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Post by Vince524 on Apr 14, 2018 13:36:51 GMT -5
He started it, as in this case, one boy attacked another. The other boy was defending himself. Hitting back to prevent further attack. Could they make the case that Henry should have notified an adult? Sure, but they're not doing that. Again, if they were to have punished the other boy by giving him a week In House Suspension, and Henry only 1, then they could claim that that they were being fair. Or give them both the suspension, but no trip for the other boy.
And it's not a given that Henry could have gotten help.
If you're trying to build kids into maturity, don't equate physically attacking a kid for no reason with hitting back. Both boys didn't chose to not restrain themselves in equal measure. One kid initiated it. Henry chose to respond, to defend himself, so that a week later the same boy or another kid wouldn't see him as easy prey.
What lesson is Henry learning here? That attacking a kid, and fighting back are equally bad? That if you don't have a teacher to come to your rescue, you're SOL.
It would also be a different case if the school took non punitive action against both kids, saying 'they worked it out, there was no damage.' Mark could argue the other boy deserved a punishment. But what case is there to punish Henry beyond the school wants to CYA and not have to take sides.
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Post by Christine on Apr 14, 2018 20:30:29 GMT -5
He started it, as in this case, one boy attacked another. The other boy was defending himself. Hitting back to prevent further attack. Could they make the case that Henry should have notified an adult? Sure, but they're not doing that. Again, if they were to have punished the other boy by giving him a week In House Suspension, and Henry only 1, then they could claim that that they were being fair. Or give them both the suspension, but no trip for the other boy. And it's not a given that Henry could have gotten help. If you're trying to build kids into maturity, don't equate physically attacking a kid for no reason with hitting back. Both boys didn't chose to not restrain themselves in equal measure. One kid initiated it. Henry chose to respond, to defend himself, so that a week later the same boy or another kid wouldn't see him as easy prey. What lesson is Henry learning here? That attacking a kid, and fighting back are equally bad? That if you don't have a teacher to come to your rescue, you're SOL. It would also be a different case if the school took non punitive action against both kids, saying 'they worked it out, there was no damage.' Mark could argue the other boy deserved a punishment. But what case is there to punish Henry beyond the school wants to CYA and not have to take sides. I think, possibly, you're going off of the OP and haven't fully considered the follow up post. I think the use of words like "attacked" and "defending himself" might be misguided in this case. I get the sense that it was more like that thing where one boy gives a challenging push, or shove, the other boy responds in kind, and it sort of unintentionally escalates, because, CHALLENGE. The boys themselves, by Mark's account, have no hard feelings towards each other as a result. It was, by my reading, one of those strange but typical encounters boys sometimes have with each other, like you see in the wild, with animals. It's utterly normal. And like I said before, it's my opinion that it's not punishable. But alas, since it's difficult to differentiate between boys who feel compelled to engage in this sort of behavior and bullies/victims, schools have, by and large, made rules about physical contact and whatnot. It's an imperfect system, to be sure. But the school, here, seems to have properly differentiated, and that's a good thing, I think. I could be wrong about this incident, but that's my sense of it. I think both boys were "at fault" for the encounter. Sorry, but I'm not buying that "he started it" is a justifiable reason for "ending it," physically (though, props, because, it's just one of those things where you're kind of proud of your kid for ending it, even though you probably shouldn't say so.) Again: it's completely normal to want to shove someone back who shoves you. I get it. I would want to do that too. But it's not necessarily the correct response. A kid giving you a shove does not relieve you of the responsibility to respond correctly, and intelligently. This is what I would say (and have said) to my boys. As far as the school's response, I can't agree that it's doing damage, sending the terrible message you claim it is, in this case. Sorry. I think overall, they most likely overreacted. But they are bound by rules. Their judgement according to those rules was basically fair. As a parent, I would focus (and have focused, as a parent) on correct behavior and not the school's arguable overreaction. (Though, to be clear, I've objected to school admin behavior in the past, and I've not tried to hide that from my kids. They've heard me bitch.) But where there is room for correction (and there usually is, in my own parenting experience) the focus should be on the kids learning from the experience. If you (editorial) want to focus on how unfair the schools are--while, may I suggest, sending the message that's it's totes cool to physically retaliate against any "assault," no matter the context, no matter how nonthreatening, is not a good message to send--then great. Teach your kids that. I haven't, and won't. There's a right time and a wrong time to use force. I want my kids to be fully capable of using force, but I want them to use it because it's the right thing--the only thing--to do. And may I just add, fuck middle-of-the-day school. My kids are each 7 years apart in age, I've been doing this for 21 years... just recently finally graduated from elementary school, forever, and in 2 more years I'll be done with middle school, forever. Hallelujah.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 14, 2018 21:03:07 GMT -5
Yes, they're bound by rules.
The rules say if someone hits you, you can fight back. They don't seem to have a rule saying "if you're in an altercation, then no matter what, no matter who started it, you get punished."
Is this "everyone is doing the wrong thing with their kid" week?
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Post by Christine on Apr 14, 2018 21:13:36 GMT -5
Yes, they're bound by rules. The rules say if someone hits you, you can fight back. They don't seem to have a rule saying "if you're in an altercation, then no matter what, no matter who started it, you get punished." The rules regarding "victims of bullying" are clear. This was arguably not the case. No one has claimed your second proposed rule. But at the same time, should the rule be, "if you're in an altercation, if the other person started it, you're exempt from disciplinary action"? No, it's "Cass, the champion of parents" week. ETA: I have not in any way been criticizing parents in my posts here, including Mark, who I've "known" internet-wise, for a decade, and whose kids I adore, having had the privilege of seeing pics and reading stories of them on Facebook. If I have in any way seemed critical of you, Mark, it was not my intent, and I apologize. My only intent was to offer advice from my experience. I think Henry is stellar in every way, and I know he will succeed, especially with parents like you and and his mom.
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Post by Vince524 on Apr 14, 2018 22:34:01 GMT -5
He started it isn't a defense if one boy says mean things and another boy responds by clocking him.
In his 2nd post, Mark reiterates that the other boy initiated the physical contact. You're using the term 'he started it', but saying Henry was attacked is another way to say it that's just as accurate.
Is it bullying? Friends can bully friends. Sometimes they're not great friends. I don't think we know the dynamics. In addition, kids (Especially boys) can often put things behind them, even after a physical fight. And part of that can be the fact that the kid attacked stood up for himself.
I think what Mark means(And he can correct me) is that it's not an ongoing bullying issue. But the 1st boy was out of line. Henry responded.
This isn't the school trying say, we need to find non violent solutions. This is them saying if there's any physical contact between students, were not going to care if one was a victim fighting back. They're saying if Henry had simply allowed himself to be hit, he wouldn't be punished. That's the lesson they're teaching here.
And what is the rule for if you can't defend yourself? Is Henry to be punished because it's not part of a larger pattern?
The other boy was at fault.
My daughter had a girl who picked on her, shoving her once. My daughter shoved her back. That was the end of it.
If the school had tried to discipline my daughter for that, I would have been at the school. Most likely, my wife would have gotten there first.
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Post by Christine on Apr 14, 2018 22:53:03 GMT -5
He started it isn't a defense if one boy says mean things and another boy responds by clocking him. It's also not a defense if one boy pushes another boy and the other boy knocks him out cold, right? It's also not a defense, in my opinion, if one boy pushes another boy, the other boy pushes back, then a knee to the stomach, then a knee to the balls, and this is all the acceptable, logical outcome of the initial shove, UNLESS the initial shove was threatening and there was no other recourse but to mount a defense that ended in a knee to the balls (again, with proper kudos to the KO). My point is, and has been, that if you're going to retaliate against a shove, then that shove needs to be either harmful, or hold a valid threat of future harm, to justify the retaliation, imo. As in the case with the story of your daughter, the shove was a step up from verbal bullying and clearly threatening because of the obvious escalation. The threat was there. This was not between girls who were "basically friends." Yes, the other boy was out of line. Yes, the other boy was at fault. This is not in dispute. My point is, and has been, that the initial shove in this altercation does not seem, by Mark's account, to be bullying, or a threat. If I'm wrong, my bad. But it seems to me more like (and I hate to use the phrase but) boys being boys (middle-school boys). The offended party can step up and not engage, here, at least initially, and there is a responsibility to not engage, imo. That would have probably been the right choice. (If not, retaliation was still an option.) Though the choice to shove back is understandable, it's not necessarily justifiable. The concept of "if you push me, it's my right push you back" is technically, and I guess legally, true, but the mature, intelligent response is to consider all the options. And that's what we try to teach our kids, right? To think beyond the knee-jerk type responses? To consider, in this case, what will happen after the satisfying feeling of shoving back? And AGAIN, I don't think the school admin even needed to be involved here, but since they were, I don't see how they could uphold "defense" in this situation, if the boys are basically friends and this was not a bullying or otherwise threatening situation.
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Post by prozyan on Apr 15, 2018 2:21:57 GMT -5
It's also not a defense if one boy pushes another boy and the other boy knocks him out cold, right? Wrong.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 15, 2018 6:10:37 GMT -5
You have rather a gift for brief replies, Prozyan.
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Post by Christine on Apr 15, 2018 7:00:33 GMT -5
It's also not a defense if one boy pushes another boy and the other boy knocks him out cold, right? Wrong. See, I don't get this, at all. At least Henry's responses were proportional. The question is whether it's necessary to engage or not. If it is, then I'm all for it. But knocking someone out cold in response to a single shove seems irrational.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 15, 2018 8:53:00 GMT -5
If this altercation had consisted of Kid shoving Son, and Son shoving Kid in response, and it had stopped there, I'd recommend that the school do exactly nothing with regard to either child.
Here, IMO, the line was crossed not so much with the shove and shove back (which I would argue, unless they were very rough indeed--like a shove to the ground--could arguably qualify as relatively minor rough-housing, given this context), but with Kid's knee to Son's stomach. THAT was entirely disproportionate, especially given that Kid started it and son's shove was simply a proportionate response, and it had the potential to really hurt Son. (Which the shove really didn't.)
Based on Mark's description, THAT'S where I think Kid really started the fight, and that's where I think Son was justifiably defending himself. The shoves are a prelude, sure, but if it had ended there, I suspect this thread wouldn't exist.
derail/
This is, btw, similar to the approach I try to use when modding. If two members are mutually shoving at one another but are short of the line, even if just barely, I merely step in and tell them both to cut it out. I don't go through the thread and try to parse out who started it. I go past that only when I think the line has been definitively, clearly, stepped over by a member, or if a member I asked to cut it out defies that request. (Members don't always like that approach -- they regard their push-backs as justifiable, and demand that I should only single out and rebuke the person who started it. But, pfft. Someone giving you a shove on the forum doesn't relieve you of the responsibility to respond rationally.)
Here, I regard everything up to the knee to the stomach as relatively harmless mutual roughhousing -- but the knee to the stomach put it in a different ballgame. That was not harmless, it was not mutual tit for tat, and it was not justified.
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Post by Amadan on Apr 15, 2018 9:13:43 GMT -5
Oh good, I get to go back to disagreeing with Christine. Okay, yes, we want to teach kids not to fight, and "He started it" is not a valid defense... usually. On the other hand, as Rob pointed out, one of the tactics used by kids who like starting fights, and who don't care if they get suspended, is to go push other kids around or randomly attack them, because their victims have a choice of either just taking it, or fighting back and being punished just as severely. This teaches boys (mostly) that you are not allowed to fight back, that if someone decides to prey on you, you can only run to the teacher and hope for intervention. (Best case scenario: you look like a wimp and a tattletale. Worst case scenario: you look like a wimp and a tattletale and the teacher doesn't do anything so now the aggressor knows it's open season.) I'm not saying we should teach boys to get in a fistfight every time another boy pushes them, but they should learn they are allowed to defend themselves. And from the policy Mark quoted, this is in fact the school policy, but the administration wants to implement "zero tolerance" even if that's not their actual policy. This is why zero tolerance policies exist - because administrators hate sorting out the "who started it/who was more at fault" when a couple of kids get in a scuffle and it's so much easier to just punish them all equally. But that's why bullies thrive. Christine's argument seems predicated on parsing whether or not this particular shoving/kneeing match constitutes a "bullying" incident. Maybe it was a classic bullying situation, maybe not, but there seems to be no dispute that the other kid started it. So what was the appropriate response from Mark's son supposed to have been? He got shoved - he shoved back and then tried to leave. I guess he could have just run away without even shoving back? Well, if you think that was the correct response, that's a horrible signal you're sending to the aggressor (and all other aggressors). Then he got kneed. What was he supposed to do at that point? Again, just run away and cry to the teacher? Again, I don't think kids need to turn every shove into a fight to the ground. But I do think they need to be able to stand their ground when someone is picking on them. Personally, I would raise a stink too, but that said, this is a relatively small incident and it's very unlikely the school is going to back down. (At this point, they've committed themselves, so changing their minds after a parent complains would open the door to every future scuffle turning into the parents trying to litigate by email who was at fault and who deserves to be punished more.) Hence the principal asking if you want to press charges, since if you really want to make a big deal out of this, that takes it out of their hands and into the legal system. So, your son probably got screwed over by weak and inconsistent administrators. I'd protest but not expect much to happen.
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Post by Christine on Apr 15, 2018 10:46:44 GMT -5
First of all, I found Cass's take on this interesting. I had not, in my mind, separated the encounter into two incidents: (1) shove, shove back; (2) knee, knee back. Looking at it that way, yes, the first incident is no big deal. The second warrants the knee back, imo. Even without separating the events, by the time it got to kneeing, a knee back was entirely appropriate. My focus has been on how the incident could have not escalated. It seems there was an opportunity to not shove back, AGAIN, assuming the shove was not actually bullying or threatening. Really, it seems like it just got out of hand quickly. AGAIN, that's assuming this first kid was not one of those kids who go looking for fights. If he was that kind of kid, then it is different. I've been going off the fact that these boys are basically friends, and already over it. Maybe I'm reading too much into that. If all I had to go on was the OP, I'd be 100% agreement with the initial responses. Oh good, I get to go back to disagreeing with Christine. Lol. I feel better already. That's really all I'm saying. I totally agree when it comes to kids who act like that. I absolutely agree that boys (and girls) should know that they are allowed to defend themselves. What I don't know is that the admin here is using "zero tolerance" - maybe they are, but isn't it possible that in examining all the facts, they determined that both boys shared responsibility for the escalation? But as you say here, it's possible the administrators didn't examine anything. God, no. I never suggested running, or telling. I suggested NOT pushing back. Using words. I wouldn't suggest this in every instance of shoving, either. It depends on the circumstances. Since none of us seem to know for sure what the circumstances were, I suggested an alternative viewpoint. That's all.
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Post by Vince524 on Apr 15, 2018 15:18:04 GMT -5
If this altercation had consisted of Kid shoving Son, and Son shoving Kid in response, and it had stopped there, I'd recommend that the school do exactly nothing with regard to either child. Here, IMO, the line was crossed not so much with the shove and shove back (which I would argue, unless they were very rough indeed--like a shove to the ground--could arguably qualify as relatively minor rough-housing, given this context), but with Kid's knee to Son's stomach. THAT was entirely disproportionate, especially given that Kid started it and son's shove was simply a proportionate response, and it had the potential to really hurt Son. (Which the shove really didn't.) Based on Mark's description, THAT'S where I think Kid really started the fight, and that's where I think Son was justifiably defending himself. The shoves are a prelude, sure, but if it had ended there, I suspect this thread wouldn't exist. derail/ This is, btw, similar to the approach I try to use when modding. If two members are mutually shoving at one another but are short of the line, even if just barely, I merely step in and tell them both to cut it out. I don't go through the thread and try to parse out who started it. I go past that only when I think the line has been definitively, clearly, stepped over by a member, or if a member I asked to cut it out defies that request. (Members don't always like that approach -- they regard their push-backs as justifiable, and demand that I should only single out and rebuke the person who started it. But, pfft. Someone giving you a shove on the forum doesn't relieve you of the responsibility to respond rationally.) Here, I regard everything up to the knee to the stomach as relatively harmless mutual roughhousing -- but the knee to the stomach put it in a different ballgame. That was not harmless, it was not mutual tit for tat, and it was not justified. What's more, it was a 2nd action. If the shove had been the beginning and the end, you might have a point Christine, but the 1st boy escalated it to kneeing Henry in the stomach. What do you think would have happened if Henry hadn't responded? Don't you think it's possible, if not probable that the 1st kid would have taken that as winning, as an invitation to continue to randomly strike out at Henry? Also, the school could have decided that since the kids have resolved it on it's own, to give them warnings. Then it would be up to Mark and his son if they were okay with that. Instead, they've chosen to punish both boys as if they were equally responsible. Even IF we were to say Henry was wrong for not just calling for a teacher, and therefore should face some consequence, in what way can we justify the idea that Henry is as much to blame for a situation that never would have happened if not for the other boy. The other boy attacked Henry. He created the situation, putting Henry in a position to have to decide how to respond. You want to take Henry to task for responding by physically standing up for himself, make that case. But the case the school has to make to justify itself is that Henry is equally to blame for the entire situation. He is not.
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Post by Vince524 on Apr 15, 2018 15:28:19 GMT -5
Another thing to help highlight the nuance here. If kid A pushes kid B and kid B responds to said push by punching Kid A over and over again, so kid B has to be pulled off, then saying he started it is certainly just a justification. It's still true, Kid A wouldn't have been hurt had he not pushed Kid B, but that doesn't justify a beat down. You could punish Kid A for the provocation, and still punish Kid B.
But that's not what happened. Henry didn't escalate. He stood up for himself. And he's getting punished for it. And not because the school has a rule that Henry broke, but because they want to have a 0 tolerance policy the precludes them from having any responsibility from deciding who was at fault.
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Post by Vince524 on Apr 15, 2018 15:30:45 GMT -5
God, no. I never suggested running, or telling. I suggested NOT pushing back. Using words. I wouldn't suggest this in every instance of shoving, either. It depends on the circumstances. Since none of us seem to know for sure what the circumstances were, I suggested an alternative viewpoint. That's all. So then what happens if the other boy continued to push and shove and knee? If a push back didn't stop further action, is it really conceivable that Henry could have used any sort of words to de-escalate it? In essence, you're saying Henry should have just taken it.
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