Scaring Children Into Behaving

Bill Lichtenstein wrote the article "A Terrifying Way to Discipline Children" on September 8, 2012 in the New York Times. The article introduces a brief background about how more than 400,000 students were restrained or isolated in seclusion rooms. Of those 400,000 students, about 12% had learning, behavioral, physical, or developmental disabilities. Currently, there are no federal laws banning this practice of punishment, which has no evidence of being effective. This issue has been introduced to the House of Representatives and Senate, but there is no expectation of voting on it this year. The author of this article included his own personal experience, with the abuse of his daughter, Rose. Rose had speech and language delays when she first started kindergarten in Lexington, Mass. On January 6, 2006, her parents received a phone call from her school asking them to come pick their daughter up, because she had taken her clothes off. Lichtenstein said, "At school, her mother and I found Rose standing alone on the cement floor of a basement mop closet, illuminated by a single light bulb. There was nothing in the closet for a child — no chair, no books, no crayons, nothing but our daughter standing naked in a pool of urine, looking frightened as she tried to cover herself with her hands. On the floor lay her favorite purple-striped Hanna Andersson outfit and panties. Rose got dressed and we removed her from the school. We later learned that Rose had been locked in the closet five times that morning. She said that during the last confinement, she needed to use the restroom but didn’t want to wet her outfit. So she disrobed. Rather than help her, the school called us and then covered the narrow door’s small window with a file folder, on which someone had written “Don’t touch!” Rose still has nightmares and severe stress symptoms. Her parents filed an action against her school system, who agreed to pay for her treatment needed to recover from her trauma.