Every now and ten I see a news story that has me shaking my head, wondering what are people thinking? Today had such a story.
A two-year-old girl was suspended from a daycare because she brought in a cheese sandwich.
The day care has a policy of no outside foods because of severe allergies especially to peanuts. A good policy in theory. An excellent one to implement. A stupid way to resolve a conflict.
C'mon folks, she's two years old. She doesn't understand what is going on beside the fact that she isn't allowed to see her friends. I'm pretty sure she didn't make the sandwich and smuggle it into the daycare.
The proper response to this would have been to penalize the parents who let her bring in the sandwich. Make the parents pay a penalty or sit through a video showing some child reacting to peanuts so they know just how serious this allergy can be. Instead the parents and the child are all being penalized. Because now the parents need to make sure their daughter is being taken care of during the suspension period so either they dish out more for a babysitter or one of them takes time off work to be home.
Want to bet they still have to pay for the suspended days at the daycare?
So, because a couple of parents forgot the rule, although how they could with all the signs around, and no one at the daycare was double-checking to make sure parents weren't sending food with their kids, a family now has the additional financial burden of either lost time at work or an additional babysitter plus paying for the days unused at the daycare plus having their child learn really early in life that life isn't fair and a mistake can hurt several people at once.
Do I think the punishment was reasonable? Obviously not.
A flat fine would have been better. I know there will be people saying "but a child could have been hurt if that had been a peanut butter sandwich instead of cheese". Yes but it didn't happen. And a child, especially a two year old child, should not be punished because the adults were not responsible with their actions.
Rules are there for a reason. But the response to breaking them should be appropriate to all the people involved. A daycare is not taking care of children like the regular school system does. The children are younger and need to be considered when punishments for rule breaking are handed out. They don't understand about suspensions. All they understand is that they aren't being allowed to see their friends. Children that age require an immediate punishment so they understand the rule they broke and the results of breaking the rule. Children of school age understand more about delayed or extended punishments.
This is just one example of how people over-react with punishments. There's an old saying "Make the punishment fit the crime". I think we need to bring that back into force. But mostly we need for people to sit down and look at what they are doing when they determine punishments for breaking rules. I know the point is to make sure the person doesn't break the rule again but some of the punishments being put forth are extreme and completely inappropriate.
Or maybe we should just send them to their rooms until they've learned their lesson?
No comments:
Post a Comment