Posted on 11/17/2011 9:34:15 AM PST by Altariel
The Albuquerque Public Schools superintendent is speaking out after a seven-year-old autistic boy was handcuffed at school.
Maria Quesada spoke with KOB Eyewitness News 4 Monday night and said she was outraged to find her son cuffed at school.
Photos showed marks left on his wrists.
According to APS police documents, the boy was out of control and unplugging cords from outlets, throwing chairs and kicking a teacher and a police officer at Mary Ann Binford Elementary School.
Quesada said she does not think the 4-foot tall, 50-pound boy deserved to be handcuffed.
Superintendent Winston Brooks spoke Wednesday afternoon, weighing in on the situation.
"Under absolutely no circumstances it is appropriate to handcuff an elementary aged child in this school district. Period," Brooks stated.
Brooks said the officer who handcuffed the boy is on paid administrative leave.
His problem is his enabling mother.
The kid is not socially able to be in a public school.
expediency of course....
Mainstreaming is feel good liberal PC idiocy that harms both the mentally disabled and functional children.
I suspect “Mijo” hasn’t had too many lessons of the “actions have consequences” sort. Better that he learns those at seven than at seventeen.
The mom’s right. He shouldn’t have been handcuffed. He should have been hog tied so he couldn’t continue kicking people.
We can handcuff him and get blamed for that, or we can physically restrain him and get compared to Penn State's issue with young boys. Once the situation reached that level, handcuffs were not out of line. The correct answer would be for the enabling mom to teach her child that actions have consequences, even for him, and that he needs to learn coping mechanisms. The correct answer for the school would have been to distract him before he reached that level. I don't have much hope that common sense will break out on either side of the school-family divide in this situation.
Right...he deserved a damn good "smack"!!
I see the folks at FR have again taken to advocating violence against children, and children with mental disabilities again.
No complaining when this site gets labeled as a hate site advocating violence.
“The correct answer for the school would have been to distract him before he reached that level.”
Adults can’t always be around to “distract” children before they throw a fit. The ultimate lesson that a child learns if adults are constantly “distracting” them to avoid physical violence is “if other people don’t distract me/placate me in time, my violent behavior is their fault.”
All children need to learn to control their behavior without reaching that level (unless the situation warrants kicking or attacking an adult, such as fighting off an adult assailant).
>>>This kid’s problem is not his (alleged) autism.
His problem is his enabling mother. <<<
And you know this, how?
The kid clearly needed to be disciplined, but handcuffing a 7 year old is unnecessary, idiotic and abusive.
This child assaulted his authority figures. He made a choice to attack his teacher and a police officer. He injured himself trying to escape the handcuffs (indicating that there was a reasonable likelihood that the assaults would have continued if he were not restrained).
If a few teachers had tackled him and held him down on the floor, Mommy Dearest would be filing a lawsuit for that.
The sooner children learn that attacking adults (outside of self-defense to prevent from becoming a victim of assault) is a Very. Bad. Idea., the better.
He disrupted the classroom, threw desks (which could have easily injured other children in the room) and physically assaulted multiple adults; he received the consequences for his actions. It’s a very conservative lesson.
The mother did not think that a boy who threw chairs, disrupted a class, kicked his teacher and kicked a police officer “deserved to be handcuffed”. That is enablement.
The boy assaulted at least two people (possibly others that we don’t know about it).
You can’t spank him for that in today’s schools.
Holding him on the ground or against the wall would almost certainly result in a lawsuit from Mother Dearest.
He became a danger to himself and others, and he learned that (at school) there are consequences for that behavior.
Moreover, Mommy gave *permission* for “Mijo” to be restrained. Now she is complaining about the very restraint she gave the school *permission* to do.
We disagree. I have neighbors with several autistic children, and learning to deal with frustration is a process that takes time and practice for kids dealing with that challenge. By distracting them just enough that they can handle the situation, we help them to build coping skills. It's not a perfect "personal responsibility" answer, but it is a perfect human answer. It's not about being an entertainer or doing everything for the kid but about providing enough support that problems are within the range that a child can then handle.
I also know kids whose parents use a diagnosis as a crutch for a child who is essentially normal except for the bad parenting, but this is probably not entirely one of those issues. Even the worst parents (and this mother might be close to that line) can't turn a child that young into a monster like this unless there is also an underlying problem. The school should build toward a point where this child can handle frustration and disappointment more naturally and with less personal supervision, but demanding that this 7 y/o do so without help is not going to be the best answer for this child or for the other children who have to be around this child.
Apparently not.
Since Mommy Dearest gave the school permission to restrain him, it may be difficult for her to win a court case, if it comes to that.
“Quesada said she gave school staff permission to restrain her autistic son but did not think that meant handcuffing him.”
http://www.kob.com/article/stories/s2372848.shtml
“It’s not a perfect “personal responsibility” answer, but it is a perfect human answer. It’s not about being an entertainer or doing everything for the kid but about providing enough support that problems are within the range that a child can then handle. “
Perhaps that approach works for your neighbor’s children (assuming mom and dad are gradually less responsible for distracting Junior as the kids age).
However, there are plenty of parents who ignore/downplay willful defiance, malice and premeditated decisions to attack made by their autistic children and try to sweep those characteristics under the rug. Special needs children need to build character too, and such parents only make their job harder when they justify their child’s immoral, (and in this case, illegal) behavior.
There are responsible conservative parents of special needs children. Those are the ones who don’t tolerate bad behavior in public and correct their children (as needed and in a manner that they know their children respond to in order to discourage repeated bad behavior). They have a tough job, they do it well, and they are respected and appreciated for it. In my experience, they’re also the ones who dislike it the most when an adult hides behind “my boy can’t be held responsible. He’s autistic.” as an excuse.
Unfortunately, responsible conservative parents are not the sort that typically call the news stations to report on how horribly Little Johnny was treated; therefore, we don’t hear about them as often. It’s a shame.
A 7 year old autistic child made a choice to attack? I just write you off as ignorant.
File a lawsuit - whah whah whah !!!!!!!!!!!!!
You sound like what you complain about.
You don’t sound like a parent much less a ‘responsible, conservative’ parent. You sound like an ignorant fool asking for an a** kicking.
I agree. It sounds like a streight jacket would have been more appropriate.
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