AIBU to think that a parent should be able to deal with a 10 year old threatening her with a hammer and garden shears?

Glorianny

The Met recently announced that they would not respond to calls for help with mental health problems. I think they should take the same attitude towards problems with children. They are not qualified to deal with disruptive children and inadequate parents.
If the child had eaten cannabis she needed medical attention, not police intervention.
That said the police shouldn't be tasering children, but I think few people would know how to deal with an aggressive 10 year old who had threatened her mother with a hammer and was now flourishing a pair of shears.

My experience is that in circumstances where a child is threatening their parent, is out of control with the potential for harm to the child or another person, medics won’t come out unless police officers are also called.
Mum called the police, not a paramedic/GP. There was a danger to the child or others. That’s the kind of mental health situation the police say they will continue to respond to.
The police are often very good at ‘dealing with disruptive children and inadequate parents’

I agree with your point that few people would know how to deal with an aggressive 10 year old who’d threatened her mother with a hammer and was now flourishing a pair of shears

For most 10 year olds, garden shears are large and unwieldy, and, usuall,y so blunt, that you could, in my late MiL's immortal words, ride bare-arsed around the moon on them.

Start with talking and then step forward with an authroatative air and take them from her. It was aaid that she had dropped the hammer by then.

The police are dealing with difficult situations every day though Dickens that is their job and they should be fully trained in how to talk a situation down (in any situation it should be their first line then if that doesn’t work move to next plan etcthat should be a big part of all training )
To taser a young child seems unforgivable to me a 10 year old girl is neither cleverer or stronger than two policemen and a mother no matter what’s she carrying
Unfortunately a lot of police footage I ve seen they go into full ‘warrior mode’ shouting and screaming at the assailant from the first second of meeting

The Met recently announced that they would not respond to calls for help with mental health problems. I think they should take the same attitude towards problems with children. They are not qualified to deal with disruptive children and inadequate parents.
If the child had eaten cannabis she needed medical attention, not police intervention.
That said the police shouldn't be tasering children, but I think few people would know how to deal with an aggressive 10 year old who had threatened her mother with a hammer and was now flourishing a pair of shears.

Smileless2012

The police officer involved was cleared of any misconduct.

He was cleared by the Met but the IOPC are investigating, the ruling is due tomorrow (Thursday).

It's no wonder they have violent outbursts

Alot of children have a poor diet with sugar highs and lows from breakfast to bed, it's no wonder

The police officer involved was cleared of any misconduct.

pascal30

we also don't know the effect the cannabis had on the child.. I think tasering is too extreme but these young police officers probably haven't had a lot of experience in violent situations.. I would however question why they were carrying a taser gun.. they should have been taught de-escalation procedures as we were in psychiatric hospitals..

we also don't know the effect the cannabis had on the child

There is that, too.

In fact, there is so much we don't know (as is usual with these cases) that I can't come to any conclusion. The police were faced with a difficult situation - that's the only conclusion I can come to.

tickingbird

I've just seen your later post where you've made it clear that you are not in fact advocating the use of a belt on a child, so I apologise for my above comment.

You gave anecdotal evidence that two people you know were not harmed by the practise - I have anecdotal evidence of one person who was. So you and I obviously have different views - both based on personal experience.

I certainly was generalising in my original post - suggesting that there is a large body of people who believe it's possible to discipline a child without hitting it.

tickingbird

^You can be strict and be a disciplinarian without violence, and if you can't - then you've probably created the 'monster' child yourself!^

Ugh!

Far too much generalisation in this comment and as for the “Ugh!” I think Ugh to that.

I was smacked as a child and I’m not violent at all. My best friend from childhood and her brother were children of Irish immigrants who really did wallop the pair of them, often with belts etc. Neither class themselves as abused children and both are very laid back and not in the slightest bit violent.

As for social services, they do love an easy option. Criminalise decent parents for smacking a child but do nothing for those poor children being brutalised regularly even when reports from concerned relatives and neighbours are received.

Oh, I'm sure a good walloping with a leather belt (or even a plastic one) never does any harm.

I presume that is what you are intending to suggest by your - purely anecdotal - evidence?

Yes sounds about right BlueBell I just wanted a bit more insight.

BlueBelle

I agree that hitting children with belts etc is child abuse and I should have made that clear in my post. I didn’t intend for it to come across that I advocate such violent means of chastisement.

I don't suppose that you had cannabis sweets hanging around either, Katie59

but girls are not usually as adventurous Oh, mine are

I never imagined my 4 boys getting out of control the knew the boundaries and I kept them busy doing useful things.
Cubs and Scouts helped a lot and they had a lot freedom as long as they were back at mealtimes and I knew where they had been. If it had been girls I would have been stricter but girls are not usually as adventurous.

We weren't there, we don't know the full circumstances.

Bluebelle de-escalation, an essential skill, which should surely should be used long before a taser is even considered.

A child of 10 can be eased down from confrontation to explaining the problem to putting things down. Regrettably some pokicemen are just trigger happy and, as they say, shoot first, ask questions later. Obviously at times that is necessary, but with a 10 year old girl?

BlueBelle

Deescalation in my understandingNamsnanny would be talking the person down just like in a gun hostage situation or a suspected suicide, not tasering them or shooting them or pushing them over the edge

Thankyou Bluebelle.. I've been out.. Yes when a violent or psychotic epsisode kicked off using methods like keeping yourself safe with a clear escape route, talking very calmly and essentially listening and not making the situation worse..
This should all have been part of the taser course the police had undergone

Bluebelle, we are currently looking for a child psychologist which would be acceptable for the LEA and Social Services because they often ignore a diagnosis if they are not their "books". Also, the school say ADHD with ODD, the support worker is starting to think ASD with PDA. Going privately would mean assessing for both which would be thousands; CAHMs have already knocked back the first referral as they are too busy and have worse cases on their books.
My DGD can be the most beautiful and thoughtful souls on the planet but once things go wrong, she loses it completely. Even things she loves get thrown and broken. Nobody in the family is "blaming" her and she is mortified if she knows I know about her activities so I have asked her parents to discuss these things away from her. She doesn't want to be the way she is any more than we want her to struggle.

Deescalation in my understandingNamsnanny would be talking the person down just like in a gun hostage situation or a suspected suicide, not tasering them or shooting them or pushing them over the edge

icanhandthemback I have only two children. I used to say that both read the baby advice books before they were born, one so that he could get everything right, the other to make sure that she knew exactly what to do to cause maximum disruption.

She was never violent, but we tolerated behaviour at home that we made absolutely clear was unacceptable with other people.

Fortunately she was born with tremendous insight into her own condition. By the time she was 20 she had decided she was too uncompromising to ever cope with having children or a partner, she has always needed a lot of time by herself.

She is in her 50s now. She has her own home, a good job, lots of friends, is a wonderful daughter and her niece and nephew love her to bits. But she has her home to retreat to, where she can be happily alone evenings and weekends, as well as working from home, when she can and we know, when we have family holidays to make sure she has a quiet space to retreat to and opportunities to go out without lots of other people surrounding her.

Is she ND? yes, I think so. DS and I are but are problems are easy to label. Like your DGD, we are not sure what shape hers takes

Has your DGC be seen by a child psychologist? We paid for a private referral. This was many decades ago, but we found it really helpful.

It sounds to me as if a full psychological assessment would be of better use to your DGD and her parents, than Social Workers, whose approach to their work is too often framed within their experience of mainly working with seriously dysfunctional families, so that they cannot see beyond that as an explanation for all family problems.

I wasn't there either, but yes, I would think tasering might not be necessary, but the police have really no alternatives these days were neither we, the parents or the police are allowed to smack a child's bottom!

In most cases, judgement depends on circumstances. Parenting should be taught to school kids, including acceptable attitude to authority. The child seems out of control if she is taking cannabis.

When I was ten I was strong and used to handling tools and if I had not had the right attitude I could have been a danger to others.

pascal30

we also don't know the effect the cannabis had on the child.. I think tasering is too extreme but these young police officers probably haven't had a lot of experience in violent situations.. I would however question why they were carrying a taser gun.. they should have been taught de-escalation procedures as we were in psychiatric hospitals..

If you pop back here, could you explain what de escalation procedures are?

I can say hand on heart I NEVER smacked any of my children and none of my children have ever smacked theirs but then I was never ever smacked as a child

Sorry Tickingbird but whalloping children with a belt IS child abuse whether they want to recognise it as that or not and it is teaching a child that violence is the answer Never ever acceptable and for every child you can say never grew up violent I bet there’s 10 that did because they are being taught that violence against others smaller, is acceptable