Body Sock

[beckyh]

So I was watching the local news this morning and found a really bizarre story. (Remember I'm from the land of dimple chads, this sort of stuff happens all the time)

www.baynews9.com/content/36/2006/12/13/206561.html

My mother is a first grade teacher in Pinellas County, so I asked for her opinion, I'll let you know when she responds.

What do you all think about the body sock? Torture device or comforting tool?

[Hallelujah]

While everyone is different, I don't think it would calm me down and should not be used for such a purpose. It could cause quite the opposite reaction in some, making them feel suffocated, setting off (as was mentioned) asthma attacks and panic attacks. For some it might be comforting, but for others it would be torturous. I vote that it should never be used for this purpose.

[beckyh]

I just got an email back from my mom who said she has used it twice on children, and it said it really helped calm them down when they became a disruption.

I also researched them some more and the child is capable of seeing through them slightly, just like looking through a thin blanket.

Maybe this is more common than I was thinking, I just thought it was weird.

[AREA666]

I think it would be more of something fun for the kids to play around with then being able to explore geometric shapes like the article said. I know when I was young going under blankets or something and playing around was fun, so that is probably how I would have viewed it. Many people also feel safer under blankets so I can see why it might be comforting. Only thing I can think of that for me not liking it is that I hate the feeling of being say in a sleeping bag if I go in so my head ends up near the zipper part, I feel trapped and do not like that, and it seems that those "sox" are like that.

[Night Ω Wolfe]

Wow, I read something about an idea the the body sock was probably based off of. It is called "swaddling". Some child therapists use it to recreate the feeling of being in the womb... which is why they think it should be comforting. The whole idea is to wrap the child very tightly in a blanket from head to toe and jostle them around a tiny bit so it feels like they really are back in the womb, the point is that it reaches to them on somewhat of a subconscious level and helps breed trust and closeness with a parent. Personally I think the whole idea is ridiculous but whatever.

I almost want to get one of those body soxs though... I think my daughter would have a blast playing in it (she is so weird) of course only if she controlled WHEN and for HOW LONG she was in it. I just can't believe they are allowed to use them in the school system though and for those reasons! That is outrageous! If they tried putting my daughter in one of those because she was a little too hyper that day I would be in an outrage... heads would roll. I don't care whether it is supposed to "calm" or not, restraining a child in any way for their behavior is torture. Also it defeats the whole purpose of teaching them to obey and to have self-restraint. Take time out for instance... yes it is designed as a punishment, but it also it to teach the child that they have to obey their parents and all teaches them self-restraint by making them sit in a location when they COULD leave it if they so chose to. If you take away the option they aren't learning anything.

[Whiplash]

i think this is a totally jacked up thing to do to a kid. if someone put one of my kids in that thing, i would have to punch them in the throat. whatever happened to putting the bad or misbehaving kid in the corner. all this crap is turing American children into a bunch of pansies. "timmy, you have to connect with your feelings, you have to be calm." "timmy, how did what that kid called you, make you feel? Tell him what he said hurt your feelings, dont project your anger, accept him for who he is" and all that crap. what happened to spanking? "timmy, sit down and pay attention." "timmy i said sit down". "one more time timmy and you are gonna get swatted" bang thats it. i see all these parents now a days trying to be their kids friend and not their parent. you see these kids running around, being little jerks, breaking stuff, and the parents are like "timmy, dont do that. Please timmy, or i will put you on a time out." time outs are BS! spank that kid for the love of joe. hey, i was spanked, my parents didnt beat me, no one called the cops for child abuse. if i was being a little jerk, then i deserved it. and i am a better person becuase of it.

sorry this is turning into a rant, but im on a roll.

another thing turning the kids of America into sissys is all the new little kids sports, where no one loses, everyone plays and even the losers get a trophy. what is this teaching the kids? real life isnt like that, you wont always get that good job, you wont always get promoted. real sports teach kids that if you want to win and get ahead, you have to work hard and be better then the other guy. and taking dodge ball out of schools! becuase the not so athletic kids feel like they are being picked on! hey i was the fat kid and got nailed all the time in that game, but i loved it! it was fun. now in PE for those kids like me who complain becuase they are fat or unathletic, they have some stupid "sport" now called cup stacking. thats right people, the kids stack freaking cups! that is not a sport and should not be in PE. this is telling our kids that even though you are not good enough to do something, an exception will always be made for you. BS!

we are coddeling our kids and it needs to stop if we want to stay a strong country. kids need to be taught that they wont always win even though they suck, and need to be taught about a hard work ethic.

k im done.

[Hallelujah]

Cup stacking???

Couldn't agree with you more, Whiplash.

[griffman]

when Becky first showed me the article I thought it was a crazy idea, but the more I got to thinking about it and the more research we did on it... I started to think it wasn't AS bad as before. Granted, there are WAY better ways to deal with the problems, but it's just not as bad as it first sounded to me.

First of all, I would like to say that if it weren't for the sucky parenting none of this would have to happen. I'm not saying you HAVE to beat your kids for them to be good, but you have to be in charge of them, and they have to know it. They need to understand that if they do something they aren't supposed to they are going to be punished in one way or another for it.

When a kid that isn't controlled by the parents get to the teachers, it takes away from EVERY kid in the classroom. The teacher won't get to spend the time required on the class, and instead be disciplining the couple kids (or more) that are nuisances. If calling an administrator and telling them to put the kid into a "body sock" will be for the greater good, and it has been proven to work it's job... then I'm for it, unless there is something better proposed.

I plan to be a parent someday, and hope it will be soon ... but as of right now I have no kids. If I had a kid, he or she would be very well disciplined, well because I can be a Nazi... but I would definitely appreciate steps being taken towards calming the obnoxious kids down in order for my kid to get the most out of his/her early schooling years.

On a closing note, they don't use this very often, at least not as far as any of the research I have found says. Becky's mother has been teaching first grade for I think like 20 years now, and has only used it twice. However, she does say that in recent years the kids have been getting worse than when she first began teaching first grade. It could become a more common practice....

keep your dang kids in line. Its your job as the parent. Its not the teachers job to constantly discipline children with incompetent parents.

[Night Ω Wolfe]

Alrighty then..... first off Whiplash I also can't agree with you more. And that whole cup stacking thing is ridiculous... for the obvious reasons as well at the fact that all these overweight kids really don't need to be spending even MORE time sitting on their butts. I watched some TV special not that long ago about how our country and it's children have become plagued by obesity. Did any of you know that the vast majority of this country is medically considered overweight? I can't remember the exact percentage but it was scary. PE was one of the last things that MADE a child get off their butts and get some exercise and if they are starting to accommodate these kids it really scares me. It seems like for many many years now this country has done nothing but encourage people to do everything possible while sitting around on their butts. For any of you out there that does have a weight problem I do not want you to feel like I am judging you in anyway.... I am not at all prejudiced. But it really scares me and worries me because of all the health issues that can occur. I have an Aunt that is medically considered "grossly obese" and it is frightening how little she can do anymore. So sorry for going off topic there but I had to...

As far as the disciplining a child goes... and I AM a parent... Okay so I grew up with a Dad that did believe in spanking. He never beat us, there was never a mark left by his spankings and in reality he never even hit us hard enough to really hurt all that much either. But they were scary... he had this way about him when he was angry that even though he could keep himself under control so he would never HURT us he had this look in his eyes that was VERY scary. I always thought that the next time I am gonna end up pushing him over the edge and he is really gonna hurt me. Well there is a whole huge story behind this... but to make it short, now that I am looking back at my childhood, if it weren't for the fact that my mother did nothing but undermine his authority it would have worked. But because it DID scare me I swore that when I had children I would never never use spanking as a punishment. Well let me tell you that did NOT last long at all. What you have to understand is that when you have a small child that isn't old enough to understand WHY they can't do certain things and they also have really short attention spans, time outs and other such punishments just really don't work. Yeah they get all whiny and hate the time outs at the time, but they forget they were even in one very shortly after and then are back to doing the bad behavior nearly right away. I am not sure exactly what it is... but there is something about a spanking (and I am NOT talking about beating) that they remember for much longer. Now I don't mean that you should spank your kids all the time or for every offense... this just makes it such a regular thing that it becomes ineffective too. But if you choose your battles and there are certain behaviors that are VERY bad either because they are dangerous like "don't run in the street without looking" or something really important to you like "don't touch the expensive DVD player because mommy would be really mad if you broke it"... these are the times. If you use it sparingly they will remember for a MUCH longer period.

Okay now as for the teachers punishing... Yes I agree that it is the PARENTS job to teach their children discipline and that if the parent is doing their job right that the teacher should rarely have a need to do anything but TEACH. But I also don't think that ANY form of physical punishment is acceptable in schools. In my opinion everything possible should be done to make school a FUN place where the kids will WANT to go and of course then will actually learn much more. But if a child feels abused or picked on by their teacher it just doesn't work. I also understand that a child cannot be allowed to disrupt the whole class either.. but this whole body sock thing is not the answer. In my daughter's school for instance, if a child is being too disruptive then the teachers aid will take them OUT of the classroom and they will sit in the hallway till the child is calm enough to go back into the class. This seems to work pretty darn well for them. Then of course if the child just CANNOT be calmed down they will be sent to the Nurses office to lay down for a bit and if THAT doesn't work they will just get sent home. From what my daughter's teacher has told me (she is in kindergarten BTW) no child so far this year has had to sit in the hallway for more than 10 minutes before they are totally fine and able to return to the class without any more disruptions for the day.

And one last thought..... If you are right and this body sock is only used in extreme circumstances then I again feel there is no need. But this is for a very different reason... if a child is being soooo uncontrollable that they feel the need to resort to this action than they really need to be taking a much longer look at this child. If a child is that out of control there HAS to be something seriously wrong in the picture. It might be something seriously wrong at home or just one of those rare occasions that a child actually DOES have ADHD (don't even get me started on this one!). But they need to look at the long term of what is going to help this child... not what is going to control them for the next few minutes or hours.

[Whiplash]

you hit it right on nose wolfe. lol and the whole ADD and ADHD thing? its ridiculus. every kid in America has ADD. ever try seriously talking to a kid, they have the attention span of a jar of mayo. add a little sugar and then they have ADHD. this is a made up disorder to let kids off the hook for not paying attention. dont get me wrong there are some legitimit learning disorders like dyslexia, its a part of the brain, a mis-wiring. but ADD and ADHD are both behavoiral issues. if you have never read "Prozac Nation" i highly recomend it. kids are being diagnosed with these "learning disabilties" and are being pumped full of drugs that turn them into zombies. heres a suggestion, tell the kid to pay attention, and if they dont, its not ADD or ADHD, its becuase they are stupid. people seem to think now in this country that if you are stupid its not your fault, its the school systems fault, or you have some made up desiese. i dont know about other states, but here in California, they have this thing called "No Child Left Behind". its this dumb notion that if a kid is kept back a grade, they will be damaged. of course they will be damaged, thats the whole point. it shows them: "See timmy. you didnt do your homework, you didnt pay attention, and you screwed around the whole school year, now you have to stay in that grade and be the idiot of the class. better get your act together." just passing a kid onto the next grade is ridiculas. did you know that the illitereacy rate for people over the age of 15-30 is higher then it has ever been? you know why, becuase kids are being moved up to the next grade even though they didnt learn the ciriculum. and they are moved up so they dont get made fun of, or so they dont feel bad. agian this just shows our kids, its okay if you suck, you will get ahead anyway.

i will tell you where this country is going: hell, in a handbasket, on a rocketship.

[beckyh]

I'm pretty attached to the realm of Education since my mother has been a teacher so long and I plan on being one someday too.

I'm beginning to think the Body Sock also has some merit. In the situations my mom explained to me, the child had responded positively to the treatment and really calmed down. More importantly, it wasn't used when it wasn't truly needed. One of the children my mom used the technique on was a legitimate danger to the classroom. My mom actually had her hair pulled out by her at one point and bitten several times. The child was emotionally unstable and in an awkward foster care environment. If it works, why not try it?

As for degrading kids in our society, I think parents are just getting lazy. I (unlike Griffman, who I need to have a talk with...) do not plan on having kids very soon, but do realize how horrible children have gotten over the years. I think the growing trend of just plugging your kid into something to raise them is ridiculous.

And as for ADD and ADHD, I do believe they are a little on the BS disease side, but on the flip side I have seen children benefit from the use of treatment for these issues. Maybe they don't really have a problem, and I'm sure it can easily be overdiagnosed, but if it does help some children in the classroom or at home, once again.. why not? I'm sensing a huge rebuttle to my stance on ADHD, but hey, a little variety never hurt.