Should we Pepper-Spray our Children?

The news is riddled lately with stories of bullying, bully prevention and the like. Though these stories usually revolve around kids bullying kids and the occassional adult bullying kids, I found a story the other day that was the opposite - an eight year old bullying adults. Not only were these adults teachers and cops, but the cops now are under a law suit for using pepper spray to defuse the situation.

According to the Denver Post an eight year old was on his way to school and got in trouble on the bus. Once at school this eight year old began yelling and threatening to kill his teacher and another staff member. The staff members were so afraid they barricaded themselves into an adjacent office while the boy threw chairs and a TV at the door. He was ramming the door with a cart. He then broke a piece of molding off the wall and used the molding as a weapon, should the teachers come near him. At this point the police were called in and when unable to subdue the boy, used pepper spray to get him under control.

I was able to find statements from the town police spokesman, Steve Davis on another website that further explained the situation from the cops point of view.

When officers arrived at the school, Davis said, "the child was armed with a piece of wood described as being twelve to fifteen inches in length and sharpened to a point, and he was using it as a weapon. The officers told him they were there because of what was going on and to drop the piece of wood -- I've heard it described as either a piece of trim or a piece of paneling -- and he didn't. He held it up to the officers and was threatening them with it."

In response, Davis goes on, "one of the officers pulled out the pepper spray and tried to squirt it, and the child blocked it with a cardboard box. So the officer reached around the box and squirted once -- and the child dropped the long piece of wood and the cardboard box and the situation was defused."

The mother of the child sees the pepper-spraying as excessive, maintaining that police in the two previous instances were able to talk him down.

As a parent, it was this last paragraph that really caught me. Not the fact that the kid had been pepper sprayed - honestly that didn't bother me. But when his mother admits that police have had to come and defuse a situation not once, but TWICE with her son, BEFORE he threatened to kill people with a weapon in hand. At this point I think the only thing excessive is locking him up and throwing away the key.

Possibly the only thing more chilling was watching the kid on tv, who smiled through the whole interview and acted like this happened every day.

Don't get me wrong - I honestly believe that parents should not be able to pepper spray their children. But if cops have to be called three times to control anybody, they should have the right to use whatever force necessary to bring the situation under control. They have been trained on how to use this technique, and as such, are capable of knowing how much to spray, where and when for least minimal damage.

In a world where bullying is out of control, we as parents, and leaders of our community should be showing our children core values - respect, responsibility, courtesy, loyalty, honor, integrity, and self control. We show this by not only making an example of our actions, but our actions to our children as well. If we cannot control ourselves to pass these things down to our children, and have our children reinforce these ideas, we will see many more incidents of eight year olds acting out and then let the country be pepper-sprayed, because it's time for all of us to learn a lesson.