Posted on 04/23/2005 2:43:55 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
ST. PETERSBURG - What parent hasn't tried this trick on stubborn children: Tell them it's time to go, pretend you're leaving and hope they follow.
Two educators tried the tactic last month in the case of a 5-year-old girl at Fairmount Park Elementary. Twice it failed.
The pair used a range of other strategies in an hourlong ordeal, about 30 minutes of which were caught on a videotape released this week by a lawyer for the girl's mother. Some of their "interventions" appeared to work, others did not.
Although administrators and many teachers are trained in dealing with misbehaving children, educators say they have no sure formula for success, especially in such an extreme case.
At Fairmount Park on March 14, the girl swung several times at assistant principal Nicole Dibenedetto and teacher Patti Tsaousis. She created a mess wherever she went and generally refused to cooperate. She eventually was handcuffed by St. Petersburg police, who were called to the school.
"She's a little girl who wants to be in control," Carol Thomas, an assistant superintendent in charge of Pinellas elementary schools, said while viewing the video this week. "It was very deliberate behavior.
Lynette Fields, a professor at the University of South Florida's College of Education, called it "a very trying situation in the real world."
Thomas said Dibenedetto and Tsaousis handled the case admirably, setting limits for the girl but also giving her options and praising the positive decisions she made amid the bad ones. Thomas also offered suggestions for what else might have been tried.
Instead of counting to five out loud, as Dibenedetto did to coax the girl to act, Thomas said she might have counted in her head to give the girl more leeway.
Another alternative: ignoring the child.
But Thomas said that strategy is risky because it requires an unbending commitment. If you give up on it to prevent a child from getting hurt, it results in "intermittent reinforcement," Thomas said, which only strengthens bad behavior.
Fields said it appeared Dibenedetto and Tsaousis took a page from the philosophy espoused in the book, Parenting with Love and Logic, which gave rise to the Love and Logic Institute.
The Love and Logic philosophy discourages the "drill sergeant" and "helicopter" styles of parenting. The first one commands and directs children, the latter hovers and rescues them from mistakes.
The Love and Logic style encourages children to talk about their feelings, make their own decisions and complete required tasks within loose "time frames."
It is a philosophy that surely grates on those who said during the robust public discussion following the videotape's release that the girl was in need of corporal punishment.
In letters to the St. Petersburg Times, on Internet postings and in talk radio debates, many expressed outrage Friday that the educators at Fairmount Park seemed hamstrung by concerns about touching the girl or being too stern.
Among the dynamics at work that day: two school staffers were forced to focus exclusively on the girl during dismissal, one of the busiest and most stressful times of the day; the girl's behavior had prompted the school to call city police a few days earlier, and the mother had complained.
District officials said that in the future Pinellas schools police should be notified because they are accustomed to dealing with students.
Florida law still allows corporal punishment but leaves the decision to school districts. Many districts abandoned the practice years ago because of liability concerns, Fields said. Pinellas is one of them.
Even the law that allows corporal punishment is fraught with caution. An educator may administer it only with another adult present. That adult must be told - in the presence of the student - of the reason for the punishment. Parents can request a written explanation.
Pinellas educators are told they may use "reasonable force" to protect themselves, a student or anyone else from harm. But, in practice, that translates to a simpler rule of thumb: no touching at all.
"That's a good rule for anyone to follow when dealing with somebody else's children," Fields said.
Pinellas elementary schools reported 406 disciplinary referrals for batteries on adults last school year, up from 272 the year before. Many are repeat offenses from a smaller group of children who chronically misbehave.
"Some schools call them "frequent fliers,' " said Bob Poth, principal of Douglas L. Jamerson Jr. Elementary.
"The bottom line is that if a child is misbehaving, learning is not taking place," Poth said. "We only have 180 days with the kids. We can't afford to have them fooling around."
Times staff writer Donna Winchester contributed to this report.
She should have gotten 30 years hard labor /sarc.
Darn parents probably spoil the little snot. It doesn't hurt to let the police cuff'm and teach them a little lesson in reality.
I was in the mall one day, kid wouldn't listen to the dad (climbing on rails, walls etc...). The security guard got the go-ahead from the dad to have a little talk with the little snot. :) Kid's Behavior changed real fast.
That's dad's job not the security guard's.
Yep, greedy lawyers, dishonorable judges, clueless juries, and worthless plaintiffs.
Probably THE most important factor in disciplining children, especially younger ones, is for the punishment to take place as soon after the misbehavior as possible. Say whatever you want about spanking, but it can be administered promptly and it gets the child's attention. If the child(ren) know that spanking is an option and that it will be used as needed, chances are that is won't have to be used often. The formula is simple--note the misbehavior, tell the kid to stop or else a spanking is coming, and follow through if necessary. And, by the way, the spanking doesn't have to be all that hard to get the point across.
"Time out" is a fine option... to be used right after the spanking is administered.
If it scared her a bit it might save her some grief down the road.
The same child psychologist (talking head) that said this was a racist incident also said she may have post traumatic stress disorder from this. Give me a break!
I know, but the dad wanted some intervention lol :)
Was this the SECOND time the school had called police?
Yup!
racist no,of course its always racist if a black person gets in trouble,gets yelled at,gets into a fight,its white boys fault,
the libs think that racism is always done by a white person,otherwise its free speech,
as the post traumatic thing goes,id agree that its possible,
what got me as odd was that the child was black,and for some reason i wasnt surprised,guess that makes me racist,but then again my best friends black,my other 2 close friends are mexican/hispanic and the singer we might hire into my band is black,so im no racist,
but,had i been the principal i woulda told the childs parent that the child could not be returned to school until she fixed the behavior,lawsuits be damned i would have fought tooth and nail
I think it would be a wise move for Dad to use whatever is within his power to get the point across.
As for this girl, this is her second brush with the police. She certainly didn't appear afraid of the Police when they were talking to her.
Just how many warnings are we giving children nowdays?
Libs say blacks can't be racist because they don't have power. Isn't it nice to turn everything on it's head to avoid the truth and personal responsibility? Leaders like Jesse Jackson thrive on this kind of racism, while blacks, who buys his excuses, suffer the consequences of their own inaction.
"...host of radio WRLAM.
N: Why would the police handcuff a 5-year-old girl?
G: Lack of training, lack of sensitivity, and dare I say it, this is a black child, white cops. I don't want to pull out the race card but we need to look at it.
N: Why do you say it's race? Other than the fact that she black and they're white? Is there racial animus there?
G: I believe there is a lot of unconscious racism in this world. I find it hard to believe that if this were a young white girl, white child, that they would come in and take her out in cuffs. You wouldn't take a white child or black child or any child in that case, out in cuffs. It's stupid.
N: What kind of harm can come to this child, short term, long term, because she was handcuffed?
G: Short term, I think that she may still be terrified and very, very confused.
missed portion ...she was acting out there and asking questions, Judge, as to what may be going with this child behaviorally to begin with.
N: right.
G: Long term, she may a tramatic sort symptoms out of this sort of thing. Perhaps post-tramatic stress. These things don't happen to 5-year-olds.
N: We'll find out eventually but we don't know why the tape was made of this girl and the teacher. The teacher was taping herself so she and her superiors could critique herself. But when the child is unruly. There you can see a bit of unruliness. To me it looks normal for a 5-year-old. But when the child is unruly, how do you handle a child like this in a public school?
G: Well I think that this particular indivivual... is kind of doing the right thing: putting her arms around her, trying to calm her down, letting her know what the limits are, giving her her options, At this point, the tape is showing the girl threatening to punch the teacher. When the teacher tried to hold the girl, the girl kicked her. The girl was also pulling on the womans clothes and looked like she may have come close to biting the woman on the shoulder....but I think where it all goes array, of course, when the cops come in and instead of taking the time with her as they might do with a hostage taker, they just go in and say, "Little girl, you have to stop. This has to stop now and we're carrying you out." That's absolutely crazy. And I also wonder, Judge, whether this girl being video taped the whole time adds to the little girls agitation.
N: In my own experience as a judge, when juveniles were arrested, younger and older, cuffs were never used.
G: It's not only cuffs they put on this child, the plastic cuffs, they put cuffs on her legs, too. And that's something that hasn't quite come out, when she was in the police car. So this is a VERY tramatic, VERY bad situation.
N: Will she and her parents need some kind of therapy --- as a result of this event.
G: absolutely. And I think, of course, this will lead to litigation. But if I were the psychologist working with the young girl and with the parent, I would say, "absolutely, this girl should get some therapy to deal with this and perhaps some other issues we may not know about.
N: (laughing) Do you see any behavior that is out of the ordinary for a 5-year-old from the tapes we've been watching?
G: Well, I'm a little bit concerned. In no way do I want to victimize the victim here, but there may be some disconnect that I see with this little girl in that she just could NOT stop acting out so that needs to be addressed. But certainly, the remedy that was given was absolutely wrong. You can't send in a cannon to kill a fly.
N: agreed. Dr. Jeffrey Gardere, Thank-you ...yadda yadda yadda
Long term? Who wants to have her enrolled in their school next year?
Swatts on the butt seem to do the best to stop this type behavior. I raised 2 boys on my own for 10 years and didn't have them act up like this. Of course they knew mom would take a hand or belt to their butts if they got to far out of line. Then there were the evenings of NO TV to endure for lesser offenses.
So much crap in one small article can only be called one thing ... A blivet!
Thank you for the transcript!
Which are soon replaced with just "the look."
My thought exactly. Why didn't the school call the mother rather than the police?
Thanks for posting; I didn't see it earlier.
Too bad the psychologists and political crowd are running schools now. Back in the olden days, kids knew what would happen if they "disobeyed". And after the principal finished with them, they had to go home to face their parents.
Spare the rod and issue the handcuffs.
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