Kindergartener handcuffed to chair for throwing tantrum in school

Do you have a link to the story Trish? I agree this sounds pretty horrible. On the other hand, what if some of the things he was knocking off the desk were breakable, and it was clear that he was intentionally destroying them? Willful destruction of property... vandalism, I don't actually think a five year old should be held responsible for those things, but maybe a scare tactic WOULD be in order. It has the potential to be a very clever way of dealing with a problem child.

That argument sort of goes away at the end of the story though. The fact that they wouldn't release him to his baby sitter, and that they took him in for psychological evaluation makes me think something really odd going on... either with the faculty (which is probably more likely) or with the kid.

You're right, it's absurd that three (plus) adults would be unable to restrain a child to keep him from harming them. It's possible they had to restrain him to keep him from harming himself, but I don't think handcuffs would do that... he's probably more likely to hurt himself on handcuffs than a person. Maybe they were more worried about being accused of something for laying hands on the kid than they were for handcuffing, so liability wise they thought that was a safer option. Or, what if the kid said "I'm gunna kill you all and myself, I've got a gun at home/in my locker (do five year olds have lockers?)!" It's easy to believe he saw something like that on TV and repeated it, and in today's atmosphere sending him to a psyche evaluation would probably be the most likely course (whether it's the best course is another matter). And really, it's not unheard of for a six year old to shoot someone, so why not a five year old?

I'm not saying any of this was actually true... it appears as you say, that adults over reacted to the point of idiocy. I'm just trying to come up with some possibilities for why it might have happened.

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It might be that they felt handcuffing was more appropriate than actually overpowering him, forcing his hands behind his back, etc. A lot of people working with children have good reasons to be afraid to touch them, unfortunately.

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I think a handcuff is a lot less scary and dangerous than three adults pinning a child down. It has less potential to make the child spiral even further out of control. And furthermore, why should three adults be kicked, scratched, etc. by someone else's child, when there is a reasonable way to avoid this?

People get all worked up over something that should not be seen as such a big deal. Have you ever had handcuffs on? I have. It's not that traumatic.

As for releasing the child to the babysitter, it depends on whether the school had the necessary releases directly from the parents to release the child in that condition to that particular person. If anything had gone wrong as a result of the child being too much for the babysitter to handle at that moment (which sounds quite possible in this case), the mother would probably then find it convenient to sue the school for that. In today's environment, the school was right to protect itself.

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And this was the third such incident with the same child in the same week? The article talks about "what is this world coming to" when five-year-olds are getting handcuffed. Indeed, what's the world coming to when school employees and security guards are expected to put up with this type of behavior, and its THEIR fault when the child's sweet dreams are disturbed.

Where I come from, that child would have been having nightmares of the whipping he would have gotten for acting up like that, not the handcuffs that protected him from doing more damage to himself or others.

Looking ahead ten or fifteen years, I'm personally less worried about the kids who had to wear handcuffs for a little while after such an outburst than the kids who are allowed to exhibit such extreme behavior with no real consequences.

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I have a 5 year old nephew who I have seen get this out of control. He is defiant and violent, because that is the only way he can get attention from his parents. He is a classic example of what happens when you are never consistent and you always respond with violence. I have had the opportunity to have him by himself with me and my husband and I was terrified, however, he was an absolute angel and when he started trying to act up, we responded lovingly and calmly and gave a quick explanation why he couldn't throw stuff and he was just like "oh, okay" and he was good the whole time. It makes me so sad to see him so mistreated and so misunderstood. I guess what I'm getting at is, I can see them getting to this extreme and I think handcuffing the kid was better than the adults physically restraining him, I can only hope that while he was restrained an adult was speaking to him in a calm and caring voice, basically, 'talking him down'.

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Ok... does anyone remember the incident that happened a little while ago where two kids (I think one of them was seven or so, but maybe they were both older) "held up" a train or a bus or a subway or something with toy guns? They were taken away in handcuffs? Am I imagining this? because I can't seem to find it anywhere.

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Let me get this straight:

We can't SPANK in schools anymore, but we can HANDCUFF them to chairs and haul them off for a PSYCH EVAL which will forever be on their permanent health record?
Hmmm....
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense.

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Listen, my son has a sensory disorder. You would NEVER know it, but he can throw a rager of a tantrum and has injured myself and my husband during one of his meltdowns. If he had a tatnrum in school and he was handcuffed by the staff? I would have no problems. Why?

1. It keeps them from getting hurt.
2. It keeps my son from hurting himself.
3. It keeps property from getting destroyed.

If a handful of teachers tried to hold this child in order stop his tantrum, they could possibly hurt him because of how violent he was. I wouldn't want to touch that situation with a 10ft pole. Unfortuantely because we live in a sue crazy country, people are scared. I think I would have done the exact same thing.

Plus, you weren't there and you have no idea. I think you are comming off a bit judgemental. It seems that you have never been around a child who is throwing a raging tantrum. Not just a "run-of-the-mill" tantrum. I mean a true rage. If you have, you would know that they ar violent and in danger to themselves and others.

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I agree with some of the others. If the adults had physically restrained the child himself, there's a possiblity of bruises.
Our school principal still has a paddle and permission to use it. If this were the case in PS 81, I doubt that child would have acted as he did.
A friend of mine was caught up in a similar situation. A large for his age second grader attacked three classmates and his teacher when she tried to stop him. My friend, a male teacher, had to drag the boy off his own teacher and restrain him. No handcuffs available. The child had bruises on his arms, poor lil thing! The teacher he attacked and the teacher restraining had more bruises than the child, plus deep bite marks to the female teacher's hands. Guess who got into the most trouble over this incident? Not the little darling! Plus, of course, his mom is suing.

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After reading the article, I think it's irresponsible of the news article and news clip (video) to describe this as a tantrum, or as simple misbehaving. A tantrum is when a child screams and kicks and pounds... THE FLOOR. "punching his teacher and swinging wildly at school aides, that he smacked the assistant principal in the face, ran into a corner, and began to throw things on the floor." is not what I would consider a tantrum. I'm still not sure it merits a psych eval... but the handcuffing doesn't seem quite so out of line to me any more. I'm not really sure what their options were aside from forcibly restraining him... and as many people have already pointed out, just holding him down presents all sorts of problems.

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I aso am more convinced hand-cuffs were warranted after reading the entire article. That child appears to be much larger than the average 5 year old. He appears to outweigh my 8 year old.
My older daughter has a few male classmates who are already eye level to me, and I am tall for a southern woman. My daughter is only a head shorter and only 40 pounds lighter than I am. She would never dare, but I'd have a hard time holding my own if she got physically violent with me without seriously hurting her.

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It is much safer to handcuff a child who is out of control than to have 3 adults (all of whom are 2 times his size) try and hold him down. The reports lead me to believe that this was not a temper tantrum but rather a child enraged. As to the psych eval...this was the third time in a week that this kid pitched a fit...I'd say something wasn't right and they were tyring to find out if there was a medical cause as to why he was out of control. I would wonder how many times this school year he has had an incident like this...

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reading the comments above (well..except for one), it's good to see there's common sense left in the world.

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Oh we're having such a nice reasonable discussion... can't we avoid snarky comments?

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