Criminalization of childhood behavior

Three issues of concern 

1. The disconnect between discipline and child development
2. The removal of authority to discipline from parents and educators to law enforcement
3. The criminalization of normal childhood behavior

These three are interrelated, and seem to be undergirded by bias against black and brown people. Let us take number 1. Humans go through a process of growth and development that is obvious to everyone. We observe children move from being infants who are totally dependent, to fully independent adults over the course of about 21 years. No-one expects a two-year old to get up, make breakfast, shower, prepare for school or work and manage the day by themselves.

Children go through stages of development; and each stage is accompanied by certain typical behaviors, within a range (give or take).no two children are the same, but we have general expectations about how they will behave at a given age. When a child’s behavior is very different from what you would normally expect, it is usually because that child is under some type of physical or emotional stress; or going through some kind of trauma.

So, if a seven-year-old is in a school throwing a tantrum, the appropriate response is NOT to call the Resource officer or the police and put that child in handcuffs. That is de facto child abuse. It is similar to putting a child who has come down with a high fever, to stand out in the cold pouring rain for hours. Or making a child with a broken leg run laps around a sports arena to fix the leg. If a parent were to handcuff a child who is throwing a tantrum, the police would be called on that parent. How could it be right for the police or people in institutions that are supposed to care for children permitted to do this? Some of the procedures used to control children in such cases and in such places may be legal, may be protocol, but they are wrong!!!

The ability to discipline children appropriately should be the purview of parents and educators; given the proper education, strategies, and authority.

Fear of legal action seems to have been given priority over the well-being of children. Even normal human contact in the course of teaching seems to be forbidden. Teachers are supposed to be in loco parentis.
We need education requirements, and policy and procedural changes that would rectify these issues.

1. Parents must be given to information and effective strategies to address their children’s behavior. For many parents, Caribbean and black parents in particular, the common mode of discipline was corporal punishment. This has more or less been removed by law, and nothing put in its place, except police intervention, which I would argue is far more traumatic and dangerous to the well-being of a child; in the immediate and in their future life. There is of course, discipline; and there is abuse.

 
   2. Everyone: teachers and all educators at all levels, police officers and everyone in the juvenile justice systems, must be required to have training in child and adolescent development; understand what is normal behavior, and be trained in ways to de-escalate and deal with difficult situations.