Whatever happened to balance and common sense? Last week I watched a Dr. Phil show that talked about over the top ways of disciplining. In some situations the discipline actually led to death. There was one segment about a 12-year-old girl in a junior high school who was arrested because she had doodled on her desk.
Of course, damaging school property is something that needs to be addressed. However keep in mind that this young girl had first of all, used an erasable marker that would have taken a few seconds to wipe off and second of all, she didn’t even write anything very terrible. She wrote about loving her two friends. The point is that the punishment, which was to be arrested, was way over the top.
I couldn’t help but remember two years ago when my oldest son was in 8th grade. He had warned me ahead of time that at parent/teacher conferences I would hear about a situation involving a paperclip and his desk. First of all, you need to understand something about my oldest son. He is extremely shy, hates any kind of attention being on him and keeps mostly to himself. He has never once, in all his years in school, been a problem.
Apparently he had been playing with a paperclip. He has a hard time focusing and paying attention during lectures so he finds things to do. This particular day it was to play with a paperclip. He couldn’t get the paperclip to unbend and go completely straight, so he pressed it down on his desk to unbend it. He told me that his teacher had gotten very angry, got into his face and according to him, “Was so close I could see all her veins.”
So that night happened to be parent/teacher conferences and as I sat there in front of her, she coyly reached into her desk and pulled out a paperclip. This was her evidence of my son “damaging” school property. She was quite upset about the incident and to be honest, at that moment I thought it was so funny I had to force myself to not react. If I had, I probably would have laughed out loud.
I don’t think my son was right in playing with a paperclip and using his desk to unbend it. At the same time, I don’t think he was exactly “damaging school property.” Her reaction and the whole thing of saving the paperclip to show me was a bit over the top.
Now I’m not just blaming teachers here but even parents are sometimes over the top. In an effort to discipline or teach our teens an example, we can get a lot out of balance and lack common sense. Going back to the 12-year-old girl on the Dr. Phil show, did an arrest really make sense? She was handcuffed behind her back, led out in front of other students and once they got to the police station, she was handcuffed to a pole for two hours. I would say that was more than just a little out of balance.
I know that schools have adopted zero-tolerance policies and that parents are also doing their part to try and raise respectful, good citizens. But at the same time we have to be balanced and use common sense when we are working with teens. Extreme measures that don’t make sense aren’t teaching them anything.
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