Teacher Accused Of Slapping 6-Year-Old At Restaurant

[Bunny]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/wtae/20070525/lo_wtae/13392518;_ylt=ApIn90LAMMrXXc_P6agtaCYE1vAI

<snip>
A local teacher is accused of slapping a 6-year-old boy, but not in a classroom.

Clyde Kearns, a first-grade teacher at Bentworth Elementary in Bentleyville, Washington County, is accused of slapping the boy at CJ's restaurant Thursday afternoon after the boy allegedly teased Kearns.

The boy's mother asked him to stop, but he kept it up, police said.

When the boy stuck his tongue out at Kearns, the teacher allegedly slapped him on the side of the head.
<snip>

[Darth_Kitten]

1. If people won't control their kids........

other people are going to..........right or wrong.

[Iris]

2. what the hell?

The kid stuck his tongue out at the guy. Jeez. Would you go around slapping adults upside the head for all the rude shit they do?

[Darth_Kitten]

4. Yes, that's EXACTLY what I wish to do..........

put it in perspective.

[Iris]

9. I have put it in perspective.

You are suggesting it is ok to live in a society where ANY kid who acts in a way some adult doesn't like should be allowed to be HIT by that or some other adult. Why is that right? I see obnoxious behavior from adults all day long, yet you think they have that right because they are adults. Not only that, you suggest these SAME adults should be allowed to hit someone else's child whom they deem to be behaving improperly.

[Darth_Kitten]

16. No, I'm not.

You're projecting a bit.

[LoZoccolo]

8. I would actually be more likely to slap an adult.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzCgwNozmk4

[Iris]

10. omg!

Well, at least most adults would have a chance to smack back.

[Pushed To The Left]

38. And who could forget this slap?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C35wyVQxXUA&mode=related&search=

[LoZoccolo]

44. Ha ha ha ha I'd never seen that!

He should take his libertarian sensibilities and declare that the market decided whether or not his question deserved a smack!

[Tektonik]

3. oh boy

:popcorn:

[Darth_Kitten]

5. Well, if people are just going to watch and watch......

while their kids are nasty, or disrespectful, and do next to nothing at times to control them, then "some" people may take it upon themselves to do it for them. Right or wrong.

But who of us is really able to even so much as touch a hair on children's precious little heads? There are laws.......but I dare anyone to say they haven't even thought of turning a brat over their knee and spanking him or her.

[Danger Mouse]

6. I work with kids that are emotionall disturbed and get a lot worse than a tongue sticking out.

In fact some of the highlights include 'fuck your momma' 'go to hell and die' 'faggot' 'fuck you you fucking asshole' 'shut up you fucking fatass' 'i will fucking kill you, bitch.' and many more!
Would you slap those kids too?
As an educator, I have learned that it is difficult to put up with shit. But if I can put up with a kid calling me a 'fucking faggot,' i think that asshole of a teacher can put up with a first grader can put up with a kid sticking out his tongue. There's no excuse for slapping a kid like that. Obviously, that teacher wouldn't last an hour in my job.

[Iris]

11. wow. You deserve combat pay! n/t

[Danger Mouse]

14. I get paid way too little, but I love my job.

It's doing something that's worthwhile and underappreciated.

[Iris]

23. well, I appreciate you!

Thanks for fighting the good fight!

[Darth_Kitten]

17. Maybe teachers are getting fed up with some kids........

their jobs can't be easy and some people snap.

Nobody's advocating abuse of children, but I'm personally not going to freak out if some adult slaps a brat across the face.

[Karenina]

19. You obviously have no children.

Kid sticks his tongue out.

Adult options:

1) ignore it
2) return the favor
3) Kid wants attention, give it to him. Ask him why he's sticking his tongue out. Or holler in his face "GO AWAY!"

NOT AN OPTION: Striking the child.

I dunno what's wrong with folks these days.

[struggle4progress]

24. "Oh, come on, you should be able to stick it out further than that!"

:)

[Karenina]

30. Zum beispiel!!!

With a heavy emphasis on the SPIEL! (spiel=play)

[Darth_Kitten]

28. What kind of insensitve crack is that?

"you obviously have no children" :eyes:

It doesn't matter if I do or don't have children, just because your sperm hits an egg or you gave birth doesn't make you one of the chosen, wise individuals in this world. :eyes: Maybe some parents should pay more mind to being less smug and spend more of their efforts monitoring the behaviour of their little darlings.

Believe it or not, I show a helluva lot more regard and care for children than a lot of so-called parents. But I guess, I just "wouldn't understand"


Whatever. I guess because I've never personally fought in a war I can't speak out against it? Because I've never been poor I can't fight poverty?

[philosophie_en_rose]

33. Um. You don't care when out of control adults slap children in the face. That's insensitive.

The insensitive crack is that you don't care that "some brat" gets slapped in the face. Someone hypothesizing that this is due to a lack of having your own children was not insensitive. It was a kind excuse for your insensitive comments.

[Darth_Kitten]

39. Well, for the umpteenth time, a slap in the face isn't MURDER!!!

And I'll worry about being called insensitive by someone who actually knows me and my real character.....but, whoops, nobody I knows would ever call me that. Try reading my posts and getting the "gist" of what I was saying. And, no, I wouldn't really care if some brat (not the brat in this situation) got a little slap. Boo hoo.

And yes, I thought the original thread posting was a tad insensitive.

[Karenina]

34. OK, DK... Please don't grab the nuke football on me.

Having children rewires the brains of both males and females. One can observe in the animal kingdom what happens if the young are threatened. I once was silly enough to ignore Farmer McMillan's warning and jumped over the fence to pet and play with the oh-so-cute piglets. I spent several hours up a tree, waiting patiently for him to do his rounds and get me the hell outta there. I got switched and NO LAWSUITS were forthcoming.

And I meant NO HARM to the yung'uns.

That happened waaaay back in the wayback when the adults of a community TRUSTED each other. Mr. M. swatted my bottom. Rightfully so. I would never have DARED to complain to my parents or anyone else (as that would have likely earned me yet another swat).

That said, in today's world, those "community values" are a thing of the past. "Violence" towards children is a hot-button issue. I do not consider getting my butt swatted "violence" nor did my parents. CONTEXT IS EVERYTHING.

An unrelated adult physically attacking a child is another matter to a parent. Doubtless you've read the tales of a 4', 100 lb mother lifting a semi to rescue her kid. Or maybe, more recently, the brawl on Mothers' Day where a 24yr-old, clueless mom attacked a 56 yr-old woman for screaming "SHUT UP" in her kid's face. It is a psychic connexion that defies analysis.

I had to apologize to a dear friend who left his daughter in my care when he had "short-hop" concerts. Kid and I got along famously but I was ALWAYS harshly critical of what he allowed her to "get away with." Perhaps that was the reason I was part of his "village." I could enforce what he could not. She KNEW if I was around certain behaviours would NOT get a free-pass but somehow HE could not enforce the boundaries I set. It was only after I dealt with my own kid units that the light went on.

What is INSENSITIVE, DK, is the very thought that ANYONE has the "right" to
use PHYSICAL VIOLENCE against a child. That mentality is what perpetuates the FUBAR fix we're all in.

[Darth_Kitten]

41. I'm not pro-violence by any means............

I've seen too much crap in my own life to have any liking for violence.

I just happen to have a low threshold for tolerating bad behaviour on the part of children (and if I haven't said it already, for the bad behaviour of adults) I'm not a very patient person at times, so I could at least understand, to a point, somebody snapping and giving a kid a swat on the face.

[Karenina]

45. Slapping a child in the face

is a HUGE NO-NO, way up there on the list of "how to guarantee non-compliant behaviour and future issues." It's a humiliating and ineffective tactic which shows the adult in question is out of control.

Think for a moment, DK, about the increasing number of neuro-ATYPICAL kids today and their (sometimes sadly clueless) parents. What you may see as "bratty" may be a manifestation they haven't admitted, think is "just a phase" or actually believe is "normal." I must admit to occasionally wishing parenthood required a licensing process. :evilgrin:

There's a post downthread which I will respond to. Please do read them both. :hug:

[Danger Mouse]

51. Sorry, no dice.

You don't hit someone else's fucking kid. PERIOD. If he can't handle a little disrespect, then he chose the wrong profession.

[Danger Mouse]

20. It wasn't even one of his students.

It was someone else's kid. If some asshole slapped my little sister, I would lay his ass out, even if she WAS being a little brat (and she often is).

[Darth_Kitten]

29. Oh, and go to jail?

:)

[fizzgig]

21. you're a good man, hun

:hug:

[Danger Mouse]

22. some of my coworkers go home with bruises,

and staff have been injured by kids before.
i mean, sometimes they'll hurl desks, so eventually someone gets hurt...

[xmas74]

27. I know exactly how you feel.

Up until Tuesday I was working w/ DD clients. I wish someone had just stuck their tongue out at me instead of spitting at me, slapping me, punching me, kicking me, elbowing me, shoving me, attempting to stab me and spitting blood in my face, along w/ a nice variety of threats toward myself and my young child.

If you can't handle someone sticking a tongue out at you-well, the teacher has no business in the education field.

[Danger Mouse]

7. What a manly man, slapping a six-year old.

If the teacher worked where I did, he'd probably be in tears. Fucking wus.

[Iris]

12. exactly. If he reacts this way to a kid he (presumably) doesn't even know,

how does he control his classroom?

[Danger Mouse]

13. He smacks em around a little.

That's what they get for giving him sass :P

[Heidi]

15. Who's the adult in this situation?

Seems to me that an adult who (I assume) has at least some background in early childhood education and child psychology allowed himself to be manipulated by a bratty kid whose parents had abdicated their responsibility to teach the kid civility. I have little patience with bratty kids and much prefer cats, but it doesn't escape me (when in the presence of bratty kids) that most kids aren't born that bratty, and that I'm the adult in the situation. Hard to fault the kid, in my opinion.

[philosophie_en_rose]

32. I agree with you completely. Nothing excuses this behavior.

This is kid may have been disrespectful, but this teacher was an adult. Teaching kids that violence and lashing out in anger are the ways to deal with "disrespect" is both wrong and exactly what creates that kind of behavior in the first place.

So instead of snotty kids, you get violent snotty kids who smack smaller people. Nice.

[Pithlet]

42. I agree 100% with your first point. Not so much with the second.

Most kids are indeed born "bratty" (I really hate that word). They aren't miniature adults that become children because of bad parenting. Even the most flawless parenting won't always yield perfect little darlings at all times. Not even most of the time. Even the most well behaved kids you've ever seen have their moments, and they don't have little buttons on their back where you can turn them off instantly when they start throwing a fit or misbehaving. They simply don't have the impulse control naturally, which is why parents have to step in, of course.

But, if you have a kid, you are bound to have the moments where nothing you do instantly shuts off the screaming and water works, no matter how brilliant and perfect you are as a parent, and then you get the hateful glares and muttered comments of "brat" as you slink out the door, mortified. You're judged a bad parent because you somehow forgot where the kid remote control was, or where the buttons to "control" your kid are located. It starts the first day you go out in public with them as infants. Have a special needs child who's needs aren't obvious to those who don't know him? Multiply all my points by 1000. I think most people who don't simply outright loath children would amend the way they think at least a little if they spent just one day with me. I get glared at every single time I go out in public. I'm a horrible parent because their perfect day was spoiled by having to hear my son scream for a few seconds. I'm loathed. I'm a beast. And my child is devil spawn. It's a lot better now that he's older, but we still have our bad days. Even my "normal" child has his moments. He's a kid, not a small adult. He isn't a bratty kid just because his behavior doesn't conform to those who don't know or understand kids. And I'm not a bad parent, though many will read this post and judge me so, and think I'm merely in denial. Some may even respond and say so; they've done so here in the past. Even some who are parents, or know of parents of such children, may hold their "easy" child up as an example of how it can be done, so anyone with a more spirited child must be failing as a parent. Because individual personalities and temperaments apparently don't develop until one is an adult.

Getting back to the OP, lord knows there are bad parents out there who have totally lost control, or never had it in the first place, and their children are consistently badly behaved because of it. But unless you know them personally, it's hard to judge based on one incident. There is no way to know if the boy in this story is a victim of his bad parents, or if he was simply being the "brat" that most kids are at some point or another.

[Karenina]

46. My "atypical" son graduated from University yesterday.

When he was 3, one doctor at UCLA strongly advised me to institutionalize him as he would never be able to learn anything. Our "luck" was he had an older "normal" brother and my dad was a neuropsychiatrist. I knew where to look to find out what the medical profession did and didn't know.

Kidlink had odd behaviours. In public I was ALWAYS in behaviour mod mode.

These are the last paragraphs of a piece I wrote nearly 20 years ago which was rejected from a popular women's magazine because it "didn't work."

We were fortunate. My son is classified "high-functioning" which means he is not severely affected. He has had early, aggressive intervention and has been successfully mainstreamed into a pre-school setting where he continues to make progress with his interactive skills.

It's a daily challenge to parent such children. They can be physically attractive and appear "normal" so people don't understand why they won't make eye contact, speak when spoken to, do bizarre things or just "go off."
I recall going through my routine to manage a tantrum in a restaurant. Despite my success, the woman behind me glared, whispered to her companion, then said in a loud voice, "WHAT AN AWFUL SPOILED BRAT!" I was exhausted, hungry and as the tears welled up I quietly responded, "He's not spoiled, he's autistic." I saw in her blank gaze she had no idea what that meant.

[Danger Mouse]

49. People who don't have a kid like that or don't work with them (as I do)

simply don't KNOW. I don't work with autistic kids, but emotionally disturbed is still pretty intense.
People just don't 'get' it...they're not bad kids. They do bad things, but inside, they're not bad. You can't help each one, but you can do the best you can to help as many as you can. Some kids succeed. Some kids fail. When a kid fails, sometimes it's us that's failed them. Sometimes the parents. Sometimes, it's just bad luck.
But lack of compassion from ignorant adults always INFURIATES me. Some people just don't get what kind of kids I work with either. They just don't understand.
'Awful spoiled brat...' I would like to see that dumbass deal with your kid, or any kid with problems. It's incredibly draining, it's very difficult, and it doesn't help when ignorant dumbasses have to chip in their obnoxious 2 cents.
'What an awful spoiled brat!'
my response:
'What an ignorant nosy asshole!'

[Karenina]

52. The "brat" GRADUATED from University yesterday!!!

:bounce::cry::bounce::cry::bounce:

[styersc]

18. Should have stabbed him in the eye with a steak knife.

If you fail to discipline children they will grow up to be violent.

[Redneck Socialist]

25. Well, what do you expect...

it was the kid's idea to go to Olive Garden. :evilgrin:

[gollygee]

26. He slapped a kid because he stuck out his tongue?

Slapping is worse than sticking out a tongue.

I have taken my daughter out of a restaurant and sat with her in the car while everyone else enjoyed dessert after she stuck her tongue out at me though.

[Blue Diadem]

43. I had a mother of my son's playmate tell me she'd shove her fist

down my son's throat(he was TWO!) if he ever stuck his tongue out at her. :scared:

People are wacky sometimes. That happened nearly 30 yrs ago. She eventually did go into therapy thank goodness.

[Scooter24]

31. While I can't condone his actions

I absolutely abhor parents who can't or refuse to raise their children to behave in public. Tantrums do happen, but parents need to learn to gain control of the situation instead of just sitting there with the "kids will be kids" attitude.

[Karenina]

35. And when THEY fail

it IS up to the rest of us to set OUR boundaries in ways that serve our and the childrens' best interests.

[Ariana Celeste]

36. talk about lack of self control.

jesus christ.

[Pushed To The Left]

37. The teacher's lucky he didn't get his ass kicked! I don't have any kids, but if I did

and somebody pulled that, they would most likely be in for a very painful experience.

[BarenakedLady]

40. That would not fly with me.

NO ONE hits my kids. NO ONE.

[dropkickpa]

47. Exactly!

Lay a hand on my kid, expect me to lay my fists on you. Plain and simple. And I doubt a jury would be very sympathetic to a stranger physically attacking a 6 year-old child. Parents have been investigated for child abuse for a slap, so no fucking WAY is it okay for a stranger to think they have the right. And really, a tongue being stuck out? How old is that teacher that it would provoke such an uncontrolled reaction? 6 like the kid? Jumpin Jeebus on a pogostick, revoke his teaching license ASAP. I certainly would pull my child from his class.

[Karenina]

53. NO ONE hits my little friends either

INCLUDING A PARENT, if said parent is looking out of control. My skating buddy, Troy (9), was dawdling after our ice dancing session, picking at a slice in his boot while his mom was kvetching at him to take them off. I FELT her SNAP, begin to lunge and (I CANNOT explain to this day what got into me) put my body in her path. "Do NOT hit him! GO SIT DOWN." I sat down next to Troy and just gave him a look, he had his boots off in record time.
Handed him my cloth to wipe his blades and said, "Don't make your mom nuts. Ask her nicely to glue your boot back together, OK?" I'll never forget the look on his face as he said "OK" grabbed his bag and exited.

[AnnieBW]

48. There's a lot of 6-year-olds in restaurants that I'd like to slap, too

People don't control their kids while they're out to eat. Not every restaurant is Chuck-E-Cheese, people!!! :mad: Teach your brats how to behave in public!

[Danger Mouse]

50. So you're saying it's okay to slap someone else's kid if they're 'disrespecting' you?

[AnnieBW]

54. Of course not

But I'd sure like to.

[Danger Mouse]

55. Yeah. Believe me, there are times that you'd love to give a kid a good slap.

But we know better.
Unlike that asshole.