Posted on 12/16/2006 7:20:34 AM PST by Graybeard58
Last month, a 4-year-old Texas student was suspended for hugging a teacher's aide in what school officials called a case of sexual harassment.
However, most experts of psychology and law say a child that young cannot commit sex crimes usually reserved for adults.
"It's just ridiculous," said Jeanne Milstein, a child advocate for the state of Connecticut. "A 4-year-old has no idea what sexual harassment is."
A pre-kindergartner at La Vega Primary School in Bellmead, Texas, near Waco was given an in-school suspension after he allegedly rubbed his face into the bosom of a teacher's aide. The two hugged before he boarded the school bus.
The incident isn't an anomaly: There have been several similar cases in New England. In May, five Boston elementary school children were suspended after playing something called the "rape game" by choking, scratching and grabbing one another. A 6-year-old from Brockton, Mass., was suspended in January after inserting his fingers into a female classmate's waistband. In 2000, a group of Bath, Maine, third-grade boys, similarly, came close to prosecution after pinning girls to the ground and simulating sexual acts.
But local professionals who work with children say the youngest ones don't have the capacity to sexually harass or even understand the concept. By definition, sexual harassment involves superiority over another person, as well as sexual gratification.
They say a child knows neither of those things.
Clinical psychologist Lynn Marlow said for children most instances of so-called sexual harassment come down to experimentation or curiosity. More seriously, they might also be a child acting out abuse.
Feelings of attraction form by late elementary school, she said. Sexual orientation and other strong sexual feelings occur at the onset of puberty.
"It's not at all uncommon for children that age to engage in some "I'll show you mine if you show me yours' exploration,'" said Marlow, based in Cheshire. "They don't have a clear sense of what they're doing or why it might be inappropriate."
She said the proper reaction should be talking to the child and finding out why they did it. Give them guidance, she said.
More serious offenses should be referred to juvenile court, said Francis J. Carino, a supervisory juvenile prosecutor in the office of the Chief State's Attorney. There, the child would get assessment and evaluations.
"It's a legitimate concern when you see a child in this age group engaging in this kind of behavior," he said.
Still, reprimanding them severely won't help; nor will criminal charges, experts said. Both actions would undoubtedly terrify a child.
"The more you punish, the less available a child will be to learn anything from a specific incident," said Dr. Joseph Conrad, director of home-based family services for New Opportunities Inc. in Waterbury.
He said the rash of recent sexual harassment incidents involving children can be pegged to school tragedies -- the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Colorado at the forefront.
In that instance, teens Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 12 fellow students and wounded 24 others before killing themselves.
Since then, school officials believe they should respond to every incident, no matter how small.
Instead, he said, they should apply a "zero tolerance" idea with a conscience, and case by case.
"We're talking about human behavior," Conrad said. "If anything, it is still quite unpredictable."
" our "freedom of speech" Nazis have made everything "adult" available to children 24/7/365."
Kids that young shouldn't be taken to R rated movies, nor allowed to see them on TV. It's a parenting thing. Infantilizing the rest of the culture 'for the children.' actually, for the blue-noses, is the Nazi thing to do.
Exactly. I wonder about the mental stability of someone who interprets a four-year-old's hug as "sexual harassment."
Poor thing!! She's probably just trying to get an early retirement by way of the Golden Handshake.
I disagree.
The filth is in all advertizing, and in all media - print, broadcast, cable and internet, all the time; not just "adult" venues.
Our society used to protect our children by restricting when and how "adult" material could be presented, so that we did not have to worry excessively about "unaccompanied minors" every minute of the day, even in our own homes.
My mom could leave the TV on and know that the raciest thing we might see would be an old 1940s May West movie on Saturday afternoon. Even her "ladies" magazines were not marketing thongs, breast implants and drugs to improve your sex drive. The raciest thing the media delivered to our house was the ladies underwear section of the Sears catalog, and my mom got many magazines.
Even the recent children's animated movie Shrek 2 (supposedly for a primary audience of 5 to 9 year old girls) included a thong tryout scene for the princess.
We are sexualizing children at a younger and younger age, because the sexualization of both advertizing and "art" has been moving down to target audiences at younger and younger ages; and the extent of each level of that sexualization has been getting more and more overtly sexual.
Advertizing works, and the constant downgrading of what is "adult" and what is permissible for children has been a self-generating process, run by the advertizing and entertainment media. They get a new level opened up, start moving stuff into that level (remember, advertizing works) and then turn around and justify it by the numbers that "accept" it; moving on to the next level, and the next, and the next.
Our grandchildren's children will be watching the animated sex acts of animated teenage characters in their cartoons; and "rape" by pre-pubescent children will be a regular crime statistic figure, not an occasional one.
A hug is not a sex act.
It's the paranoiac defining of a four year old's hug as sexual harassment that points to the hysteria of people who see depravity round every corner, a people who make sure single men are not seated with unaccompanied children on flights.
The repressive culture of the 1950s that socons yearn for included censoring books, Sunday blue laws, not allowing married couples to be portrayed as sleeping in the same bed, and forced the word 'pregnant' off of television. We won't be revisiting those social norms anytime soon, I hope.
I realize where you are coming from, and when a child's act is not overtly sexual, they should not be stigmitized as if it was. The wrongful stigmitizing has itself committed the very "sexualizing" offense on the child, that the authorities claimed they object to.
That I understand.
On the other side, children ARE continually being sexualized in deeper and deeper ways, and and younger and younger ages through advertizing and entertainment; so increased "playing out" of overtly sexual acts by younger children, if and when they actually occur, would not surprise me, given what children are being exposed to.
"The repressive culture of the 1950s that socons yearn for included censoring books, Sunday blue laws"
"Sunday blue laws" were not only supported by 'socons', but the workers in retail industries loved them also - they actually got to spend their Sundays with their family. Without Sunday blue laws, retail workers spend less time with their families altogether, because even some of their days off are the days when everyone else is at work or school.
I have never known a single retail industry worker that did not long for a standard five day work week. Even when they liked the mid-week day or days off, they did not like the cost - of always working on Sunday or Saturday and Sunday.
It is not unremarkable that most of those jobs are part time and for most people that enter them, outside of managment, they are not career jobs that people do continuously for very many years. People want their family and personal life back, which means having time available when it is also availavble to friends and family.
I would have no problem bringing back Sunday "blue laws", and maybe seeing some reduction in the public's credit card debt at the same time. If closing bars at 2:AM is not unconstitutional, neither are "blue laws".
Texas, in the 1980s, still had such laws (maybe they still do). Enforcing them in the modern age made some strange scenes for newcomers like me at the time. You could sell groceries, but not hardware or liquor, or some other items. On Sundays certain sections of the supermarkets had those bank-style elastic nylon barriers roping off the sections of the store that had items that could not be sold. At the time, I never heard a single Houston native complain about their Sunday blue laws.
--I would have no problem bringing back Sunday "blue laws", --
Where do you stop? Shouldn't the power plants also be shut down? Gas Stations, hospitals, EMT's fire stations, ...
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"Blue laws" applied almost exclusively to Sunday sales in retail sales industries - clothing stores, furniture stores, toys (just think "the mall"), sometimes liquor and not to much else. So your alarms ("Where do your stop?")do not now nor never did reflect the reality of just, and simply, what "blue laws" did exactly.
Is a hospital, or power plant or EMT station or fire station a "retail industry" company? No. And they weren't affected by "blue laws" either.
And what is the difference between those outfits and "retail industries"? People actually need them; sometimes cannot do without them.
Your house needs electricity, unless you don't have electricity, or unless you don't care that the food in your refrigerator will spoil if it is shut off too long.
You might actually have a medical requirement for a hospital and if you have to go the hospital, you might need gas (four of my six nearest gas stations close on Sundays because they want to; one closes Saturday and Sunday).
But, you will survive and so will your family if you have to wait till Monday to get in line for the latest Sony Play Station.
That's the difference.
Where do you stop? You use common sense, which they always did for a long, long time when "blue laws" were common place, and everyone survived, even the retail industry companies. They were even profitable and made many a wealthy family dynasty. Imagine that!!!!!
People seldom shopped on Sunday, went to Church more regularly, carried less debt, saved more, made larger down payments when they bought a home and usually only one parent worked. Yet, we actually survived without Sunday at the mall. Unbelievable!!!!
I am not making this up. (The journal is actually a humor journal for professionals in the social sciences.)
Geared more to the low brow, this is a fun site:
http://www.recoilmag.com/
The words "intelligent" and "teacher" should not be used in the same sentence. These people, as a species, have IQ's at or near room temperature. The old saying of "those who can - do, and those who can not do - teach" is so very true. As a population, they are a bunch of egocentric losers feeding at the public trough.
Thanks!
With a 4 year old, the "freedom of speech Nazis" are certainly not responsible for what the child is seeing. If a 4 year old is watching raunchy MTV videos etc., it's because his PARENTS are allowing it.
No, power should be shut off from sunset friday until sunset saturday, and you should not be allowed to flip a switch.
...and they passed their retirement costs on to their grandchildren, without a second thought. Ponzi scheme, anyone?
The most obvious problem with the Blue Laws was that they favored a specific religion. An observant Jew couldn't shop on Saturday for his/her own religious reasons, and couldn't shop on Sunday because the dominant religion had forced its choice of a day of limited activities onto everybody. For a Jew who worked full-time or more Monday-Friday, this was a serious imposition.
But then there's also the basic freedom thing. Does the government really have the right to tell a private store owner when s/he may or may not sell certain items?
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