With that said, I should mention another part of my professional function which is to assist in evaluation of ADHD kids (whatever ADHD is, it is something, Peter). There are some who are really dangerous, though very young. I met one kindergartner, for example, that we had to hospitalize. His mother was a recent immigrant, and didn't know how to get help when she found, when he was three, that she had to hide the kitchen knives so as to protect the family while they slept. Instead she only got help when he went to school and the school got scared of him and sent him in to the emergency room He was openly homicidal. "Kids being kids" doesn't cover all of reality.
Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema
Kevin Robert Dean wrote:
> Now now Wojtek--do you have any statistics to back up your "personal
> experience" that temper tantrums inevatably result in Child Abuse charges?
> I don't think so.
>
> > 1. your child age 9 asks you to buy something in a store, you refuse, the
> > child starts screaming, punching and throwing things at you - would you
> > give that child what it "needs"?
> >
> > 2. you decide not to, take that running amok child by the hand to the
> > parking lot, put it in your car, while being called by that child names
> > that would make most people blush, and drive home;
> >
> > 3. about 20 minutes later, a police car stops in front of your house, a
> > policeman enters your house to look for potential child abuse, because
> > someone at that parking lot made a report; then for the next 8 weeks you
> > attend hearings at the state child welfare agency trying to prove that you
> > did not abuse your child. Since you are a single working class mom, each
> > of those hearings requires you take a day off from work, which has an
> > impact on your already meager income. Even if you manage to get off the
> > hook this time, the agency keeps a permanent record on you.
> >
> > Steps 1-3 repeat periodically in various settings, but the key elements
> > (e.g. tantrums, aggression and other people witnessing it) are basically
> > the same.
> >
>
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