8-year-old arrested for alleged tantrum

By Associated Press
Posted March 4 2005

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. -- Police arrested an 8-year-old boy who allegedly had a violent outburst in school, head-butting his teacher and kicking an assistant principal, when he was told he couldn't go outside to play with other students.

The 4-foot pupil was led away from Rawls Byrd Elementary School in handcuffs Tuesday and charged with disorderly conduct and assault and battery.
"It's not something that happens every day," Maj. Stan Stout said of what could be the department's youngest arrest ever.

Stout said the chair-tossing, desk-turning outburst occurred after a teacher, and later the assistant principal, attempted to stop the boy from joining his classmates.

The child was later released to his parents.

We had a kid like that in school, when I was young, he was very, very scary. No control whatsoever, this child needs help and quick. I wonder at the handcuffs though, but he may have given them no choices.

Call in the Super Nanny.

I don't think the kid needed that kind of negative attention; he is definitely OLD enough to understand what he did wrong - there has to be something he can't express that resulted in this terrible behavior! It's the teacher and principals fault for getting in the way - they should have left him; showed no signs of attention and he probably would have stopped. once he calmed down - I'm sure a therapist or counselor in school could have better handled the situation.

ahhh I think it's due to possibly 2 things...

1. the child has a legit medical problem or
2. bad parenting....

my guess......

number 2.

maybe it's some kind of right wing conspiracy, with these kids lately

lack of social skills!
parents are probably on the computer all day...

on the forums....

I swear - if my kids acted like that - I'd walk away and pretend I was by myself!

Remember back in the old days when the kid would not act like that in school in fear of having the crap kicked out of him at home after the parents were called. Society has gone so far to protect the children by not allowing parenting as we know it and thereby creating the ridlin generation.

Ritalin for everyone......

It's all about respect, and in my opinion it's getting tough to teach it!

I know - I think a kid needs to know fear in order to have respect. I had a military Dad...yes sir! When I was a kid, i feared my dad - as I got older - he wasn't so scary...he was my best friend and confidante. I NEVER talked back to my parents!

hehe. My dad was extremely strict when I was growing up. Now, at 94, he says *I'm* domineering... I think that's almost a compliment - although he claims he doesn't know where I learned it. lol.

When he's having a tantrum, I just threaten to walk away and leave him alone. That usually does it. Never any need to get out the hairbrush or belt, or anything else that was used on me!

I hold up 5 fingers and start counting down. No one knows what will happen if I get to 1; all I have to do now is raise 5 fingers - and my kids KNOW!!

Must have been the teachers fault.

Just kidding... don't bite my head off. Just seems that more and more people blame the schools and teachers.

What the article doesn't say is if the kid had a developmental or physical disability. I reserve judgement on anyone till that's known. It's not always about discipline. Until we knew that my son had an acutaly disability, I was banging my head against the wall trying to figure out what I was doing wrong as a parent, but at the same time my 6th sense was saying, "Something just isn't right. A child doesn't act like this for no reason."

It's hard to know the full story when only half of it was printed.

Could be attributed to class oversizing....

i guess it's easy to assume - if the kid was taken away in handcuffs - he probably was not in a "special ed" program that knows how to deal with this type of behavior;

Wow, arrested today...
When something similiar happened about 7 years ago, they put the kid in the "special" classes.