Posted on 01/25/2008 5:28:47 AM PST by fweingart
A 5-year-old boy was handcuffed and hauled off to a psych ward for misbehaving in kindergarten - but the tot's parents say NYPD school safety agents are the ones who need their heads examined.
"He's 5 years old. He was scared to death," Dennis Rivera's mother, Jasmina Vasquez, told the Daily News. "You cannot imagine what it's done to him."
Dennis - who suffers from speech problems, asthma and attention deficit disorder - never went back to class at Public School 81 in Queens after the traumatic incident.
His mom and a school source said Dennis threw a tantrum inside the Ridgewood school at 11 a.m. on Jan. 17.
Dennis was taken to the principal's office, where he apparently knocked items off a desk.
Rather than calling the boy's parents, a school safety agent cuffed the boy's small hands behind his back using metal restraints, the school source said.
The agent and school officials then called an ambulance to take the tot to Elmhurst Hospital Center for a mental evaluation.
Vasquez was stunned when a guidance counselor called her at work to say her son was being taken to the psych ward.
Vasquez rushed to the school from her job as a patient representative at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan. On the way, she called Dennis' baby-sitter, who was closer to PS 81, and asked her to hurry over to the school.
When baby-sitter Sandy Ortiz arrived, Dennis was still handcuffed, she said. School safety agents also were holding his elbows even though the boy was calm, Ortiz said. Dennis is about 4-feet-3 and weighs 68 pounds.
"I hugged him. I said, 'OK, release the cuffs, I'm taking him,'" she recalled. "They told me, 'No, Miss. You're not taking him anywhere.'"
Ortiz routinely picks up Dennis from class. She said she's never seen him behave in a way that would require him to be restrained.
"I was so upset. There's no reason to handcuff a baby of 5 years old, traumatize him that way," she said.
The handcuffs were removed before Dennis was walked out of the school and driven by ambulance to Elmhurst Hospital Center. He was evaluated at the hospital and released about four hours later, his mom said.
School sources said Dennis had punched an assistant principal the day before he acted out in class. The sources also said he broke glass in an office door a week earlier.
A spokeswoman for the city Education Department declined to comment on why school safety agents needed to handcuff Dennis, saying the incident was under investigation.
The NYPD, which oversees school safety agents, also declined to discuss specifics. Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne said, "We hope common sense would prevail and we are looking at what happened."
Vasquez immediately withdrew Dennis from PS 81 and enrolled him in a private school, Grand Street Settlement.
"I asked him, 'Do you want to go back to that school?' He broke down in tears," Vasquez said. "He said, 'I don't want to go! I don't want to go!'"
We're homeschooling three sons. It can be done. I've known homeschool families with two working parents and families with single/divorced/widowed parents. If you ever need information, ask here. The homeschool parents here are very helpful.
LOL - Fair enough.
This kid is a danger to himself and others, and doesn't belong in a regular school.
You do get it. Geez, when I grew up I was a mischievous, rowdy but good, high energy kid and did not, repeat, did not, grow to become a criminal :)
You are absolutely correct. Some 5yo children are passive; others are aggressive. At five, the aggressive children need some extra discipline, that's all.
My eldest is so well-behaved and polite that other parents rave about him to me. You would never guess that, at age five, he was a handful. Hitting me, kicking and punching doors, and screaming tantrums that would last an hour was very typical behavior for him.
Reasoning with a five year old might help somewhat, but not much. Labeling him with a disorder won't help at all. Someone needs to be willing to get mean with him, and as years go by, he learns. (As a matter of fact, his behavior was so over the top that I became overly strict, and now he's too timid. So now we're looking into martial arts, just trying to find a balance.)
What disturbs me the most about this story (and others like it) is that the school and the police are taking control, and the parent is not given any control. They wouldn't even release the child to the babysitter she sent.
“Then Mom can take her little angel elsewhere.”
That’s the problem - the school can’t make her but she can make them. Apparently short of murder (or drawing a picture of a firearm) you can’t expell a student these days.
True ADD is a focus issue....like trying to hear over a roar of static or trying to see through a mass of butterflies. The attention is inward with the child, trying to deal with the distractions inside their own heads.
There are about 6 various types and degrees of ADD and ADHD. It’s real, just way a way overused term.
That IS the problem.
Where, in the US Constitution, does it say ANYONE has a RIGHT to education?
Most schools want the kids to be mindless, prozac zombies...
In many cases, they are. NYC public schools are full of kids who were born to drug and/or alcohol addicted mothers who didn't have anything approaching adequate nutrition during pregnancy. This type of thing definitely does lead to lower IQs, and learning and behavioral disabilities. Many of the kids are also not getting decent nutrition or adequate sleep, due to the sort of households their parents maintain, and this increases the negative effects of in utero damage.
So, I guess in your opinion, Daddy should have killed the principal. One thing I know for certain, I would be more concerned about what my daddy would have done to me after I got home if I ever did anything like that. He died several years ago and I still appreciate the good moral upbringing my parents provided.
In addition, the Spanish press in New York (which I read daily, since I’m Puerto Rican with family in the Bronx) has not mentioned a “afther” either... neither in photos, which are only of Dennis and his mother... so chances are very slim that a “father” is actually in the picture.
Oops. Type-o.
afther = father
Nowhere that I’ve seen. It must “emanate from the penumbra” like the “right” to an abortion, welfare, etc.
That’s what I thought too.
You are right-on there.
Most pediatricians will tell you they can’t even diagnose ADD until a child is 7 or so.
Better go back and reread the story Gondring. The woman who was willing to take the child was Sandy Ortiz, the baby sitter, not Jasmina Vasquez, the mother. The mother might have arrived later, but the story doesn't make that point clear. Your argument is wrong because of that misunderstanding. The authorities chose to keep a child from a non-parent on the second day of repeated problems. Doesn't sound like a police state to me, just school officials who are damned if they take action like the one they took or damned if they don't and another student or teacher is injured because of this out-of-control terror.
If you can possibly manage it, HOMESCHOOL!
Honestly, at age 6, academics can be covered in about 1/2 hour at home. The rest of the time can be spent doing what 6 year old’s need most: PLAY!
Play is a child’s most important work.
This was the 3rd incident in a two week time frame, and the second in two days. I would say that the school was acting in the best interests of the other students in the school by requiring a psychological evaluation. In all probability, the mother was notified of the two previous incidents and had taken no discernible action. How many violent incidents should the school allow before pursuing the best interests of the child's fellow students for safety's sake? For all we know, this procedure is defined in school policy and the school officials were only following the local Board of Education's prescribed protocol.
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