Five-year-old girl arrested

Wow that is just ridiculous! You do not handcuff a five year old girl.

What the hell is the world coming to? Handcuffing a 5-year-old girl and arresting her for throwing a tantrum?! And all this after she had already calmed down. Uh, can we go back to the good old days where teachers had the balls and the sense to yell at kids a give them a proper time-out, and call their parents if things got out of control?

A failure of the school, or a failure of the parents to teach their child what's appropriate and what isn't?

This is the age I'll be teaching next year (scary!). Obviously the teachers weren't trained well enough to know what to do when a child acts out. You can't necessarily blame the parents for a child's temper tantrum as all kids have them. It's how you properly handle it - in this case, it wasn't handled well.

PS - this happened back in April of 2005.

Ohmm..

Kinda drastic are we? We can arrest a 5-year old girl but the man at the head of the polygamist ranch couldnt be when he was caught. A little bit weird. Parents should take responsibility and teach them how to behave. This is old news anyway why do I care. Peace out.

--Jade

THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU! But seriously, this spoiled child needs to hear NO once in a while.

Having to put children with behavioral issues in some type of hold isn't that out of the ordinary. It seems that teachers should be trained in this.

There should be some type of age appropriate hold/response to behavioral issues without going to the lengths of getting the police, who usually end up fumbling around the situations anyway because they don't know what they are doing either.

Obviously she was out of control..it took 3 police officers to wrestle her down to the ground to hand cuff her and get settle her raging tantrum....

I've babysat worse 5 year olds than that young girl, so that school should feel ridiculous and ashamed for doing that.
I would have called her mom and told her to come get her daughter.

Well if the teachers are not smart enough to know how to digress a potentially dangerous situation for the child and its peers then they should be let go. She is five and they are adults, its obviously a situation that got way out of hand!

Whoa! That's a long cry from sitting in the corner.

Kind of makes you wish you could still spank your children doesn't it? My parents would have. Sounds like that kids parents should too.

I think the root of the problem is the home environment this little child has grown up in. If she is this angry at such a young age just imagine the horrors she has seen that have been her example. The mother has gotten a lawyer to try to sue the school and police. The social services should be brought into her home and she should be investgated. The mother also should spend some of that lawyers salary on counselling for her frustrated little girl.

This is an interesting case of children gone wild. Its pretty clear in the video the girl is out of control. They show her hitting her teacher and climbing on a table which supports there claim that she was a danger to others and to herself. I think calling the cops and arresting her is a bit extreme, but it was clear that an outside party needed to step in. (I would have called her mom, but that's me) I wish they showed the whole clip so that you could see how long she had been acting out, what steps they had tried, and what was said or done to eventually have her calm down. From the current editing it is unclear if she calmed down before or after the cops arrived, and if it was after how long they had to talk to her to have her calm down.
I don't think there is a case for a suite here, I mean your kid is out of control because they were never taught that it is inappropriate and you should respect your teacher. Yes, all kids act out but it is the duty of the parent, not the school or the police, to teach them what is right and wrong. Unfortunately there are some parents out there that put a large part of teaching right from wrong on other people. I don't know about everybody else, but I def learned how to behave from my parents, prior to attending school.
It really seems like something else is going on with this girl's life. Hopefully with all this attention to her outburst people will take a closer look to remedy the situation. Otherwise, look out when she gets older.

Children's Services should have been called. That little girl should never have been handcuffed. There is an obvious problem with her behavior, she needs intervention and some kind of counseling. The school and police were both out of line.

Totally agree, wellgroomedhost. Something is setting this child off, and if the school didn't offer some counselling or something after seeing this, then something's wrong.

Did you notice the 5 year old was black? I wonder if the situation would have been handle differently if she was white. I don't think race had anything to do with this, but did they really need 3 police officers to arrest a 5 year old?

The little they showed of the girl having a "tantrum" only showed the utter incompetence of the teacher. I've worked in kindergartens and we had children who at times were much more unruly than that - but with a modicum of knowledge of child psychology and some competence, we knew how to deal with this kind of incident, how to communicate with the child, how to restrain the child with gentleness and firmness if necessary, and never needing outside help and certainly not the police.

I understand the girl was out of control, but it looks like after the police showed up she was sitting quietly in the chair right before they handcuffed her... I think it was too drastic

one more reason to hate our school systems and our police!

From what was on the video, I have seen MUCH worse in students who have behavior disorders. There are things that one can do in a situation like that, but clearly the teachers in that situation were not prepared to handle children. Children hit sometimes and get upset and don't calm down. The instructors/classroom should have a procedure for that type of behavior.

I'm ashamed that we as a society don't know what to do with a typical temper-tantrum any more.

How hardcore of a tantrum did some 5 year old girl have to have for the school to call the cops. just outrageous.

She does not start screaming until after they handcuff her, kids throw tantrums and she had calmed down it appeared as she was sitting. This is not okay.

if i acted like that, the school would not have to call the cops. my parents would have been there in five minutes to tear my ass up.