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Wow. Drop what you're doing, and go read this article:

The only thing that sets these students apart from kids at any other school in America - aside from their special-ed designation - is the electric wires running from their backpacks to their wrists. Each wire connects to a silver-dollar-sized metal disk strapped with a cloth band to the student's wrist, forearm, abdomen, thigh, or foot. Inside each student's backpack is a battery and a generator, both about the size of a VHS cassette. Each generator is uniquely coded to a single keychain transmitter kept in a clear plastic box labeled with the student's name. Staff members dressed neatly in ties and green aprons keep the boxes hooked to their belts, and their eyes trained on the students' behavior. They stand ready, if they witness a behavior they've been told to target, to flip open the box, press the button, and deliver a painful two-second electrical shock into the student at the end of the wire.

Now, this is already astoundingly nasty stuff. The justification is that these are severely disabled children who would otherwise be locked up, drugged to the eyeballs, or killing themselves. I can't accept it - because I wouldn't want anybody to have that power over anyone, certainly not in such a regimented system - but at least I can see the defence. Only, read on and it gets far worse:

Sometimes, the student gets shocked for doing precisely what he's told. In a few cases where a student is suspected of being capable of an extremely dangerous but infrequent behavior, the staff at Rotenberg won't wait for him to try it. They will exhort him to do it, and then punish him. In these behavior rehearsal lessons, staff members will force a student to start a dangerous activity - for a person who likes to cut himself, they might get him to pick up a plastic knife on the table - and then shock him when he does.

And worse:

New York state inspectors concluded that "the background and preparation of staff is not sufficient," that JRC shocks students "without a clear history of self-injurious behavior," and that it uses the GED "for behaviors that are not aggressive, health dangerous, or destructive, such as nagging, swearing, and failing to keep a neat appearance."

Edit: wow, there have been some totally fascinating comments on this. Thanks, everybody :)

Current Mood: irate
Current Music: lots of covers from duranorak

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

colfu.livejournal.com

Although I agree that it is already way down the slippery slope of 'going too far', I also try to imagine how I would feel if my child purposely banged their head into corners / surfaces resulting in damage to the skull (example given in article, where the crib is padded to stop damage to child).

Firstly, I am not a parent, though I do teach children from the age of 4 upwards, and have never felt like harming myself, so I do not have as much personal experience with this subject as some of the posts above. But I have read all the above before writing this.

With that in mind, the child is already in pain and in danger of seriously injuring themself, so I would see small shocks as a lesser evil. This is assuming that other options had been tried and had failed (what other options are there?) The parent had already padded the crib, and I am assuming that when they got older they did remove low tables etc so that there were no easily accessable corner / hard objects to head-bang. Is the answer just a bigger padded crib if nothing else works? For the rest of their lives?

When I was younger I had very bad eczema on the backs of my knees, elbows and wrists, and on the tips of my fingers. I didn't really scratch much when I was awake, but every morning I would wake up with blood everywhere as I scratched myself raw nearly every night in my sleep. My mum, a chilren's nurse at the county hospital for 20 years at the time, eventually made me make fists, then put my fists into socks which were then taped on. Unfortunately I found that the friction from the sock worked as well as my hands, but as my fingers got better I realised that the raw pain would actually go away if I left it alone all the time, and then I would be in less of a habit to scratch while I was asleep.

If I did this to my kids (which I don't have) today, I would worry about getting done for abuse or the like. However, I stopped getting eczema about the age of 8. 16 years later it has started coming back, and although I have gotten rid of it, it was so hard, that I actually decided that each time I scratched a certain area, I would watch no TV, read, or use the computer (non work related) for a day. It's still very hard, but there was no way I could have done it even 6 years ago.

Anyway, what my mum did worked and I see it as not a very nice thing to do, but the lesser of two evils, and actually feel grateful for it (though I didn't at the time!). This is how I feel with the case of the head-banging. This child has a very very good chance of seriously injuring themselves. So althought, as some of you have noted, there may be side effects taht we can't see yet, I would see it as an acceptable treatment.

In the case of swearing or being unkempt, they can F-OFF! But then if Child A always swears profusely before attacking someone, it may stop them before an attack, or just teach them to shut up and surprise their victim. So perhaps the 'watchers' could not the outburst, use less harsh ways to calm them down, but be ready with the shocks in case they do suddenly attack someone. This way they see the shock being related to teh attack, not to the outburst (which isn't going to harm anyone).

I say this, because when I am teaching someone (adult!), and they constantly pull their arm back before hitting me, I spot this hit them first. I do this not to stop them hitting me, but so that they learn that pulling their arm back first just gets them hit. They very soon stop doing it, and do their attack correctly, and I don't hit them. So I use the same method to stop the first action, not to stop the result. Make sense?

So, to conclude, where what they do to themselves or someone else is worse than a little shock, I say yes. For when they are just being an inconvenience/unruley/noisey etc, I say no.

From:

serena-lesley.livejournal.com

So, to conclude, where what they do to themselves or someone else is worse than a little shock, I say yes. For when they are just being an inconvenience/unruley/noisey etc, I say no.

I agree to an extent. Basically there are things in place that aren't as cruel as shocks with help children / people who haven't the mental capacity to not hurt themselves in some way, such as scratch mittens, a version of what your mother did, because she needed to. There are existing ways of dealing with the behaviours mentioned in the article, such as behaviour therapy and more positive attention from the carers. Self-harm is usually (though granted, not always) a sign of unhappiness which needs to be dealt with, rather than treating the self-harm and ignorig the unhappiness.

I would need major convincing that a child who was being considered for any 'treatment' such as this had failed to respond to all other possibilities, and even then I still can't agree with it 100%, due to the contents of the rest of the article. A small shock used as a 'reminder' not to attack someone, yes, I can see the value in that. However the whole program is just far too open to abuse (such as using shocks for behaviours that don't put anyone at risk) and for that reason I don't think its use can be accepted or condoned.

Um, that was me agreeing with you mostly, but pointing out that there are plenty of other options in between 'hurting yourself in an uncontrolled way' and 'being given electric shocks when someone else decides to press a button'.

From:

colfu.livejournal.com

I'm glad you agree with me, as it took me ages to figure out what I actually meant when I thought about how I felt.

Self-harm is usually (though granted, not always) a sign of unhappiness which needs to be dealt with, rather than treating the self-harm and ignorig the unhappiness. It's kinda amusing that you mention that, becuase I am currently reading about and having sessions on The Alexander Technique (http://www.cambridgealexander.com/about.htm).

This is basically looking at what the problem is and how to fix it so it doesn't happen again, as opposed to just fixing the result. eg: I have a pain in my back, the doctor sends me to hospital, they see that something is wrong and give me drugs / exercises / therapy to alleviate the pain. It goes. A year month later it is back, and I have to do it all again. The Alexander Technique would look at my use of my body to tell me what was causing my pain in the first place and then help me use my body in a way that it doesnt happen anymore. They do this successfully for migranes (oft treated with many drugs), posture related pains (back, knees, shoulders - oft treated with surgery), breathing problems and anything else you can think of.

The site isn't great, but there is a great book by Wilfred Barlow (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Alexander-Principle-Your-Without-Stress/dp/0752843907/sr=8-5/qid=1160666570/ref=sr_1_5/202-6769009-5453469?ie=UTF8&s=books) that I stole from a mate, that I demand everyone should read as I think everyone will have a better life becasue of it (or I can just pass around my nicked copy).

From:

serena-lesley.livejournal.com

It sounds like there is very sound reasoning behind the technique. :)

From:

colfu.livejournal.com

I've almost finished the book, so if you are interested, i'll post it up to you.

From:

serena-lesley.livejournal.com

Ooh, that'd be ace, thanks! Alternatively you can make your way in this direction in coincide with the next Judder (there is one tomorrow, and on the second Friday of every month) and I can read it then. :)

From:

colfu.livejournal.com

I'm afraid at £40 return train journey, it's not gonna happen before xmas at the earliest, unless I can get a certain young lady from peterborough to wantto drinve up ...