Boy breaks grandmother's arm by accident

[Nimbostratus100]

I am not going to say what happened next and what I think until I have heard a few objective opinions on here

The facts of the case

12 year old boy in sports club, leaving the main entrance on his skateboard, which he has been told is not allowed in the building, knocks over the grandmother coming to collect another child. The grandmother has a broken arm and needed an operation

This is a fairly elite sports club, you need to be able to play to a certain standard to by allowed to join. This boy has played there for a year. No serious trouble, several minor reprimands. Reasonably good player. Turns up for the team probably 80-90% of the time.

This happened last weekend. The sports club is meeting tomorrow. The parents have just heard that this boy has/has not been expelled and will/will not be there.

What do you think should happen? why?

I am allocating the voting by a toss of a coin to be random!

YABU - the boy should be expelled
YANBU - the boy should not be expelled

also, what else should happen, as well as/ instead of being expelled?

Thank you

He should be expelled. He obviously can't take a telling and persists in ignoring safety rules and now someone has been seriously injured.
He should be expelled and he should lose his skateboard too - He is so badly behaved that he should not be trusted with it.

It's not an accident when you are deliberately flouting permission to do so, ignoring previous warnings & all common sense H&S.

If I drove my car on the pavement & knocked you off your feet, would you plead with your insurance company, the police, jury & judge - "It was an accident, of course she shouldn't be punished"?

Who said anything about no punishment?

If you did something in your car deliberately like speeding and caused an accident then you would receive punishment but wouldn't necessarily be banned from driving forever!

To be clear, he has ignored safety rules on precisely one occasion, and now he is being punished for that.

I think she'd have to sue Club (and its insurers) as the incident took place on Club premises; and as she did nothing wrong, i.e. no contributory negligence, she might have a case.

My personal feeling is that is is right that he shouldn't be expelled for a stupid childish act when he didn't mean to harm anyone. But I seem to be in the minority out of the adults associated with this club.

Yes, I think he is a basically good hearted boy, who has the potential to go off the rails without direction in his life, and I am very much in favour of keeping him engaged with his sport

I agree - he is only 12 years old, hardly the optimum age for impulse control & thinking ahead.

Confiscating the skateboard for a specified period would be a proportionate response, but as the lad's family don't seem to support him at the club, that might be difficult to co-ordinate with a parent/guardian.

^^ This! Best post on this thread.

I did some training on unconscious bias recently. A trainer gave a scenario, said it was a script for a play, and asked us to write down who we would cast as protagonist, antagonist etc. Turned out there were some very apparent biases that became quite obvious when the actors/actresses faces were pasted onto a storyboard.

If the OP is the casting director, the notes we have so far are:
Protagonist: 12 year old kid. Parents not interested. Skateboards. Minor rule-breaking.
Antagonist: Grandmother. Still working, so in her sixties but looks closer to 70. Suffers broken arm.

Now, who are you casting in these roles?
Is the kid a Harry Potter 1 era Daniel Radcliff? A Billy Elliott era Tom Holland? A Home Alone era Macaulay Culkin? Or are you imagining someone else ... someone older, edgier, more 'delinquent' and less cute? If so, who would you get to play this kid, based on what you know from reading this thread? Does the story change if the Grandmother is played by June Whitfield, or Dame Maggie Smith, or Catherine Tate?

If you dismiss this as irrelevant, then you are arguing from a perspective clouded by unconscious bias.

Is there anyone on this thread who suggests the boy should not have a punishment that teaches him something? I don't remember seeing any posts saying that. Yes, there are several that say he shouldn't be chucked out permanently, but none are saying he should get away with little or nothing by way of punishment.

I'm not disputing whether punishment is appropriate or not, I'm disputing that it was purely an accident.

But if you don't get the analogy, no worries, I'm sure there's going to be quite enough nasty-minded comment on this thread without me adding to it by needling a perfectly sensible PP. 😀

NB the fact I don't consider it an accident doesn't make me one of the "hang draw & quarter" brigade that will inevitably be calling for frothing vengeance.

So when he is 18 and just passed his test, is told not to drive round this car park as speeds of over 5mph are not allowed, but he does and kills a kid, is it also an accident?

Not a ridiculous analogy. He was told not to behave in a reckless way with his skateboard. He did anyway. He caused serious injury to someone.

And you're saying he shouldnt be punished? This could have been a lethal accident if she'd fallen and hit her head.

You do realise the owners of the sports club will now likely have to pay from their public liability insurance as the accident happened on their property? I'd be suing because the facility did not fully control one of its members.

Yup, I don’t recall any posts saying he shouldn’t be punished, but certain posters don’t seem to perceive anything short of ‘cancellation’ as being punishment.

Yes, he should be punished. The question is, should the club automatically go to the most extreme punishment of expelling him permanently?

Everything else is irrelevant except the fact that he was told not to use the skateboard in the building and his choosing to ignore the warning, directly led to him knocking over the grandmother. He should be suspended for a year and have to give half of any pocket money to the grandmother each week, for the whole 12 month suspension.

He cannot get off with saying it was unintentional because it was foreseeable, even to a 12 year old.

fuck all to do with unconscious bias.

😂👏👏

Great post, although you missed a trick for the Screaming Vengeance Squad with your Hogwarts ruminations - clearly the kid must be cast c/o Slytherin House.

You know you go to prison AS punishment and NOT FOR punishment right?
Mistakes happen and some people think more than others BUT they shouldn’t define you … he didn’t mean to hurt anyone .. it was unfortunate…

The driving analogies don’t work.

there’s a reason we don’t allow 12 year olds to drive. They don’t have the emotional and intellectual maturity to control several tons of metal.

if you are driving, you are deemed old enough to make adult decisions and be able to foresee the consequences of speeding, or reversing without looking, or whatever. Punishment is based on the driver having the competency to make those decisions.

a 12 year old doesn’t have the same maturity. As in this case, he knows he shouldn’t be skating indoors, but would a 12 year old think it through past smooth floors and not consider if someone popped up or stepped into their way? Probably not.

a skateboard is not a car. We don’t licence skateboard or restrict their use to adults because they aren’t the same.

The club's decision was that he should not be expelled. They know way more about the background circumstances than anyone on this thread. So I trust you accept that whatever penalty they did impose falls into the "So be it" category?

Fair enough. You know you're right, no point arguing with somebody who is actually being quite reasonable as well.

I actually don't know why I've been so invested in this thread, it's all gone a bit nuts 🤣

Of course he should be expelled. He could have killed her. He has persistently had to be disciplined in the past, and yet chose to ride his skateboard, when he knew it was forbidden. He's a danger to other people.

OP says they don't attend or support him, and that members of his family are troublemakers. It would be incredibly unlikely that supportive parents would never turn up.

Why are you so determined to put this boy in the worst possible light, even to the point of being so selective about the information available?

It is rare for people to band together to protest about a child. They clearly know this boy and are angered by him. I suspect there is a lot more bad behaviour, whether inside or outside the club, than is being admitted.

What a bizarre post. 12 year olds sometimes do utterly stupid things. That doesn't make them entitled . No-one is suggesting this boy needs mollycoddling. He simply needs a punishment that is actually proportionate to all the circumstances, and it's reasonable to believe that that is what the club has imposed. You've whipped yourself up into a pretty ludicrous froth out of, really, nothing.

He has been involved in one accident (where he behaved recklessly) and there is nothing to suggest he has ever previously jeopardized anyone else’s safety. Your response is ridiculously disproportionate.