to be obedient subjects in a totalitarian society.

Read his commentary on LewRockwell.com.

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