5-Year-Old Cuffed and Shackled

I must say that I hate BAK's¹ with a passion. I know it generally points to a lack of proper discipline and control by the parents but tantrums, backtalk and aggression can still work my nerves. I've seen enough episodes of Super Nanny and Nanny to know that many parents are having a hard time managing the behavior of their children. No doubt, some of that behavior trickles over into school. However, I have a definite problem with a 5-Year-Old child being cuffed and arrested for a temper tantrum.

"A 5-year-old girl was arrested, cuffed and put in back of a police cruiser after an outburst at school where she threw books and boxes, kicked a teacher in the shins, smashed a candy dish, hit an assistant principal in the stomach and drew on the walls.

The students were counting jelly beans as part of a math exercise at Fairmount Park Elementary School when the little girl began acting silly. That's when her teacher took away her jelly beans, outraging the child.

Minutes later, the 40-pound girl was in the back of a police cruiser, under arrest for battery. Her hands were bound with plastic ties, her ankles in handcuffs."

The little girl was "acting silly." Well, gee! Isn't that what 5 year old little girls tend to do? Perhaps the teacher should have addressed that behavior and found a way to coax her into behaving like the rest of her classmates instead of snatching away her jelly beans. Perhaps it was her temper that aroused the child's.

I was a very tiny and shy child. I looked much younger than I was and constantly had problems with people mistaking me for a toddler. On my very first day of second grade at a new school, I lined up outside with my class and followed the teacher into the building. Somehow, probably because I was so timid, I ended up at the end of the line. Just as I put my first foot on the stair to go to up our room, my arm was yanked by another teacher who told me that I could not go up there and that I was with the wrong class. I told the woman, repeatedly, my name and that I was in second grade. She kept insisting that I was wrong. She was a kindergarten teacher and she'd already gotten her headcount but she insisted that I was too little for second grade and that she would help me find my "right" classroom. So, off she pulls me - by the arm - to the other kindergarten class, the pre-1st grade class, both 1st grade classes, and finally, after there were no options other than the one I had originally stated, to my class. I was late. I'd missed most of the other children introducing themselves. I was tear soaked and humiliated. I never, ever forgot that day (and neither did most of my classmates because even in high school, some of them were still bringing it up). Nearly 40 years later (even though I am still petite and still get 'carded') I'm sure that single incident has shaped who I am today. I will argue to the death against someone telling me I don't know something that I am SURE of. Literally and figuratively, I do not allow anyone to grab my arm, not listen to me, and drag me to places where I know I do not belong.

So, I can only imagine the scars that will be left on a 5 year old who was handcuffed, shackled and carted off campus in a police vehicle for what began as normal "silliness." Then people wonder how "angry black women" and men come to be that way.

¹(bad assed kids)