Reaction to tantrum open to interpretation
Some people who deal with child behavioral issues review the response of school and police officials to the 5-year-old St. Petersburg girl who ended up in handcuffs.
By RODNEY THRASH
Published April 28, 2005
ST. PETERSBURG - What's a school to do when a 5-year-old girl punches the assistant principal, rips papers off a bulletin board and climbs atop a table?
In the days since a Largo attorney released footage of three police officers handcuffing a 40-pound Fairmount Park Elementary kindergartener, education officials have praised the way administrators tried to defuse the situation without touching.
But was that technique, something Pinellas County Schools spokesman Ron Stone called Crisis Prevention Intervention, the only way?
Perhaps not, some Tampa Bay area child psychologists said, but there is "not an established standard of care," said Dr. Rick Weinberg, a clinical associate professor at the Florida Mental Health Institute at the University of South Florida. The institute in Tampa, which includes a department of child and family studies, researches tactics for dealing with children who have behavioral challenges.
Of this much, Weinberg's colleague and child psychologist Allison Pinto was sure: "This is a great example of what teachers now are asked to do in the school setting, which is not just educate children, but also provide this intensive level of support."
Nothing about the girl's tantrum was ordinary, psychologists said.
"A normal tantrum would be verbal refusal to obey, to cry or scream and to do that for a brief period of time, maybe five or 10 minutes," said Patricia J. Shiflett, a St. Petersburg clinical psychologist with 20 years' experience.
This?
This was "an example of extreme fight or flight," a response in which "you either run from or you fight with what you perceive as dangerous," Shiflett said.
In "extreme fight or flight," the stress of the situation is too overwhelming for the child to manage.
"It may be the collective stress in the child's life, not just stress at the school," she said.
None of the psychologists went as far as to diagnose the girl. Ethically, they could not.
"It really is a snapshot," Pinto said. "We don't know anything about the particulars of the child, the classroom and the adults that are available to serve as resources."
Because of student confidentiality, no one, except Pinellas County Schools, knows.
That piece of information, Shiflett said, is key to understanding the best way to deal with unusually agitated children.
"It's important to evaluate the child and the stressors in the child's life, any medical problems or other reasons why the child is having this kind of reaction," she said.
Before the handcuffs, before the wails, before A Current Affair, was there anything officials could have done to intervene? The tape makes it clear this was not the girl's first run-in with the school or St. Petersburg police.
"If this is a child who's already got a history and the police know her, I would hope that there could be several other adults in the child's life who care enough for the child and could come over in a situation like this to assist in soothing and comforting and trying to manage the situation," Weinberg said. (On the tape, the assistant principal indicates that the child's mother was unable to break free from work.)
Enlisting other adults in addition to parents is part of the institute's approach to addressing its at-risk elementary students' behavioral issues - before a major problem erupts.
"For those students who we deem to be at high risk for behavioral difficulties in the classroom, (it is important) to have on hand a list of people besides police who could be called as consultants in emergent situations and for support, advice and perhaps on-site assistance," he said.
That list could include Sunday school teachers, pastors, football coaches or dance instructors - adults who are important in the child's life.
Stone would not say what, if any, intervention took place before the girl's March 14 tantrum. He again cited student confidentiality. But, he said, Pinellas County Schools spent $5-million last year on training for about 17,000 district employees.
"We are constantly running training opportunities," he said.
That's fine, but "if you want to look at places to intervene," Weinberg said, "usually you want to try to intervene at the place where there's the least amount of escalation. It's easier to extinguish a small, little brush fire than it is to put out a forest fire."
Midway through the tape, the girl makes her first and only declarative statement: "I want to go with my teacher." She was told no, that she had made the room "unsafe" for her teacher and classmates.
Weinberg said this "was an interesting moment of opportunity" for assistant principal Nicole Dibenedetto and teacher Patti Tsaousis.
"I would have liked to have thought that they would've said, "Would you like to see your teacher?' and see what she said and to try to give her successive choices where she could get what she wanted as long as we sort of staged those choices in a way that got her to calm down," he said.
Here's a different way the dialogue could have flowed:
Assistant principal: "You'd like to see your teacher?
"Well, good.
"I would like to help you to get to your teacher. Let's think of a way that we can get to your teacher safely, so your teacher won't be scared or your teacher will be glad to see you."
The idea, Weinberg said, is to get children to verbalize their feelings, rather than act out.
"If the student says something, we know that if you can take the feelings and the anger and the angst, and put those feelings and thoughts into words, rather than channel it into behavior, then you're onto something."
The girl never made it back to the classroom but to the back of a police squad car. The video footage showed three police officers, all of them white, handcuffing the girl, who is black. Weinberg said he wondered if the outcome would have been different if a black officer had been present.
"There is some aspect of an African-American officer who would be familiar with that child's neighborhood and culture and ways in which a child operates that might have been able to talk to the child first," he said.
Still, what does race have to do with it?
"An African-American child encountering a white police officer will have a different internal reaction and external behavior than if that child encounters an officer who looked more like her and can speak in ways that are more familiar," Weinberg said.
According to police officials, there was a black officer, Mark Williams, in the room directing the operation.
Though he can't be seen on the tape, Williams can be heard saying, "You need to calm down and you need to do it now. You remember me? I was the one who told your mom to put handcuffs on you."
Each of the experts was careful not to criticize Fairmount Park administrators.
"Hindsight is 20/20," Weinberg said. "You never know what's going to happen."
Besides, he said, "When you're in the moment, it's very difficult to know how to continue to be as soothing and comforting as possible. As far as I could see, the assistant principal was doing a very good job. Wasn't working too great, but she was doing the best that she could."
Rodney Thrash can be reached at 727 893-8352 or rthrash@sptimes.com