The Harmful Consequences of Extreme Discipline in Schools: Handcuffing Children and Sending Them to ER for Psychiatric Evaluation.
- Ishaan S Ahuja
- Jan 2, 2024
- 3 min read
For eight years, way more than 750 children, as young as five years old, have been handcuffed and sent to the hospital for psychiatric evaluation in response to behavior prompted by bullying or frustration over assignments.
• Schools miss using emergency petitions.
• In a school calendar year, 117 times children were sent to the emergency room by Wicomico schools in Maryland.
• New York City schools continue this practice despite a 2014 legal settlement to stop the practice.
• 40% of the population is 12 or younger and were of color or had a disability.
• This is happening all over the United States.
Is this right?
Over the last couple of years, schools across the country have used the process of sending children to emergency rooms for psychiatric evaluations due to erratic behaviors prompted by frustration or bullying. Children as young as five years old were also being sent to the emergency rooms for psychiatric evaluation.
Such experiences generally happen with students of color as well as students with disabilities. This is because of the sad fact that these students don't receive the support they need. However, schools believe that these students are encountering emotional distress and need to be immediately treated.
An example from the article states how one mom with a son in a school in Wicomico County recalled her son being handcuffed due to an outburst of frustration over a reading assignment. The mother fought with the administrators of the school to obtain accommodations for her son, who was autistic and had ADHD as well. She explained to the school authorities that her son had struggled with reading throughout elementary school, and he was several years behind by the time he reached middle school, thus explaining why the child got very frustrated over a reading assignment. She also recalled school officials denying the fact that her son has special needs and instead said that her son only had anger issues. None of the complaints made by the mother were taken into account, and instead, her son was still sent to the emergency room.
Is it fair to send children to an emergency room due to an outburst of frustration over homework? If you think about it, it's not even their fault. Throughout their lives, these children have not been getting the help they need and, therefore, aren't able to learn even though they have a disability. I firmly believe more educators and schools need to have the training to support children with various disabilities and how to provide support to help these children learn. Even today, a large percentage of educators not only do not have the training but are also unable to differentiate between a child having anger issues or showing behaviors suggesting a disability. It is not very reassuring.
If we look at the Wicomico County scenario, the boy never really had a mental illness or anger issues; however, don't you think that sending this child handcuffed in the back of a police car to the emergency room we just opened the door which may lead to PTSD in this boy. Are the schools helping address mental illness, or are they instead creating mental illness issues for children by sending them to the emergency room due to outbursts of frustration or anger? In this case, According to the boy's mother, "Every time he saw the police, he would start panicking."
The fact that students of color or students who have a disability are generally the ones going through such experiences in comparison to privileged children shows that racial disparity still exists.
In the 21st century, the civil rights of children are at stake.
As per this article, not only did the families share their experience of their child being sent to the emergency room and, in most of the cases, leaving a child traumatized, but they also shared that these incidents mostly happened when the trained support staff was not present in school. This truly highlights the point that either there is not enough trained support staff or most of the educators aren't trained to care about children who have disabilities. Therefore, the school/staff does not have the patience to support and calm the child in the moment, and a quick decision is made to send these children to an emergency room in a police car. Do parents who have children with disabilities need to be afraid of sending their children to school?
Children with disabilities need more support in schools; more teachers need to be trained teachers who can support and teach students with disabilities and understand their needs. Last but not least, the system of sending children to emergency rooms in handcuffs should stop; it does not help in solving the problem; it rather aggravates the problem or gives birth to a mental health issue.
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