OT Teacher Fights Student

"I would impregnate the kids mother and then become his new step dad."

- El Prez

 

Against a kid?

 

I have a 12-year-old son and a 16-year-old daughter. I also have taught them to treat all adults with respect, even more respect than they show us. If they had the nerve to behave like this, they would be deserving of the consequences.

However, there are also limitations on the authority of the people with whom they interact. The guy at Fred Meyer doesn't have the authority to confiscate my kids' phones if they're being a public disturbance. The mailman doesn't have the authority to take away my daughter's keys if she nearly hits him with the car. And none of my children's teachers have the authority to strike them, no matter how obnoxious their behavior or foul their language. That disciplinary authority belongs to me and their mother--nobody else.

Even if my children are being incredibly disrespectful and flaunting everything I have ever taught them, the fact is that they are still my children, and I will show them the same love that I would if they were perfect, which includes coming to their defense if they are treated inappropriately. Were that my child in the video, he may be grounded until graduation, he may lose every earthly possession, he may end up in military school...but I'm still coming after the teacher that had the audacity to pummel him like that.

 

I think it depends on the situation. As in, yes kids should be respectful to adults, but in some cases when adults aren't respectful to kids, what do you tell your kids to do?

Now granted, in some cases it is brought on by the acts of a kid, but there are cases where the reasons are hidden beneath the situation at hand. I.e., the adult figure is just an ass clown, they might be racist, sexist, etc. They also might be an overly aggressive person and the kid might be sensitive/shy, etc.

I think it's made into a black and white thing too much (not talking about race here, but right/wrong good/bad). We don't know the whole story at times, and it might be that the kid was a total jack ass, or that the teacher might be a total jack ass.

I'm sure while @HCP has taught his kids to be respectful to all adults, if his son saw an adult being disrespectful to his sister, he wouldn't be upset if his son did something to stop it. For example, if his son saw some employee at FM saying inappropriate things to his sister, I bet (if it wasn't possible to de-escalate things), HCP would be fine with a little intervention/ass whupping on the part of his son.

Of course this totally opens up a can of worms, because how do you know when you intervene vs not, etc.

 

If someone attacks you first, I think you should be able to hit back. But then again, it depends on the size of the kid, etc. Like, if a 9th grader was coming at me with a weapon of some sort, I'm going to do my best to knock that kid out. If he is coming at me with insults (your momma wears combat boots) I'm not gonna give a shit.

But if it's a grade school kid, that changes things.

In this case, I'm sure there's more to it than just insults/disrespect. But regardless of whether or not there has been a perpetual case of the student insulting the teacher here, the teachers life wasn't (I'd guess) in danger. So really, he didn't need to be punched (as much as I might feel a little dose of humble pie might not be a bad thing for kids at times).

I wonder if there was a lack of support from the school/home in keeping that kid from behaving like that. It's easy for me to say this since I don't work in a school and don't have to deal with 20-30 raging testosterone monsters an hour for 6 hours a day.