word vomit
Oh, hey! Another young child with a diagnosed mental disorder misbehaves in a way that would probably just get a reprimand and a long trip to the time-out chair if the child did NOT have a diagnosed mental disorder, but instead is deemed to warrant manhandling, arrest, and a trip to a psychiatric hospital!
I can't even count the ways in which this is wrong and inappropriate.*
You know, I can tell you from personal experience that kids like this often grow up to be really dysfunctional adults, not only or necessarily because they "have a condition", but because it's terribly easy to internalize the message that you are bad, and mean, and awful, and that you can only hurt people and break things, and that you deserve to be mistreated because you are such a bad person, you don't deserve to assert yourself, defend yourself, or lose your temper even in situations where it might be justified...and I think that's a message that we send to kids with all kinds of developmental disabilities, emotional and behavioral problems, mental illnesses. Often in much subtler ways than by having a cop come to yank them out of elementary school and arrest them when they're four feet tall and probably too young to understand the situation, but what I'm saying is, there's no fucking way that won't just exacerbate things.
I suspect most people don't understand what it feels like to be this sort of kid, at all; I can only speak for myself, but a lot of the time when I was little I would act out because I felt really scared, confused, and threatened by the world, which was constantly bombarding me with more sensory impressions, emotions, and bits of information than I could process. I wasn't trying to hurt or upset anyone. I had things I could do to make that bombardment more manageable, like sitting under my desk and humming, or leaving the classroom and hiding in a supply closet to calm down if the world was Just Too Intense that day/hour/minute. I read a lot, and sometimes I would get very, very scared of something I'd read about-- serial killers, the bubonic plague, spontaneous human combustion, evil magicians, rhinoceroses, kidnappers, organ-theft crime rings, brain cancer, leprosy-- and develop OCD-like rituals to make myself feel safer, and some of those rituals were weird-looking or disruptive. And if any of my coping mechanisms or rituals were interfered with, I'd throw a tantrum, not because I was spoiled and wanted my own way in everything or because I liked hurting people (at all; I've always felt enormously guilty for even accidentally hurting other people, or making other people feel bad), but because I felt like I was going to die and I panicked. It wasn't so much like being told I couldn't have ice cream or something, like having a toy taken away. It was like being forcibly stripped naked. It was like being, I don't know, tossed into a bathtub filled with poisonous snakes. So I had pretty different problems from this kid's problems, probably, but I don't hear "threw a chair" or "got in fights" and immediately think "undisciplined brat," which is what a lot of people seem to. I would say, don't assume you know there's not a sympathetic reason for his behavior, which doesn't mean the behavior is acceptable but does mean you should refrain from throwing around words like "monster," yeah, asshole BoingBoing commenter, I mean you.
*Of course, don't read the comments on any article about this sort of thing; there tend to be a number of WELL IT ISN'T LIKE CHILDREN WITH BEHAVIORAL PROBLEMS DESERVE SYMPATHY OR BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS and I DON'T WANT DISABLED WEIRDOS MARRING MY PRECIOUS, PRECOCIOUS LITTLE ANGEL'S CLASSROOM ENVIRONMENT EITHER, SO I TOTALLY UNDERSTAND WHERE THIS IS COMING FROM-flavored ones.
I can't even count the ways in which this is wrong and inappropriate.*
You know, I can tell you from personal experience that kids like this often grow up to be really dysfunctional adults, not only or necessarily because they "have a condition", but because it's terribly easy to internalize the message that you are bad, and mean, and awful, and that you can only hurt people and break things, and that you deserve to be mistreated because you are such a bad person, you don't deserve to assert yourself, defend yourself, or lose your temper even in situations where it might be justified...and I think that's a message that we send to kids with all kinds of developmental disabilities, emotional and behavioral problems, mental illnesses. Often in much subtler ways than by having a cop come to yank them out of elementary school and arrest them when they're four feet tall and probably too young to understand the situation, but what I'm saying is, there's no fucking way that won't just exacerbate things.
I suspect most people don't understand what it feels like to be this sort of kid, at all; I can only speak for myself, but a lot of the time when I was little I would act out because I felt really scared, confused, and threatened by the world, which was constantly bombarding me with more sensory impressions, emotions, and bits of information than I could process. I wasn't trying to hurt or upset anyone. I had things I could do to make that bombardment more manageable, like sitting under my desk and humming, or leaving the classroom and hiding in a supply closet to calm down if the world was Just Too Intense that day/hour/minute. I read a lot, and sometimes I would get very, very scared of something I'd read about-- serial killers, the bubonic plague, spontaneous human combustion, evil magicians, rhinoceroses, kidnappers, organ-theft crime rings, brain cancer, leprosy-- and develop OCD-like rituals to make myself feel safer, and some of those rituals were weird-looking or disruptive. And if any of my coping mechanisms or rituals were interfered with, I'd throw a tantrum, not because I was spoiled and wanted my own way in everything or because I liked hurting people (at all; I've always felt enormously guilty for even accidentally hurting other people, or making other people feel bad), but because I felt like I was going to die and I panicked. It wasn't so much like being told I couldn't have ice cream or something, like having a toy taken away. It was like being forcibly stripped naked. It was like being, I don't know, tossed into a bathtub filled with poisonous snakes. So I had pretty different problems from this kid's problems, probably, but I don't hear "threw a chair" or "got in fights" and immediately think "undisciplined brat," which is what a lot of people seem to. I would say, don't assume you know there's not a sympathetic reason for his behavior, which doesn't mean the behavior is acceptable but does mean you should refrain from throwing around words like "monster," yeah, asshole BoingBoing commenter, I mean you.
*Of course, don't read the comments on any article about this sort of thing; there tend to be a number of WELL IT ISN'T LIKE CHILDREN WITH BEHAVIORAL PROBLEMS DESERVE SYMPATHY OR BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS and I DON'T WANT DISABLED WEIRDOS MARRING MY PRECIOUS, PRECOCIOUS LITTLE ANGEL'S CLASSROOM ENVIRONMENT EITHER, SO I TOTALLY UNDERSTAND WHERE THIS IS COMING FROM-flavored ones.