What kind of society have we become when a four-year-old is expelled for saying he is going to shoot his friends?
Kyle reached his limit about the time his pillow was taken away.
Unable to sleep during nap time, and made to step into the hallway until he could stop crying, the cranky 4-year-old lashed out in a classroom at The Family Development Center at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.
“I am going to go shoot all my friends!” he said, according to a written account that the day care center provided the boy’s parents after the July 22 tantrum.
What came next — after a day care worker talked to Kyle about appropriate language, eliciting an apology — was an investigation that sent university police to question Kyle’s parents and ended with the boy’s dismissal from the day care center he had attended for the past three years.
Even if I had not given away the plot of this tragic farce in the first paragraph, you would have already guessed where this was going before they got to the University Police investigation part.
This is the result of political correctness run amok.
Officers questioned Kyle’s parents, asking if they had any guns. His mother said they don’t. She said she doesn’t allow her son to watch TV or play with toy guns.
The investigation ended with Kyle dismissal from the day care center he had attended for the past three years.
His mother believes the whole thing was handled unreasonably.
(Emphasis mine)
The fact that this situation was handled unreasonably is beyond dispute. The article mentions that Kyle has had numerous reports filed about his behavior over the last three years that he attended the day care center, most for behavioral issues such as not staying still during nap time and running instead of walking — flogging offenses I’m sure.
Perhaps the authorities were fooled by young Kyle’s size or the timber of his voice, but they seem to have forgotten one tiny detail about him:
HE’S FOUR YEARS OLD!
I have an 8-year-old son, and even with daily admonishments, he still runs around when he shouldn’t (in the store, in the house, in the barn — one shouldn’t run around horses). I believe it’s perfectly normal for a four year old to run instead of walk sometimes.
This is the single stupidest story I have seen in memory. The road we are heading down, where children are expected to act like little adults, is one we will regret when we have a generation that is completely off their rockers simply because they were never allowed to really BE children.
Also, with all the debate about our children becoming more and more obese and getting less and less exercise, one would think that a child running around would be looked upon favorably. Chalk up yet another cognitive disconnect for the adherents of political correctness, eh?
What I fear even worse is that someone will soon approach Kyle’s mom, who works in a mental health clinic, and explain to her that poor little Kyle can’t concentrate and is fidgety and needs medication. Children are not being allowed to be children anymore, to the detriment of everyone save overburdened day care workers, and it’s a sad sign of our times when that happens.
Add in the fact of many schools banning tag and dodge ball and even running at recess, and what we have here is a movement so insane it defies definition. When I was a kid, we rode our bikes without helmets and our skateboards without kneepads, and climbed trees and fell out of them in our neighbor’s yard. Nothing was said other than “Oh, are you OK?” We got angry with each other and made silly threats (“I’m gonna hit you so hard your grandkids are gonna cry”), and had fights, many times where one of us or — more usually — both of us ended up with bloody noses, scrapes, and bruises. But the next day, sometimes in the next ten minutes, we were back to being friends. Nobody got sued, nobody went to jail, and we grew up into perfectly fine adults capable of taking care of ourselves and treating our fellow humans in a decent manner.
We are creating a generation of fearful drones who, once they are thrust into real life after they graduate from school, will be unable to handle reality, think for themselves, and speak freely, as they will never have been taught how to do so. They are simply being taught what not to say, how not to act, and what not to think.
And I, for one, think that stinks.
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