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| Boys will be boys on Las Ramblas, Barcelona |
Today's front page story:
young children (5, 6, 7) are being suspended from various elementary schools in the USA for bringing plastic weapons to school, making "terroristic" threats and also, using their hands to simulate weapons.
I sympathize with the school administrators who need to make decisions to ensure safety for large numbers of children. I sympathize with them even if (as my colleague Eric Spiegel and I were just discussing) we sometimes get more or less silly requests as child psychiatrists to "certify" that a child is safe, as a condition of return to school.
However....it is notoriously unsafe to be in a world where being a child can get you suspended. I remember that world well: one of my earliest memories of attending "maternelle" (French Preschool) at 2 1/2 or 3 is that we were being punished for being kids: no talking, running, laughing etc...or punishment (e.g., scotch tape on the mouth for talking.)
So, Dear School Principals, next time a kid makes a gun with his or her hand, please have a conversation with him or her if you don't like it. Explain why it makes YOU uncomfortable in your world that you acutely feel is less safe in the last couple months.
Do not spread the germs of your discomfort to those young uns entrusted to you.
Till Later,
Anne
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