Oh, I really was not joking about the cow jumpers/T-shirts really.  I have two (a flying cow and a normal cow).

A teacher breaking a student's arm to teach them a lesson? how disturbing!!!

I agree wth you about the psychopaths getting into positions of authority. I definitely worry about myself having to work under one in the near future!! :o

There seems to be more and more stories coming out of the US about police being called in to put little girls in handcuffs and cart them off to detention.  You rarely hear about the boys having the same thing done: can't the police manage boys, but can safely put girls in chains?  It reminds me of the old story about the man who's stopped by a policeman and given a ticket.  "But I wasn't speeding, officer".  "No, but you were the only one I could catch."

It also seems that overreaction is rife: so the kid wanted to wear her suit, so what? Who did it hurt?  The teachers need to learn the first thing about children - when to make a fuss, and when not to.  If I spent all my time focusing on the small stuff at work, I'd never get anything constructive done.

That's a disturbing story, but seems to be a sign of the times.
Alison

If we just change their ideas, then there will be only a few cases of discrimination.

Yet they allow into nativity plays spiders and other odd asortments that don't have anything to do with a stable scene or christmas....Atleast the girl who you mentioned Tenaciouscj was on topic with a pig.  Like I mentioned in my previous post, I do not understand what the problem is with the girl wanting to wear her cow jumper nor the little girl wanting to wear a pig costume.  I just don't  understand the school's apparent reason(s).

To tell you the truth, I disagree with your last note about the mother's parenting.  I don't think her parenting has anything to do with what happened.  Although I'm not excusing the child for her reactional behaviour, I feel as though it was the school's responsibility to calm the situation down themselves and should have and should be liable and held responsible for their particular actions and response in punishing this young child the way they did.  

The school should have been professional and rang up the mother instead of calling the police.  Especially over a cow jumper.  I would expect the school to ring up the police if there was a (actually) dangerous student on the loose who was actually causing harm, but Evelyn only wanted to wear her favourite jumper to a party.

I got in trouble on another forum because I said it was possible a parent was letting their child do something unhealthy and not teaching her it wasn't a good thing to do.

But this is totally different. This child should have been allowed to wear her cow jumper to the party. It wasn't harming anybody. It almost seems as if the teachers wanted to provoke her into a meltdown.

They should have spoken to her mother first if they had any problem with the jumper. The only issue I can think of is they might have thought other kids would pull at the ears and tail and upset her but they handled the situation so badly. This doesn't seem to be a little girl who acts out a lot and it was total overkill to have her carted off by the police.

He wasn't fit for his job. One of my brothers went to a boarding school and a staffer who usually got on well with him beat him up when he thought he was being cheeky.

My brother was in hospital for several days but it was all hushed up until years later by which time it was too late to sue. Incredibly, my brother has forgiven this man and because he seemed on friendly terms with him, I never would have guessed about this serious assault.

I got into trouble with a teacher in 2nd grade because she wanted to throw out some flowers because she said they were dead. I said they weren't and couldn't she just take off a couple of petals that were going brown. I offered to take them home and get some new ones from mum's garden but she said she was throwing them in the rubbish and that was it and if I didn't stop crying I would get a hiding with the cane. Well, I was scared of getting the cane so I shut up.

So incredibly outrageous and pathetic!

What's next? Putting babies in handcuffs for crying?

Yes, I agree with you.  

I too wouldn't be suprised if the girl refuses to go back to that school.

They'll probably slap a gag order on them.

An NT wouldn't have done the same thing, and even if they had, they would not have had a meltdown.

NT children can be extremely unreasonable and have tantrums just as much as AS ones.  This is because they are *children*.  But we as adults are bigger, stronger, and have to be the more reasonable until they grow and learn self-control.  I've been head-butted, had my nose bloodied, and been given a split lip on three separate occassions, all by NT preschoolers in my class losing it and flying off the handle over something that's really not such a big deal.  However, I've never called police in to deal with any of them.  That is a huge overreaction on the part of the teachers; they should have known better.
Alison

That's interesting. I find people who have been negatively disciplined in the past, are the biggest supporters of people who participate in that negative discipline.

I guess if you never had the chance to consider it might be wrong to play head games with a child, you're not going to speak out against it. I suppose, learning to see that form of emotional abuse as normal, or reasonable, because it happened to you.

I see, so everyone who doesn't follow authority is a "spoiled brat". That seems to be a way of comforting yourself, with the notion that you are superior to others because you follow rules.

To me a spoiled brat is someone who doesn't like to be punished so they call the police and make up a story by saying they are being abused.
At my bf's job, someone told a story about how she told her 15 year old son to clean his room and he went to the police and said he was being abused and the officer just laughed. The story was probably obvious BS because the kid was a bad liar.

And running away from home just because you didn't like getting a consequence.

Kids who aren't disciplined and run wild.

People who hold grudges against their parents just because they were disciplined.

My god there are worse things my parents could have done to me as a kid; make me sleep in the garage, make me eat scat, starve me, beat me, shove ammonia down my throat, burn me on a gas stove, lock me in the bathroom with a bucket with clorox mixed with ammonia, etc.
So taking my bike away, TV, computer, my barbie dolls, not being allowed to leave the yard, no dessert, no friends, being sent to my room or stairs, not being allowed to do anything until I put my clothes away is trivia compare to real child abuse. Now that be something to be mad at your parents about if they did that horrible stuff to you than what my mother did to me. My dad hardly punished. He only yelled or hit. My mom did most of the punishments so I'm closer to her than I am to my dad. She took me to most of my doctor appointments and worked with me.


My god even Temple Grandin has told about her frustration about kids running wild and not being taught to behave or listen. Yeah we both hate spoiled brats. She was also disciplined as a kid by her mother. Autism was never an excuse same as my disability was never an excuse. My mother knew I had something but she didn't know what it was then.
I once had to take a mini fridge to a hotel room at work and I see their kids jumping around, making lot of noise and they are up on the ledge and my god my parents would not allow my brothers and I to do that as kids. they would just yell at us and make us sit down somewhere if we couldn't stop goofing off. The room attendant who had to clean that room after they checked out, she was mad because it was a mess their kids made and she wanted to slap the parents for not doing their job. They even broke something too.

Ha, that's a hobbyhorse of mine, but for a different reason!  My class have a rule that if they want to play in the playground they have to wear a hat - reasonable here where the summertime temperature could cook an egg  (it's forecast to be 35 C *again* today, groan) and if you don't bring a hat from home we have spares.  The problem is, there are a number of preschoolers who just *won't* wear them, and deliberately drop them over the fence or bury them in the sandpit.  In which case the rule is they have to stay in the shaded area of the verandah.  And the kids that tend to accidentally-on-purpose lose their hats are also the ones that want to buzz about in the sunshine the whole time!  Interestingly, it's the Aspie kids in my class that get upset if they *lose* their hats, because they know the rule is that outside you wear a hat! But the kids that "lose" their own hats are no respecters of ownership and will often snatch the AS kids hats off too, which leads to squabbles or out and out fights.  In this case, it's rarely the AS kids who start the problem, but they are reacting to having their hats stolen from their heads.
I should add, the same goes for shoes.  When I was growing up, you had to wear shoes to protect your feet from bindies.  I sometimes wish I could plant a few in the playground  - we'd have less trouble keeping shoes on then!
Alison

I'm not even going to read any further than this, meltdowns are NOT tantrums

Are you truly saying that AS kids don't have tantrums, ConLang?  In a word, bollocks.  I did, my daughter did, and all the AS kids I teach have had, at some stage.  It's true that meltdowns and tantrums are not the same thing, but it's NOT true to say that AS children don't have tantrums and can act extremely unreasonably at times.  We're only human, not angels.
Alison

typo - omit the "I'm"

Ours might not be, but to the NT world, it's night vs. day.

They see autistic/aspie kids as off in their own world, completely unreasonable, unreachable.

The NT world defines themselves largely by their social status/peer relationships/conformity. Anyone who does not see the world from that perspective is scary. The same way a die hard capitalist/materialist is threatened by the concept of socialism. In fact, the NT way of life could be somewhat accurately decribed as "social capitalism"

I think many NTs find people on spectrum to be very threatening at a very visceral level.

AWSOME. If she has not already, she should make more and sell them.

Don't put words in my mouth.  It's pointless.  Everyone can read what I actually said.  

If somebody grabs you and you start freaking out, the correct term is not tantrum.

It would certainly seem that way.

That would be interesting to see what their results are.  My AS son never watched tv but it was on when I was watching.  My younger kids watch frequently as it's left on by the older ones...   I'm sure it has some effect on kids but is it any different from the way the DS or Gameboy or other gaming systems affect kids these days?

The idea that television or video games have a negative impact on brain development has been disproven. It simply is a matter of parental hysteria over "What these kids are into these days" and their lack of knowledge about it. No different than when parents reacted over Elvis and claimed he was a bad influence in the 50's.

I remember that recently (in the last two months) there was a news item about a study that found surgeons who played video games had far better hand-to-eye skills and focus than those who didn't.  I remember thinking at the time: is it that the video games improve these functions ie practice makes perfect; or is it that people who are naturally drawn to the attention to detail and focus needed in video games are also drawn to a career in surgery?  

As a small off-topic aside, my daughter Lauren finished her high school year with a high UAI (in the top ten of her school), and has just accepted an offer from the Australian National University to study for a Bachelor of Science.  She wants to do that for a time, then swap over to medicine and eventually specialise in either reconstructive or trauma surgery.  And she has played video games for the age of five years. So I really believe we Aspies can do almost anything we set our minds to, despite NTs thinking we are either poor disableds or evil-genius types.  

Alison

I find any study that's main point is relying on Obesity to make it's claims of harm, as utterly dubious. Guess what, people are born with genetics to have different body types! It's not unhealthy for some people to be fat, in fact it would be unhealthy for them to be thin!

I suppose as long as the Obesity Hysteria continues, it will make life easier for people who want to discuss correlations instead of facts in their studies..

It's not uncommon for people to gain weight on diets. Diets put the body into starvation mode. When they ate that bread, their body held on to it as fat, because it knew it wasn't going to get the nutrition it needed for the rest of the day.

When the body recovers from a starvation period, it will hold on to more fat than before, in order to be prepared for a future starvation period. Add more diets to the mix, and you have a classic case of a yo-yo diet.

It's possible to loose weight on a diet for a short amount of time, but you can't deny your body what it needs to survive forever.

Thanks, however there is something that doesn't work with that. Everyone has a different body genetically, and everyone has a genetically pre-set weight. Doing those things may make you loose weight for awhile, until your body decides it's had enough with that person's self-imposed starvation period, and has them eat and gain more weight than they had from before because the body feels it needs to prepare for a future starvation period.

Also, there are people who are perfectly fine with being fat and find it offensive that they should be forced to strive to meet the current arbitrary ideal, which is being thin. Fat people want to simply be healthy, but it will never be about health, as long as health is correlated with being thin.

You can be healthy at every size. It has been proven that loosing weight does more harm than good. Listening to your body's signals for hunger and need to move, is what is best.

I'm sorry this got so long, but I really find it annoying that people should assume when someone is defending size acceptance, that all their problems would be solved with a diet. How about instead, considering if you had offered understanding, instead of more prejudice against fat bodies, then you would be leading that person towards true health. Not just cosmetic health.

I think it would also help if the people on AFF saw it unfold


Youtube vid on this bizarre incident

but why not lot her wear the jumper? it harms no one. the teachers provoked her to do something unlogical. i agree with saflt on this because there was no reason for her not to be able to wear the cow jumper.