So, not only would you send a thank you card to your kid's primary school teacher if they throat-slammed your child, you'd also buy them a beer for dropping your wife with a leg kick if she had an aggressive reaction to it? Lovely.
Yes that's exactly what I said and meant! Honestly if it's a legit case of self defence where my wife or child was being out of order and breaking the law and trying to harm someone I would have to accept the person acted within the law to defend themselves (unless they didn't) just as I would if confronted by an aggressive child or woman. I hold people to the same standard I hold myself. In these sorts of situations I tend to side with the person that is not breaking the law. It is not against the law to manage a situation badly (which this guy did). It is not against the law to not really know how to deal with a physical confrontation with a child (as this guy didn't). It is not against the law to be a childish immature adult (which this guy was). It is not against the law to take reasonable physical measures against someone that is attempting to illegally hurt you. It is however against the law to confront people while they are at work and attempt to punch them in the face even if you are 10 years old (and that kid knows that but chose to do it anyway). I hold absolutely no reverence or special place for children, women or old people. There are plenty of horrible examples of each. Children get some leeway but the older they get the less that leeway applies. And 10/12 is a good few years past where the leeway for hitting people stops. Having children myself has put me in contact with loads of kids and there are a few that are just horrible. Born horrible as far as I can see. Been horrible since the day they were born and don't look likely to change. They just turn into horrible teens and then horrible adults and then horrible old people. And they are the children of fairly nice people in some cases. People that are utterly mortified (and some in denial) by what their kid is like. I mean...this kid was willing to attack an adult man. Can you imagine the terror and violence he's inflicting on the kids around him? The child, as far as I could see, only ended up with a bruised ego. My kids get more damaged than that jumping about in the garden. In terms of life lessons maybe he learnt something but I doubt it.
If this was in the UK, he was in the dock, and I was on the jury, I would not say the amount of force was "proportionate and reasonable given the value of the interests being protected and the harm likely to be caused by use of force". If the situation was different, and the park attendant was replaced with another kid, then I'd get on board with the schadenfreude. If the park attendant did the throat-slam to get the boy off of another kid as a reflex I'd be mostly alright with it. As it is, he did pretty much everything wrong, went against the standards any other self defence video is judged by on MAP, yet because a brat ended up in tears everyone thinks it's great. I don't get it. The fact the child only suffered pain and no visible injury is purely a matter of luck. How much injury to a child is alright before it stops being funny? A bit of blood? A broken bone? Anyway, I've said my piece and I'll leave it there. I don't think this thread is a worthy addition to the self defence forum.
The force he used was about as low as you can get and it still be force. What less force could he have used? Tickle him? Chi blast? He didn't strike the kid. As far as I can see he didn't even really intend for the kid to fall over. Just wanted the kid off him. He put his hand (one hand) on the kids chest/neck and pushed him (not a dynamic shove) backwards until he fell over. Kid fell over his own feet because he was being pushed back quicker that he could maintain balance. He wasn't throat slammed. The kid then reacted, like most spoilt kids when something happens they don't like, as if the world was ending. Well seeing as it's promoted some debate on the right way to deal with aggressive kids, and aggressive kids seems to be an increasing problem, I think it's valid. The city I work in recently had a teacher killed by one of the kids she taught and that child was only 3-5 years older than this kid. IMHO we as adults are more likely to be confronted by this sort of low level, tricky to deal with anti-social behaviour than an out and out adult attacking us.
That is a grown man pushing a 10 year old boy to the floor by his throat. It is clear to me that he not only intended the boy to fall over, but intended the boy to hit the floor with some impact. The park attendant should have called the police as soon as he was aware of the kids trying to damage property. It appeared from his phone call that he knew who the kids were, or at least knew people who did. A visit from the police to his parents' house, or some form of formal caution at the station, would have been a far more useful lesson to this child. As for aggressive kids being an increasing problem, where are your stats? I saw loads more aggressive kids running amok when I was growing up, probably because they're all at home hypnotised by a screen these days, and they are consuming less alcohol and illegal drugs. The Ministry of Justice stats on youth crime bear this out. I don't personally view an unarmed 10 year old as anywhere near the same threat level as a knife-wielding 15 year old. Not anywhere close. I guess I was lying when I said I was done with this... ah well.
Especially when that 15 year old boy isn't simply a "bad kid", but has been diagnosed with psychopathic tendencies: Could Will Cornick's psychopathic tendencies have been identified before he killed?
The kid was lucky that all he got was pushed to the floor. A lot of adults would have done a lot worse a lot sooner. If I was on the jury, I'd vote "not guilty" for a charge of excessive force against the adult in the video.
Cameras are everywhere. The adult was quite restrained, he did not raise his voice, continue after the child once he put him down, did not at all look like he enjoyed that. The child needs help, I hope he doesn't learn to just pick on weaker targets but instead is assisted to reflect and learn a more socially acceptable way of behaving and interacting. Let's say the boy did end up with his head smashed into the ground because he fell badly/too much force was used. If his mother took the guy to court, the footage would be reviewed, the man's statement, witness statements, character references, any prior history would be taken into account...essentially I'm putting myself in the adult's shoes and would contain the anti-social behaviour if necessary and possible and follow through with the consequences.
This post is going to be entirely speculative, but it comes to mind reading this part of your reply. What if he knows the kid because he has called the police about him multiple times for similar issues? And that, as I'm sure anyone here can testify to if they've ever had the police involved with incidents involving minors, he's become accustomed to accepting there's no point to it? Either because the police won't follow up on anything with it, or the kid gives zero tosses about what they had to say? Now to be anecdotal as well. I come into contact with a few kids (older than 10, but still 'youths') who are complete tossers where I work. Regular people, regular problems. Stealing, abusing staff, intimidating customers. At another store without cctv they've assaulted customers multiple times. Been reported to police multiple times and the above has occurred. They don't give a rat's about the consequences because they understand that there basically are none. The police might come and talk to them. Big whoop. If you start from a position where you don't care about authority and are being a bell because you know you can get away with it, then an authority figure telling you its naughty doesn't achieve anything. The one thing that has worked in quieting them down? When I and another colleague tried to throw them out for the umpteenth time, got the usual abuse and threats, and instead decided to see if they were willing to follow through on them. They think they're untouchable, and they think they're the hardest people in town and can do what they want simply because they haven't been proven wrong, because they know most people won't respond to it due to their age. That's anecdotal, and none of us know anymore than what's in the clip which isn't enough for anybody to draw conclusions outside of that clip. That being said, the majority of crappy youths I meet, and feeling old because I do feel like its becoming worse, aren't traumatised at home, or have severe mental health issues, or any of those reasons. They're just crappy pricks who've realised there's no consequences to doing what they want. If you subscribe to the view that we behave as civilly as we do because of the consequences if we don't, then it just makes sense the other way. It's also a view endorsed, it seems, by people who have a lot of exposure to kids, teachers, who have been arguing more and more over the years that the stripping away of punishments and authority (not just talking corporal punishment here which I do object to) has been limiting the control teachers have over their students as they've realised they can pretty much do whatever and it doesn't matter. Realising he isn't immune from the world and that being violent has consequences, I would argue, was probably the bigger lesson.
Yeah I'm just gonna assume that will do absolutely nothing too. Once a child is at the stage of attacking adults they are pretty immune to intimidation by authority and abstract consequences IMHO. I'll also assume that such a visit by the police wouldn't be the first and isn't likely to be the last.
Even if there were all that extra context, I still wouldn't agree that the park attendant dealt with it in a good way. Also, my partner is a teacher, as well as a few friends, and I hang out with teachers, both primary and secondary, a fair amount. At least half of them are in schools with very high intakes of disadvantaged kids. I don't hear any of them complaining that they have been stripped of punishments and authority. As for what's going on at home, you don't have to traumatise your kids to turn them into monsters. I think Smitfire had it when he said this: Laissez-faire parents who don't give their kids any positive attention can produce monsters as well as brutal parents who neglect and/or are violent to their kids. When you say you decided to see if they were willing to follow through on them, do you mean you had a scrap with a bunch of kids at work? Or you just called their bluff? It's not like I've never had to deal with annoying kids before. When I used to train, and later teach, at a hall by Bangor's sink estate, we always had a group of kids trying to break in, burn the place down or whatever. I had to manhandle them and use stern language a few times, but I never felt the need or desire to hurt them.
What's the answer then? Because we know for a fact that violence does not stop people being violent, even though it may make them change their targets.
My wife was a secondary school teacher for nearly 20 years and would say the opposite I think. Problem kids were routinely given soft treatment and multiple chances because to exclude them would effect the money the school receives and their league table standing. Problem kids would be rewarded to being merely "acceptable" while "normal" kids are routinely ignored wholesale (unless they are gifted) or even punished for behaviour that would be ignored in the problem kid. My wife routinely had problems with parents that would take their child's side over an incident and accuse her or targeting or victimising their child despite their child being an absolute nightmare for all around and my wife acting entirely appropriately. My wife would have to push for kids to be punished because teachers further up the hierarchy wanted an easy life. It's a comic cliche but I feel there's truth in the observation that in decades past a parent getting called into school because of their child's behaviour would punish their child but these days they are more likely to go in an complain about the teacher. And that's not to criticise teachers at all. When you've got a class of 35 kids, 15 with special needs of some sort, mountains of paper work and government hoops to jump through while the grading criteria and syllabus changes almost termly it's understandable that the gifted kids and the problem kids get all the attention.
And that's totally fair enough. If this thread were a jury, I'd obviously be in the minority, and I'd be okay with that as long as I got to voice my opinion in the deliberations. There does seem to be this undercurrent in the thread though, that kids are out of control now and they used to be better behaved when the threat of violence was over their heads. First off, every generation thinks that kids are out of control and used to be much better behaved. Secondly, acts of violence by children, violence in society in general, and crime across the board was far more common when more violence was inflicted upon children regularly.
At my partner's school parents' preferred methods of complaint are death threats and smashing up cars with baseball bats outside the school. That's primary though, and I appreciate that the demands are different than secondary. She's convinced, as are most other teachers she works with, that canny psychological tactics and firm class management are all you really need, outside of specialist interventions. They don't all agree though. She did a placement at a secure unit primary during her training - nothing on the walls, restricted stationary to prevent stabbings, every door locked and every member of staff equipped with a radio. Just like prison, it only turned the kids more violent as they became institutionalised. Some of the kids deliberately did horrendous and outrageous things, simply because being forcibly restrained was the only attention and close human contact they ever got. You're spot on about problem kids getting all the attention though. Class management has to come first, because if there is no management of the class, no-one is getting educated.
Whereas my girlfriend was a teacher until recently, and she argues in agreement with me along with others I've talked to. So for me its hard to know either way it seems Good point and I agree. Tablet/smartphone-parenting is a bigger problem I was just being lazy with my listing. Just called their bluff. Which is lucky really both because I have zero real interest in fighting teenagers, and we probably would have lost our jobs had they decided to test it. Because the companies system works in their favour, again adding to the limits of authority and lack of consequences. I appreciate your experiences too, but really all I get out of that is you're a better person than me with much more patience. I don't agree with trying to hurt a kid, but I can definitely empathise with the dude in the video losing his ability to sit and take it. The extent he wanted to actually hurt the boy is limited too looking at the video, but that's been discussed already.
That bugged the hell out of me when I was at school. So many classes wasted while a teacher spent the hour trying to get the misbehaving kid to calm down. Although the time I had a teacher who got sick of the same kid misbehaving all year and by the end of it would throw them out at the first instance, she ended up getting complaints for it because she was wasting the guy's education, ignoring that him misbehaving was wasting all of ours. And another little anecdote about attention: Partner was apparently really badly behaved in her first couple years of school, and she recalls it changed when she got a new teacher who instead of trying to get her to behave and basically giving her the attention she was after, the teacher would just throw her out. My experience at school was a lot more people taking the pandering approach and it never amounting to anything.
There are no easy answers. Bad parenting is a systemic, vicious circle, often compounded by teachers who, consciously or not, decide the fate of kids after their first year of primary school. It was certainly something that struck me with the kids I grew up with: 5 year olds turn up to school from homes where they have no discipline, are neglected or are beaten... by the time they are 6 the teachers have it in their heads that these are bad kids, and the cycle of behaviour that stems from that is reciprocal; the kids fulfil the expectations on them to be horrible people and the adults fulfil their expectations of being unsympathetic authority figures.
My partner would say that kids need firm and unerring boundaries, but enforced in as fair and unbiased way as possible. The key is to always devise a way for kids to redeem themselves, otherwise there is no motivation for them to improve their behaviour. Doesn't help you at work though!
Yeah the reason I'd go with a 'focus on not injuring the kid while stopping him from assaulting me' strategy is because he really is no threat. He can't reach my head, so he isn't going to be hitting my head. He would not be able to take me down or injure me in any way really, he is just being really obnoxious and assaulting me. My strategy would change if the kid had a knife or a baseball bat.
