Intimidation...kindergarten style:
Everything I needed to learn I learned in kindergarten (continued)....with zero tolerance we have problems we know. But, threats at any level are a violation of another child's rights. Bullying laws are in place for a reason.
School districts get mocked about these things...but the parents of the child who threatened the other child who has rights( not to be threatened) are getting the upper hand. Where are the parents of the girl who was threatened? Let us hear their voices.
How ignorant for any parent to allow a child to bring any type of toy "gun" with them to kindergarten or any other educational setting. We have had children kill other children when they were in first grade with real guns brought from their homes. Children don't need to know about Newtown, but the adults do.
"Happiness is a toy gun..." and it can get an older person arrested because some can look just like the real thing. In this situation, another lawyer/advocate wants to make a name for himself. Drawings are looked at today too. Why? Because killers (with patterns of violence) always send out warning signs long before they kill.
Kids getting in trouble for playing "cops and robbers" at school was also mocked. Play "cops and robbers" at home. Some behaviors just are not appropriate at school. If a teacher organized a formal game of "cops and robbers" today or had "water gun" fights as a favorite teacher did years ago in my children's school, they would be fired.
If we knew anything about bullying, children use the tools of their young environment to threaten. A toy gun, fist, or verbal threat work just as well as the real thing because to a young victim, the threat is real. "I will hit you with my bookbag." is still a threat. "Give me your lunch or I will beat you up with my little fist" In high school, how many students had their pants taken from gym class? If anyone ever had a high school student, and you were paying attention, even identification badges were tools of high school "pranks" or antics. To some kids, it could have meant bullying instead.
I had a student recently put his arms stretched out across the back of the chairs of the two students who sat on either side of him. That is a also a gesture of intimidation. Stretch out at home on your own sofa. Play "cops and robbers" in your yard, war, or invaders or whatever. We know playing games like that are not out of the norm. But, they are not for school. Let us use a sense of decorum with our children in settings. We do not eat with our toes in public setting even if we have the dextarity to do so.
"Play out" your fantasies of killing others if necessary with imagination. Video games and movie geniuses are making a "killing" in that genre.
How many children "play out" healing others. Buy your child a "medical kit" and help them to heal people with their hands and tools of "the trade". Allow children to play house and be loving mommies and daddies. Children love to play house and comfort dolls. Just watch them if they are living in a loving home. Watch what they do if the house is not a loving house. We do remember our youth. That is why people can say, "it runs in families".
I remember a child running home from school to our house with a bloodied head because he was hit with a stone. It was during our tumultuous 60's in Plainfield. That stone left a memory for me..and how it impacted my little friend. In that mixed neighborhood, not many adults would have helped him because he was black. My mother helped him.
I learned alot in kindergarten. Remember "cooties". I remember the crowd on the steps of kindergarten children who arrived early, saying the other kids walking along had "cooties". You do know what "cooties" are don't you?
I have had students in my class who make negative comments to others everytime another student walks into the group. Now as an adult in charge, I am addressing it but it has gone on a long time so the patterns are set. Patterns can be hard to break. If the venue was a public school in New Jersey, every comment would have to be documented because commenting to others as they walk into a setting can be bullying. These students, as eighth graders, have gotten away with it for years.
It is better to raise a child then fix an adult. Raising children to become loving, responsible adults is not child's play.
Marian R. Carlino
January 20, 2013
