Why aren't parents correcting their DC?

[Meili04]

I just saw the DM article about an 11 year old boy being tasered for brandishing a knife over a tantrum in burger king. The mum said they were too harsh. I've seen this in my DDs school their child is a little angel and can do no wrong. If my child is mean to another child I correct the behaviour , if they rude I do the same.
My DC is a human being with faults and isn't perfect 100 percent of the time, no person is.

Why can some parents see no fault in their child? Our responsibility as parents is to bring up DC to be functioning adults who thrive. Treating DC as mini deities does them no favours. I think parenting is becoming too gentle. AIBU?

Can you show any evidence that tasers are likely to kill people? Yes, some people die after being tasered, but many of them have underlying health conditions, and one had doused themself in petrol so the sparks set him on fire, and Raoul Moat died.after being tasered but only because of the shotgun he put to his head. There is a widely held belief that tasers are a deadly weapon but their lethality is minimal and is often a less risky option than multiple adults engaging in a restraint.

Nobody should be tasered unless they are a real and immediate danger to other people. An 11 year old holding a butter knife and surrounded by police officers doesn’t meet this criteria.

Are police officers not people?

Maybe don't answer that.

Not a proponent of violent retribution, nor of a Sunday spent picnicking at a public hanging, but I have zero issue with the use of a taser here. The police gave him ample opportunity to put the knife down.

Evidently too risky for mum to disarm him but fine for police officers.

Also who cares if he’s 11? I’m 5ft, the 11 year old would be bigger than me. What does his age matter? He’d have enough force to injure someone with a knife.

I would assume that a trained police officer with protective gear on would be in a better position to do this than a civilian.

I’ve seen a 6 year old in meltdown need two grown adults to pin them down. This kid probably would’ve taken a few adults to get him under control and they probably would’ve needed to wrestle him to the floor and apply weight to keep him there. Imagine the mum’s complaint then, ‘the police beating up my little Angel, surely they could’ve done it more gently than that’ blah blah.

You only find out afterwards that it's a butter knife.

At the time of the incident the information is limited.

With the information they had I think the Police acted correctly.

We need to stop making excuses for our children who are out of control.

If that were my son, I would firstly be mortified and I would fully expect the police to do whatever they do, to teach him any knife should never be used to threaten someone, and to teach them that when you are annoyed you don't get a burger, you don't reach for any weapon.

I would be taking my son to apologise for threatening people with a knife and wasting precious resource because he couldn't have a burger.

Whose child/ren have you disarmed? Your own? Two different children or the same one on two separate occasions? What job do you do? What training have you received? Maybe you could be on standby to help the police if you’re not already a police officer?

I would discipline my child for having a tantrum and waving a knife around at 11, absolutely.

However if it was a normal cutlery knife and not a dangerous weapon then it is completely OTT to taser an 11 year old, and sounds like the policeman might have used the opportunity for a power trip.

Well, I highly doubt he'll do that again (hopefully, anyway).

As for the mother, she's obviously not the brightest crayon in the box is she.

And if they'd managed to restrain him there'd be an outcry about that too

Hopefully he'll think twice before doing it again

But you’re okay living in a world where 11 year olds go around brandishing knives in public? He wasn’t shot at with bullets. He will get over it and hopefully he will think twice before he acts like a little hard man again.

I do belief that 2 10yr olds, tortured and murdered a toddler a few years back ! An 11yr old threatening with knife is not an innocent child !

The child should NOT have been tasered. Excessive and extremely dangerous.

The kids who carry knives aren't stupid, they didn't just wake up and think to put a knife in their pocket over breakfast. They know the tricks, they know how to distract people, they know how to use those knives
@onefinemess that’s not a general rule. I know some kids who have knives. They carry them because they’re scared. They are not trained assassins.

So tell me how you safely disarm a child with a weapon? And keep in mind it’s only the mum describing it as a “butter knife”. He has a knife.

Can I just point out that even though it was a butter knife, the police might not have been certain what he was holding at the time. It's similar with say fake guns. Even trained police can't be 100% certain if something is a fake so they have to act like the threat is real

It’s not been confirmed it was a “butter knife”

No, she called the police and then complains about them doing their job.

Have you posters commenting watched the video?! JFC! That is clearly a very frightened little boy, being surrounded by three police officers, who keep walking towards him, one walking closest towards him is continually pointing a (taser) gun at him. The little boy, who is clearly frightened, is walking backwards away from them, keeps saying ‘keep back, keep back, keep away from me’.

The police handled that appallingly. They needed to put their weapons down, lower themselves to his height to show they were not a threat, and start talking to him.

I am not anti police, I think they do a tough job in tough circumstances, but that was badly, badly handled. They completely failed to consider how their behaviour looked from the child’s point of view, to recognize he was a frightened child and to respond to him accordingly.

OP you need to work out exactly what you are saying - if the PARENTS are the issue here - which seems to be your point - then tasering and criminalising the child is not the answer!

Maybe if we invested in early years support, help for families and better early intervention we could change cycles of poor behaviour and learned behaviour

Afrer reading the artical I find it more concerning that his mum hasn't once condemned what her DS had done, and all because he couldn't get a burger.
If as she says he was in a strange place where did he get the knife from, it must have been late evening as the burger shop had closed.

You can only think she's justifying his behaviour, no mention of him being in the wrong for carrying the knife let alone welding it at the police.
If he was in a strange place where did the knife come from?

The problem lies because some parents justifying their DC bad behaviour and that leads the DC into thinking they're untouchable.

They carry them because they’re scared

In this case he grabbed for a weapon to threaten the police with because....he couldn't get a burger !!! Not scared, just a burger 🍔

So what if they were holding a machete? It wouldn’t be ok then?