Boy Put In 'Body Sock' At School Outrages Parent (WTF??)

[The Straight Story]

Boy Put In 'Body Sock' At School Outrages Parent
Family Considers Lawsuit Against School Board

POSTED: 11:47 am EST January 23, 2007

A family in Pinellas County, Fla., whose son was put into a large "body sock" by teachers as punishment, is considering suing the school board after an investigation found the sack was used appropriately on the boy.

Recently, some school pre-kindergarten teachers came under fire when parent Patrick Holt complained that a "body sock" was used on his 4-year-old son without his permission.

"I don't like it at all," Holt said. "I don't think it should be used on anybody."


The manufacturers said the "body sock" is designed to help children explore three-dimensional space. And, an occupational therapist said the "body sock" is primarily meant for autistic children.



http://www.local6.com/spotlight/10823296/detail.html

[KamaAina]

1. Well, if it's meant for autistic children, then it must be OK

:sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm:

And, an occupational therapist said the "body sock" is primarily meant for autistic children.

Anyone attempting to put this child with autism (now you know) in a "body sock" could well have wound up in a body cast!

[ThomCat]

2. Using a therapy tool as punishment?

:wtf:

I'd sue their asses off too. x(

[Vincardog]

3. I suspect the "Body Sock" was really used as a Straight Jacket.

"Teachers behaved in an appropriate manner in responding to a situation where a student needed to be calmed down for the safety and security of all the students in the classroom," Pinellas County School Board member Andrea Zahn said.

[Odin2005]

4. As a person with an Autism spectrum disorder I find this disgusting.

[hedgehog]

5. School boards fascinate me

They are supposed to reflect the local community, but I can't think of any other governingbody that is less responsive to the people it serves. Just parents and students how many petty rules exist in their schools and how often they are consulted about them.

[maveric]

6. If a teacher put my 4 yr old in a body sock, they be in a body bag!

What kind of shit is that?

[Rex]

7. I smell resignation letters coming from miles away!

Stupid stupid stupid!

[Hobarticus]

8. Breaking: Child in body sock kicked off plane...

Not to make fun of this, this is totally inappropriate, but damn....what's with Florida and kids???

[DaveJ]

9. How come most these crazy stories seem to come from Fla.?

n/t

[Hobarticus]

10. ZACTLY!!! EOM

[trumad]

13. Here comes the Florida talking point

ugg... and where are you from because I'm sure a Google kind find equal crazies in your home state.

[RubyDuby in GA]

16. Only because it's cold in GA today - most of the crazies are from here

but we don't like to get out in the cold.

:)

[DaveJ]

19. I'd like to see some of those stories...

Chicago feels pretty plain and boring sometimes. I guess our newspapers just don't pay much attention to stuff like this when it happens.

[Hobarticus]

21. What are you, crazy?!? There are no crazies here....eom

[Greyhound]

12. Except when they come out of Texas.

Today it appears to Florida's turn.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=15427&mesg_id=15427

Could it be toxic substances in the water/air that hinders social/mental development? They're also consistently among the worst educational systems, coincidence?

[Mnemosyne]

23. Not always! We recently had a woman beat her boyfriend

with her infant about 40 miles from us - NW PA.

And there was the pizza guy with the collar bomb.

[dogday]

11. This may keep them from hurting others, but not themselves

and if they are in such bad shape, you have to put them in one of those outfits, then they could self mutilate as well... Makes no sense therefore it is senseless to do this....

[acmejack]

14. Pic of Bodysock

[Dora]

50. That's really scary. I'd flip if I was put in there involuntarily. n/t

[Cleita]

15. Whatever happened to sending disruptive children to the

principal's office? First it removes the disruptive child from the classroom. It puts the child in a quiet place to think about what he has done while he waits in the anteroom under the watchful eye of another adult who is not his teacher. The principal can call the parents if it's determined to be a disciplinary problem beyond the boundaries that the school can handle.

[RubyDuby in GA]

18. Well, for one thing, that makes too much sense

An awful lot of common sense is lacking in just about every area of life nowadays.

[Mnemosyne]

24. It's being replaced with humiliation and trauma?

:shrug:

:hi:

[marshall]

26. Remember that kid in Florida?

She completely trashed the principal's office. If the principal in this case is anything like the one I had when I was teaching, the teachers were told just to handle problems themselves and not bother the office.

[donco6]

27. BWA ha HA!

Have you even BEEN in a school lately? Do you know how many kids are sent to the office every goddam day? The waiting room in our schools have a line around the room and out the door. And that's only for the ones the teachers can't handle! And the poor secretary is supposed to watch all of them, greet people who come in, answer the phone, receive packages from UPS, find lost lunch cards, clean up the vomit from the 1st graders in the hall, etc. etc.

You people with these rosy pictures of days gone by just slay me . . .

[Cleita]

31. Sorry for me being retired and all, but

it seems like it did work back in my day. If the schools are as unruly as you say, then shouldn't some education think tank somewhere, think about it and come up with a solution? Also, in my past experience, it wasn't the secretary who watched the kids but another member of the faculty like a teacher's assistant or the school nurse, who would have been called in anyway for a consultation particularly if it involved a fight and bloody noses..

[donco6]

36. Well, maybe before you spout off next time, you'll think

School is NOT like it was in your day. There ARE no other faculty members sitting around waiting to "watch kids." They're all "administrators" remember? We don't need them, that's why they've all been CUT. School nurse? What's that? We have a para who comes for 6 hours a week. Paras? If you have a high needs special ed kid you might get one, but they're not available to go to the office.

Wake the hell up.

[Cleita]

38. Oh, I'm not allowed to spout off an opinion?

I really don't mind anyone coming in and setting the record straight if I am in error or if things have changed. I did qualify the time period as being in the past so I feel my experience is as valid as yours. I do resent someone telling me as rudely as possible to "wake the hell up". Maybe what your school and neighborhood needs is some etiquette lessons from Miss Manners. Problem solved from all sides.

However, since I count some teachers as my neighbors I asked them about your statement and apparently it's not a nationwide phenomenon and it seems that a conference between school counselors (never had those in my day, parents and "administrators" do take place behind closed doors to solve disruptive child problems. So before you spout off, be aware that one size does not fit all.

[donco6]

39. Not unless you at least have SOME facts to back it up.

Which you obviously do not.

[Cleita]

40. And you do? 'scuse me but you are trying to tell me that

what I experienced in school didn't happen? That's mighty grandiose of you. Okay two can play this game. Prove that what happens in your school as you said it happens, because my teacher neighbors don't think that's right. Also, one of them is a teacher at a last chance high school where incorrigible students are sent for their last chance at an education because they couldn't play nice in the mainstream city high school.

So wasn't this thread about appropriate discipline in the classroom? All I said was remove them from the classroom and deal with it from there. I only recounted my school experience that seemed to work at that time, since I am a great believer in learning from what worked and didn't work in the past. It doesn't mean that other means can't be used as long as they aren't abusive. The point is to remove the disruptive student from the classromm and take it from there.

You know my father went to school in an era when kids were made to sit in a corner with a duncecap, or made to wear their chewing gum on their foreheads, and many other humiliating disciplinary acts that were deemed, by the time I went to school as unacceptable practices because they humiliated the student in front of his classmates. I believe this sock thing falls in the duncecap category.

[Name removed]

41. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Cleita]

43. Go look in the mirror.

you're too ignorant to even converse with on an intelligent level.

Buh, bye.

[Blue-Jay]

46. Wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?

Jeez, what a meanie.

[asthmaticeog]

48. I'm just amazed, here.

It'd be quite enough to simply contrast your experiences with those of others. The personal digs ("Coffee klatsch?" Ageist and sexist much?) and the astonishing hostility are completely out of line. Whoever you're REALLY mad at, take it out on them, not some random DUer you disagree with. I'm certainly succeptible to being dickish in this forum, but you're just around the fucking BEND. And for god's sake, if you're really rocking that short a fuse, QUIT TEACHING NOW before we have to read a news item about YOU humiliating some kid.

[ieoeja]

44. No, Cleita, donco6 has all the answers.

For donco6 looked in his/her magic ball and saw that THIS school is the same as HIS/HER school and nothing like the school in your day or the school where my kid goes ... today.

I've spent a great deal of time in my kid's public school the last two years. I have never seen a line "around the room and out the door" waiting to see the principal. In fact, I have never seen even ONE kid waiting in line to see the principal. I'm sure it must happen that more than one kid gets sent to the office at the same time, but I haven't witnessed it and am pretty certain, given the circumstances of my visits to the school, that I would have been so informed. Four years ago the school had a separate disciplinarian to handle this task. But when he retired they saw no reason to keep on the guy because the work load just wasn't there.

If there was a line I suppose her secretary would have to watch all of them. However, it wouldn't be one of those receiving packages from UPS, etc (except for the vomit) as those secretaries are in a completely separate office on the opposite side of the building from the principal's office and manned by THREE secretaries. The vomit would be cleaned up by one of the sanitation engineers.

The school generally keeps at least one extra faculty member in house every day to relieve others as needed.

The school nurse is in every day. As is the school social worker. And a special ed teacher for kids who spend most of their time in regular classrooms leaving her the flexibility to move around.

donco6, I am really sorry to hear about the state of schools in your district. But you're a complete idiot for assuming that all schools are as fucked up as yours. You're also an ass. Not so much for "assuming" as for the manner in which you addressed Cleita who said nothing here that deserved your nasty response.

And let me save you from making assumptions about "rich kids in wealthy or private schools". My kid goes to a majority Hispanic Chicago Public School in a working class neighborhood. It is an honest to goodness inner city school full of minorities.

[Dora]

45. Wow. Why such hostility?

I'm flabbered.

[donco6]

47. Why? WHY?

Well, when someone who doesn't know anything about anything comes in and says, "Whatever happened to just sending kids to the office" (i.e., those school people are just so stupid they can't even figure this out), it just torques me off. That's why. It seems that when some dumbass teacher in some school somewhere in America does something stupid, it's open season on all of public education around here. And I just get fucking sick of it.

[Dora]

49. She knows from her own experience.

Because Cleita's experience doesn't validate yours, that doesn't mean she doesn't know anyting. She knows what she knows, and she knows different from you.

If you're so fucking sick of it, it sounds like you need a break from whatever "it" is.

[Susang]

54. You know what I'm fucking sick of?

Unprovoked and vicious personal attacks against other DUers. You had absolutely no right to go off on Cleita that way and I'm pretty sure that you know it.

[WI_DEM]

17. Why don't they just call the parents and have them leave work or wherever and come and take control

of their kids if the teachers can't handle it. Then the schools and teachers don't have to get blamed for doing something inappropriate.

[partylessinOhio]

20. Just more school insanity. Parents, get off your rumps and get yourself

into the schools to see what goes on there. We used to patrol the halls at our local high school after some things came to light like removing all the doors from the stalls in every girls bathroom because some were smoking in the stalls. We were taxpayers and the school administrators could not keep us out.

I suggest that in this case the teachers be put in the body bag.

[Mnemosyne]

25. We need video cameras that the parents can connect with

from work a couple times a day. If the kids/teachers/administrators know the parents are watching, maybe behavior/over-reactions would temper themselves? :shrug:

[Mnemosyne]

22. Try this one: NYCLU Calls On State Regents To Reject Regulations Permitting Schools; Noxious Stimuli

http://www.nyclu.org/nysed_specialed_behaviour_rules_pr_010807.html

:grr:
NYCLU Calls On State Regents To Reject Regulations Permitting Schools To Use Noxious Stimuli To Punish Students With Disabilities
ni
snip>

January 8, 2007 -- The New York Civil Liberties Union today called on the New York State Board of Regents to reject regulations that would permit New York State schools to use electric skin shock, electric shocks, beatings, isolation, restraints, food deprivation, and other "aversive" stimuli to control the behaviors of children with disabilities.

In June 2006 the New York Board of Regents approved "emergency regulations" that permit New York State schools to use, on a "child-specific" basis, aversive behavioral interventions and restraint and seclusion techniques to punish or control children with disabilities who attend New York State schools. At its January 2007 meeting, the Board of Regents are expected to vote to decide whether to make the regulations permanent. These techniques, the NYCLU maintains,

* serve no therapeutic or educational purpose;
* are an extremely poor substitute for staff and other resources necessary to provide appropriate treatment and supports for persons with mental retardation; and
* can be -- and often are -- easily abused.

snip>

Added Donna Lieberman, NYCLU Executive Director: "Over thirty years ago the NYCLU successfully sued New York State to end institutional practices that dehumanized children with disabilities who were being 'educated' at the infamous Willowbrook State School. Like the practices we saw at Willowbrook, aversive behavioral interventions and seclusion and restraint practices dehumanize without serving any therapeutic purpose. The Board of Regents must ban them, not endorse them."


:grr:
Testimony Of Beth Haroules On Behalf Of
The New York Civil Liberties Uon

Before The Office Of Vocational And Educational Services For Individuals With Disabilities Of The New York State Education Department

Concerning Proposed Regulations Relating To Aversive Behavioral Interventions


August 14, 2006

snip>

These regulations now authorize New York State educators to subject children with disabilities to noxious, painful, or intrusive stimuli or activities intended to induce pain. Personnel would be authorized to apply ice to children's skin; to hit, kick, pinch or strangle them; to perform deep muscle squeezes; or to subject them to electric skin shock, and painful water sprays or inhalants such as ammonia. They could also withhold sleep, shelter, bedding, bathroom facilities, meals, water, or clothing from children whose behavior was inappropriate or inconvenient. They could also alter fundamental food staples, putting urine in water or Tabasco sauce on food, for example. Children could routinely be put into restraint in non-emergency situations. Children could also be confined to "time out rooms" from which they could not exit and in which they would stay unsupervised.

A wide range of safe positive methods are available which are not only more effective in managing or redirecting "problem" behaviors, but which do not inflict pain on, humiliate, or dehumanize individuals with disabilities. The practice of subjecting individuals with disabilities to what are termed "aversive interventions" to control behaviors that are associated with their disabilities is outmoded and ineffective. Aversive behavioral interventions and seclusion and restraint practices, including time out rooms, are punishment and control techniques. These techniques serve no therapeutic purpose, much less any educational purpose. They are an extremely poor substitute for staff and provision of other resources which are necessary to provide appropriate treatment and supports for persons with mental retardation. As punishment and control techniques, these behavioral "interventions" can be and often are easily abused -- as they were at the Willowbrook State School.

snip>

The use of aversive behavioral interventions and restraint and seclusion techniques on children with cognitive and other mental disabilities is especially unacceptable given the unique functional characteristics of these persons. Behavioral programs using aversive behavioral interventions and restraint and seclusion techniques focus only on the behavior itself, and do not consider the core issues causing the perceived unacceptable behavior. Aversive behavioral interventions and restraint and seclusion techniques also ignore the neurological context of behavior, frequently targeting aspects of the disability that are not under the individual's control.

The primary characteristics which distinguish persons with mental retardation from the rest of us are limitations on their functional and intellectual capacities. These limitations vary from one individual to another and are the fundamental consideration in the design of treatment strategies and supports. Research on the function of behavior problems in persons with severe disabilities demonstrates that some behaviors may be perceived by others to be undesirable but may actually represent a response to environmental conditions and, in some cases, a lack of alternative communication skills.5 Services should include behavioral and environmental systems of supports that will enhance the person's independence and self-determination (ability to make choices). Such an approach is administratively complex. It requires an investment of time and resources including intensive staff involvement and creation of appropriate environmental supports. Because the functional capabilities of individuals with mental illness and mental retardation constantly change in response to environmental and other factors, programs of services and supports require continual reassessment and adjustment.

Much more at link:
http://www.nyclu.org/nysed_specialed_behaviour_rules_tstmny_081406.html

Important subject. How we treat the least of these...
Thread on it almost ignored:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=250&topic_id=2498


And someone would be very sorry if they upset my grandchild by putting him in one of those "socks".:nuke:

[donco6]

28. I've been in schools for 15 years and have never

seen a "body sock" or a kid getting shocked or beaten as punishment - or for any other reason.

[Mnemosyne]

30. I just reported what I read donco. I wish I

could believe these stories are all bull, but it's out there. The link was at the ACLU site.

[LaurenG]

29. We never had body socks when I was in school

and no one ever acted so poorly that they'd get put into one even if we did have them.

I think many parents don't keep their kids in line like they used to and the schools can't handle the lack of manners and discipline. Not that I'm condoning the use of that thing.

I'm glad I don't have small children.

[Cleita]

32. When I went to public schools the principal's office had a

rubber hose that supposedly was used on misbehaving kids. I never knew anyone that was ever rubber hosed though but the threat was always there hanging over our heads. Maybe it was the psychology that made it work.

I usually went to parochial school and "das nuns had der vays". *evil laugh*

:evilgrin:

[Avalon Sparks]

33. Adult Body Socks

and of course...

[Avalon Sparks]

34. even baby body socks...

[Avalon Sparks]

35. And finally a Body Sock Mobile

[xultar]

37. BUHWAWAWA!

[BlueStorm]

42. Now my mom would sa;y that this is evidence that there is no discipline and that spanking should

be allowed back in the schools. I tend to agree with her, though it should be a monitored type punishment. She tells me that when she was in school kids had that fear and respect and didn't dare to act up.

And what about detention? I remember being in detention quite a bit when I was young.

Blue

[Cleita]

51. Disciplinary guidelines from my local school district from their

website.

http://www.luciamar.k12.ca.us/education/sctemp/715146b57ea18a8e9e28cadccb793af3/5442-1_Students-Discipline-Educational_Behavior_Regulations.pdf

Since it's in pdf format I can't copy bits of it, but it's interesting that the guidelines formed in 1966 have stood the test of time with only a few revisions in 1990 and 1994.

[The Straight Story]

53. Here is some text from it (I can copy and paste pdf with the text select tool)

5. Use appropriate intervention techniques before using the district referral
form. Recommended interventions could include:
a. Warning or counseling the student.
b. Altering seating arrangement in the classroom.
c. Assigning time out of classroom.
d. Contacting the parent.

[SoCalDem]

52. Has that 4 yr old been in a school since he was potty-trained?

If so, maybe he was just having "a bad day at school".

I feel for the teachers of these young toddlers. Some of them may just be acting out from the powerlessness of it all.

Perhaps he just had his limit of being yanked out of a warm bed at 5:45 am so he could get schlepped to "school" until 6PM or so when Mom picks him up

Maybe he wanted to sleep until he woke up, have some cereal, lounge in the family room in pjs watching cartoons..and then ride his bike for a while..

It's not all that surprising to me that so many kids have behavior "issues". Many of them are in "school" for 10+ hours a day, get whisked home and are rushed through dinner, bathtime and then off to bed so they can do it all over again the next day.

[slackmaster]

55. There are much better options available for disciplining children