Abuse or Neglect at Home or in School

I was disturbed and appalled to read these two compositions:

Children Can’t Wait: Taking Steps Towards Their Protective PresentMahima Sukheja

Pradhuman Dies Due To Gross Negligence And Bad GovernanceDr Vivek Kumar Srivastava

Whenever I get upset and this is the way that I’ve been since a little girl, I chase that which bothers me like white on rice. I will not separate from my travail just as whiteness won’t pull back from rice except when I  find solutions to traumatic events. So this is what I devised this time around:

My advise to people who suffer these sorts of incidents wherein children are broken is to band together as small neighborhood communities. Set up a meeting by using flyers with a designated location for the meeting whose purpose is development of a safe watch neighborhood. Use logos like the following ones in both your neighborhoods and on the outsides of your homes. Post them around schools, especially on homes near school. Inform people about the meaning.

Check out the topic in your search bar: “neighborhood safe watch” and check out: “neighborhood safe watch image”. …

Neighborhood-Safe-Home-Label-LB-1560

When-do-you-need-a-Safety-House-1006

Set up people to provide safe walks home:

Sch0oo Watch_1471865218213_5740610_ver1.0

Set up an initial meeting for your neighborhood to provide for a safe-watch environment to be constructed. as suggested in the text above:

neighbourhood-watch

Have officials come to your meeting or to schools and give programs to children, teachers, school administration, parents and other concerned adults.

watch90

When I was in seventh grade (aged thirteen), I had a masculine, muscled, unmarried, gym teacher. She liked to watch girls taking showers after gym class. She also liked keeping some girls after class to watch them exercise. They were the extremely pretty and most athletic ones.

However, this extra exercise made us sometimes late for our next class and if we were not in our seats when the buzzer rang across the school for the start of each new class, we’d get a disciplinary mark in a book by whatever teacher that we had after the gym class. (If you got three marks, you were in extreme trouble.)

After getting two marks by my English teacher after my gym class since I was held late by the gym teacher, I decided that I’d had enough since I had no intention of getting a third mark in the bad behavior book that my English teacher (and all teachers) had.

So I refused to stay late for my gym teacher for extra exercise. I told her, “No!”

The day after my refusal announcement, she accused me of chewing gum in class, asked me to open my mouth to show it (and there was none), had me bend over with my elbows on my knees and whacked my behind with a breadboard paddle really hard.

When I got home from school that day, my mother noticed that I had trouble sitting down in a chair, so she enquired as to the reason. So we went off to my bedroom and I showed her my bottom covered in black and blue marks and red raised welts. Then I explained the situation to her with the gym teacher.

At the time, my father was the vice president of a prestigious college and former dean of students at another prestigious college. My mother had taught graduate courses at another school in elementary education. So their credentials were solid, but even if they had not been so, they would have taken the same action.

Furious at my treatment, they set up a meeting with the Principal at my school — someone less educated than they in terms of credentials — and told him that no teacher is allowed to touch their children and if they do, a lawsuit would be brought. They also said that if any of us children had a disciplinary problem, my parents should be informed and it would be handled by them.

If they had not done that intervention, my gym teacher would probably still have tried to dominate me to do her bidding. I will NOT be bullied, spanked, nor controlled by someone of her ilk. My parents let this stance clearly be known and this teacher, having been informed by the school director to leave me alone or all hell would break loose, did just that. She left me alone thereafter.

Yes, teach children and adults to be empowered against predators.Stand up for your children against relatives, friends, strangers, teachers or others, who would harm them just as my parents did for me.

In MA, USA all educators are legally mandated reporters for abuse and neglect. We even have a training program for it,

Here — use it if you want. Then every single educator in your child’s school and every single adult in your community can be turned into a mandated reporter.

This understanding is very important. Excerpted from 51A Online Mandated Reporter Training – Middlesex Children’s …:

“Mandated reporters who are professionally licensed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts are required to complete a training to learn how to recognize and report suspected child abuse and neglect.

“This online training was designed by the Middlesex Children’s Advocacy Center  in collaboration with the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office  to help mandated reporters.

  • “Understand their legal obligations as mandated reporters
  • “Recognize possible signs and symptoms of maltreatment
  • “Know how to respond to a child who discloses abuse
  1. “What Conditions are Reportable?
    1. “What Qualifies as Maltreatment?
    2. “Recognizing Child Neglect
    3. “Recognizing Physical Child Abuse
    4. “Recognizing Sexual Child Abuse
    5. “Physical Dependence Upon an Addictive Drug at Birth
    6. “Recognizing Child Exploitation
  2. “Responding to Disclosures of Abuse
    1. “What Should You Do if a Child Discloses Abuse to You?
    2. “Delayed Disclosures of Sexual Abuse”

Please check out this following  training session. It is your best hope to stop harm of children without resorting to violence or helplessness. Please share it with friends, neighborhood associates and school staff, I recommend. Thus, slowly transform society in your region into a new pattern if it is needed.

Mandated Reporter Training – Mass.gov

www.mass.gov/eohhs/gov/departments/dds/mandated-reporter-training.html

Reporting suspected cases of abuse, neglect and mistreatment is an important responsibility that we all take very seriously. So, training on mandated reporting …

If you do not have good education and social service departments in your region — no sweat. There are other ways to take care of perpetrators and perverts in your region and in schools. One simply has to be innovative and combine with other individuals.

When Randy Kehler was jailed for civil disobedience, people ringed his house property and banged drums while chanting. It went on 24/7 with different groups taking different hours and days.

You see, Randy was imprisoned for only paying the part (percentage) of his income tax to IRS that didn’t go to war efforts. The amount that would have gone to war efforts, he gave to war tax resistance groups and war victims.

His house, on community owned Quaker property, was ceased by IRS and sold to a young policeman and his pregnant girlfriend for around $5,000 USD. (It was worth around, I suppose, a $100,000 USD or more.)

It was a poor choice to buy it, especially when illegal to do so on communal property land trust that Randy didn’t own. So the buyer and his mate were called out for their actions and driven out by loud banging and chanting.

… Anyone who offends the community standards in care of children or in any other sort of decency regarding community practices can also be passively dealt with if the police or judiciary system won’t do so. It just takes will, resolve and co-joined actions by others just as Randy’s situation was handled despite that the government judiciary system was against him.
If somebody doesn’t like something (especially when it happens to children), then they shouldn’t passively wring their hands and complain or moan. Instead they need to gather with others, form a plan and rise up.

Especially they need to teach others, including young children, about the stand up and resist movement. It is the only way forward!

Focus on the community strengthening, and child and family level of life. Then you can respond as was done for Randy Kehler.

Randy Kehler – Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Kehler

Randy Kehler is an American pacifist activist and advocate for social justice. Kehler objected to America’s involvement in the Vietnam war and refused to …


If you want, use this lesson that a relative of mine, a school guidance counselor, and I developed so as to teach your children. They need to learn at a very young age to stand up, speak out and get adults involved in their woes. Then the adults need to do the same action while even involving whole neighborhoods in the action if needed in which case friends, family and people living close by can be rallied to the cause of supporting and protecting children, along with each other.

Children need to learn that they do not, absolutely do not, have to take bullying, neglect, nor abuse from another child, NOR ANY ADULT. They also need to be trained to know to whom to report if someone does either directly or indirectly hurt them just as I did with my mother when I was paddled by the gym teacher.

You may want to have lots of people with children sign a petition that their school needs a guidance counselor. Believe me: a guidance counselor’s job is tough, but imperative. (You can read about it here at the end of this essay: Tough To Handle! … Heroes And Sheroes In The USA | Countercurrents.)

Brief Lesson Plans Related to Name Calling and Theft of Water Bottles

NAME CALLING LESSON

Introduction

Teacher tells the true account of Susie Looms in fifth grade.

Main body

The class discusses about what it feels like to be Susie.

Conclusion

Class discusses or writes about what they would individually do if they were the most popular person in the class, had been the worst offender to hurt Susie and now wanted to help her due to the realization that she was very, very hurt by the name calling.

THEFT LESSON

Introduction

Teacher tells the narrative about Tom who takes water bottles, etc.

Main Body

Children in the class discuss about how they would feel if they were Tom.

Conclusion

Children write an apology note as if they were Tom to the students from whom items were stolen, as well as to the school’s principal and policeman for taking up their time. The note can be something like:

Dear students, Principal “X” and Officer “Y,”

Classmates, I am sorry that I took things from you and realize now that my doing it is really not funny. It is mean.

Principle and Officer, I am sorry that I took up your time to deal with my poor choices. I promise that I will think before I act in the future and, from now on, make good choices.

Sincerely,

Tom

 

Name Calling Account:

This is a true story: Susie Looms was a very shy girl and never was mean to anybody. The reason that she never was mean is that her feelings had been so hurt by her classmates by the name that they called her, which was Susie Fumes. They would say comments like: “Pe-ew, you stink, Susie Fumes” and “What a smelly girl you are Looms-Fumes!”

Susie knew that she didn’t smell badly since she showered every day and wore clean clothes every day. Nonetheless, the name calling really hurt her and she cried a lot every day because of it, as well as had horrible nightmares about being called terrible names.

She also got anxious about going to school since that was where she was tormented by other girls and boys. So she would get a stomachache just prior to getting on the bus for school each day. She also would fake being sick on some days so she could get out of going to school.

Further, she got so insecure that she couldn’t read outloud in her class from books. So she got stuck in remedial reading class, which made the other girls and boys make fun of her even more, even though she was a very good reader and was able to read books way above her grade level. Poor Susie!

Imagine that you are Susie. What does it feel like to be Susie?

Imagine that you are the most popular person in Susie’s class and you are also the person who was the meanest to her. What can you now do to help her since you realize that you hurt her very, very much and she is really a nice, interesting person?

Theft Account

Tom thought that it was funny and “cool” to take water bottles from students that he didn’t like. He would hide them in his locker and would secretly gloat every time that they would look for their water bottles and not find them.

He got so proud of himself for getting away with taking the water bottles that he escalated and now started stealing the homework from people whom he didn’t like. He put the homework papers also in his locker under the pile of stolen water bottles.

Then he was caught because one day when he was putting some stolen papers in his locker a teacher walked by and saw all of the water bottles. Oh-oh!

Then he was sent to the principal’s office and the principal called the police so that the principal and officer could both talk with Tom. Then they shared that theft is against the law, theft of homework papers could lead to a student getting an “F” for a grade, and theft of a water bottle could cause a student to collapse on the playground or in gym class from dehydration so that he’d have to be rushed to the hospital perhaps.

Tom had never thought about these issues, but realized that they were really serious. He also wasn’t surprised when he was suspended from school for ten days for having stolen items from other students. … Boy, would his parents be upset and angry when they heard about his poor choices and he wrote an apology letter to the students from whom he stole, the principal and the police officer.

He was sorry to take up their time and cause them all trouble. So what should he state in the letter?

How does Tom feel when the police officer and principal talked with him? What does he think that his parents will say to him?

Pretend that you are Tom. Then write the apology letter to the students, the principal and the police officer.


If you do not like torment of children, then rise up. If you do not like any community member harmed — child or adult — rise up and present a different way forward. Work hard for the change. It is as simple as that and can, I can attest with absolute certainty, be done!

Sally Dugman is a writer from MA, USA.

Support Countercurrents

Countercurrents is answerable only to our readers. Support honest journalism because we have no PLANET B.
Become a Patron at Patreon

Join Our Newsletter

GET COUNTERCURRENTS DAILY NEWSLETTER STRAIGHT TO YOUR INBOX

Join our WhatsApp and Telegram Channels

Get CounterCurrents updates on our WhatsApp and Telegram Channels

Related Posts

Join Our Newsletter


Annual Subscription

Join Countercurrents Annual Fund Raising Campaign and help us

Latest News