Paddling a child with AS Corporal punishment

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Paddling a child with AS Corporal punishment


First of all to my surprise the practice of paddling still exists in public schools. I can’t post the specific addresses yet due to being a new user but a simple google search of paddling schools or will yield information on the issue in the US.

Here is the blog that provoked my interest again I can’t post specific addresses so you will have to google the wording of blog to access it. The child also has type 1 diabetes and the mother mentions moving the location of the child’s infusion set to accommodate the paddling

“We took a break for a bit from our online life because our personal life was throwing too many curve balls. All of my children lost their minds, my MIL is in for a visit and we had an Endo appointment to deal with. There are a few things in all of this that I would like to share. The girl's stuff is just natural pitfalls of raising girls, like a teen love break up, the youngest trying for some added attention, you know life. My MIL's visit is good, I love her. The Daniel things that have been going on are a bit more tricky.

In the world of Asperger's Daniel has been struggling. He got himself into major trouble at school for messing with the computers in the computer lab. While I am not shocked that it had to do with computers, being the little computer junkie he is, the language he used in his crime floored me. I have always taught my children that curse words or vulgar language in general is not necessary and that if they have a strong vocabulary they don't need those words anyway. Not to mention that it is disrespectful and in my view disappointing to God. Anyway, the act he committed had three options for discipline. The principal could suspend him from school, do an in-school suspension or corporal punishment. This decision was tough for her to make because, well, she cares about these kids and trys to understand the situations. She did not want to do the in-school suspension because of his diabetes and the lack of a teacher to help him care for his blood sugars. She did not want to suspend him because of his Asperger's and the whole of that consequence was too much for his punishment. The only choice left was a paddling and she was afraid of hitting his sites. We decided that the paddling would be best and then we would also reinforce the punishment at home in a way that would help him understand the importance of what he had done. She put the paddling off until Monday so that I could get his sites moved from his hips to more safe body parts. He deserved punishment, he knew it was wrong. I think that he was probably trying to impress "friends" but I am not sure. I love that the principal was so thoughtful in her choice of punishment. I love that I did not have to jump to his defense and in doing so sending a message to my son that he could get away with things because of his health issues. I love that he is in a school that cares about him and trys to understand why he does things instead of just throwing him aside as a trouble maker. He will not be viewed as a problem child from here on, instead they get why he does things, deals with him appropriately and moves on to hopefully better times and decisions. That is priceless.

The paddling happened on Monday. Our punishment for him was that he was grounded from the home computers, the phone and no friends would come over for one week. This is huge in his world because 1) he is a computer junkie and 2) the computer is his escape. Keep in mind that while my MIL is here Daniel does not have the solitude of his room, he has been moved upstairs during the visit. I did not think about all of this, I did not feel I had a choice at the time of handing down his sentence. No retreat, no escape, uprooted routines, and uncertainty, does not make for a happy boy. Monday night, it all crashed. We had the mother of all meltdowns. I had to hold him tight and it took all of my strength as he wailed in frustration. Once he calmed down we decided that we would put up his bed tent so he would have a place of escape. The tent and some quiet time really helped.

Tuesday was the day of his Endo appointment and I was really dreading it. The last couple of weeks have been so off that his blood sugars have been a struggle. Apparently I underestimate the power of Cody. I did not think about the fact that Cody alerts us to so many more numbers than we would catch on our own and gives us the chance to deal with them in a more timely manner. Last visit the A1c was 8 and I was not a happy camper. This time the A1c was 6.4 and we were all elated. This is the lowest A1c Daniel has had to date. It took us four years but we took it from 12 to 6.4! Woo Hoo.

After the proper appointment it was the visit for the blood draw. In anticipation of this we had put EMLA cream on his arm before we got to the office. We found a point on the ceiling to distract him and she went to work. She could not find his vein, she made several attempts and then went to get another nurse. Oh boy, I did not cream the other arm. The guy comes in and looks at both arms and agrees we need to do the right arm. He has freeze spray, thank you to the inventor of this nifty invention. First try, done. No meltdown, no tears, just a successful draw. Now he is determined to find a squeeze toy like they had, it was an animal with gel in it, but the gel had tons of test strips in them. Daniel was quite taken with that and now has to have one. Anyone know where I might can score a test strip, gel filled, animal, squeeze toy? LOL

In conclusion, Diabetes is being contained for the moment, Asperger's is being wild but we are working on it, School is trying to help all they can, and life just keeps on truckin. What a ride.”

Only pedophiles like to give corporal punishment.

Disgusting... How is "paddling", assuming I have the correct definition, acceptable over a suspension? How does such a misdemeanor even warrent a suspension? In all the school systems I have seen, a child would have gotten something fairly minor for that, unless it were a third offence.

It must have been a private schools. They banned it from public schools in the late 1970s or early 80s.

Where is paddling still legal in the US? I thought they got rid of that in public schools in the 70's? If a teacher tried to do that to a student around here nowadays all hell would break loose. When I have kids if any teacher touches my kid, I'd beat the hell out of them. I see all too often public schools in the US abusing their power to bully kids, and it's crap! >8(

Yeah, but most parents who give it don't like it. It's not pedophilia in the vast majority of cases; nor is it usually abuse. However, many abusive parents call their abuse "discipline"...

That said, I don't agree with corporal punishment for most Aspies because we tend to have odd pain sensation--too much, too little, or processed in a way that's different from the average kid's.

I actually used to hit myself with more force than used in the average paddling, mostly because it felt... not good exactly, but not bad, either. It's identifiable as pain, but doesn't have the negative reaction to it. Needless to say, spankings weren't frightening because they hurt; the only thing I got out of them was the fear of being restrained. And that means being made to feel utterly helpless... Nobody should be made to feel that way; discipline is meant to help you learn to control yourself, not to make you feel like you can't control anything.

On the other hand, what if you had a hypersensitive child?... I can see, realistically, how it might be literally torture--and not understood to be torture because the child was assumed to be trying to get out of it or being a cry baby.

like I said I can't post specific addresses yet but


"Is Corporal Punishment Legal?
Shocking as it may seem, the answer in many states is yes. Depending on where you live, it is legal for a teacher or principal to hit a child with a wooden paddle. Although corporal punishment is banned in almost every industrialized country in the world, here in the United States almost half of all states (23) still allow it. And while the number of school paddlings has dropped, an average of 2,000 students a day still receive corporal punishment for such offenses as skipping school, disrupting class, talking out of turn, or sometimes much more trivial ones, as Jonathan, Victorio and countless other children and parents have learned.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the PTA and many other national organizations have called for an end to this practice. Yet a landmark 1977 Supreme Court case did not find paddling to be cruel and unusual punishment. Without a national law to ban it, the decision of whether to allow this form of discipline is up to individual states.

Paddling flourishes in what some call the "belt belt"-- rural, Southern states such as Mississippi, where one out of every ten school children is struck, and Texas, which accounts for nearly one-fifth of all paddlings in the country. Nine percent of students in Arkansas and six percent in Alabama are paddled each year. Other paddle-prone states are Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Georgia and Missouri. Corporal punishment is allowed elsewhere in the country, too, including a few school districts in Ohio, Pennsylvania and other states. Paddling survives because enough educators, legislators and parents in these states believe it works, often citing the saying, "Spare the rod, spoil the child" or pointing to the fact that they were spanked as kids and turned out fine as evidence......"

last place I saw it was in shop class in the mid-70s. Teacher had a fiberglass paddle, with drilled air holes to cut down on wind resistance (gotta wonder about a mind who attends to details like that...

Never had to find out, fortunately...

^^ That's a real shame that it's still going on. I'll be sure to steer clear of those states where it's legal.

"A decision last month by the Canadian Supreme Court to outlaw the use of the strap by teachers has left the United States and a lone state in Australia as the only parts of the industrialized world to allow corporal punishment in schools, according to anti-paddling activists. While 28 U.S. states have outlawed paddling over the past three decades, the practice remains commonplace across much of the Bible Belt.

Here in the nation's top paddling state, nearly 10 percent of students are paddled every year, according to statistics collected by the federal Department of Education. In poorer parts of the state, where a higher proportion of children are from minority and single-parent families, the use of corporal punishment is even more frequent
"

icky.

If you google DanielDoo you should be able to find the blog in its entirety. Wrongplanet prohibits me from posting website addresses due to being a new member


(I can’t even post the term U R L if the letters do not have spaces between them at the moment.)
I made a type 1 diabetes message board aware of the issue. All members we very shocked by the paddling issue, and the fact that she listed diabetes (and the scheduling thereof) as one of her deciding factors for allowing paddling. (How exactly is that child going to feel about his diabetes?)
One thing both perspectives have made me aware of is that her blog is really causing confusion about AS in the diabetes community.

I may not believe in hitting a kid at school, that is the parent's job, but the kid can't get special treatment by not giving it to him and the parents did the right thing by not giving in on him. He knew what he did was wrong so he has to learn. I was also spanked as a kid and also hit by a wooden spoon and I turned out just fine. I think it's wrong to hit a child with an object.

I can imagine other aspies saying that was abuse because they took his obsession away. Well I just say they're spoiled brats then because that is how they think.



Isn't spanking supposed to hurt? I was hit on my bare skin as a kid and it hut like hell I cried. Isn't it supposed to feel that way? That was the whole point so I wouldn't do X again because I didn't want to get hurt again. It also felt I was in hot water because my skin was so cold and it stung too when I get hit on my bare skin. It still hurt like heck when they hit me with my pants up. I never got special treatment. My brothers were treated the same way as me. So therefore it was not special treatment I got.