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What some people were saying with their hypothetical child restraint systems sounds like something that happened at the daycare where I worked last summer. There were a few children that were just problem children and we had to use what I guess you would call "light restraints" to keep them safe or from hurting other kids.
One 3-year-old girl decided one day that she did not want to be there, so she decided to run out of the room and try to go out the front door. She kept doing it, and we had to grab her and hang onto her as she was fighting us trying to run out the door. What were we supposed to do, let her run out into the parking lot? The teacher in her room just held onto her on her lap until she calmed down.
This same girl, who was still in diapers during naptime, one time did a BM during nap. After nap, she utterly refused to let anyone change her diaper. Pitched a fit. Well, we couldn't really leave her in a dirty diaper, could we? So we had to try to hold her down on the changing table, me trying to hang on to her while the other teacher tried to change the diaper. Have you ever tried to keep a wiggling tantrum-having 3-year-old still while someone is trying to change/clean her? It's not fun, lemme tell ya. I guess you could call what I did holding on to her "light restraint", since I was restraining her from getting away...
Then there was a 4-year-old boy who liked to throw things and hit other kids. One time he started pitching a fit and hitting everyone he could, so we tried to send him for time out and he wouldn't stay in the time out corner, came running out and started hitting people again. Even hit me, the teacher. I got a nice bruise on my cheek from him but of course I had to be very careful not to bruise him by hanging on to him. Again, what were we supposed to do, let him go beta up the other 10 kids in the room? I don't think so.
All in all, I think the daycare where I worked was very good and handled things well. It's just in a few extreme cases where this stuff might actually be necessary. It's all about discretion and using your judgement about keeping the child safe without actually hurting him.
BTW I just thought of something else, writing this message. It seems like for a lot of places (like that daycare, my kindergarten class, etc), where kids get sent for time out is the reading corner. Probably b/c it's more isolated from the rest of the room, and because it has pillows in case the kid is pitching a fit, but that seems like it would make kids associate reading with punishment. You're bad? Go to the reading corner! Does this seem like a bad thing to anyone? Maybe that's why more kids don't like to read...
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