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She did not get suspended for playing with a stick and pretending it was a gun.
She got suspended for threatening to kill the other children while playing the game.
I think that it is reasonable for schools to monitor and control what kids do while playing, and if a school has a policy against threats and pretend killing, then they should enforce that policy. I kind of think the policy is harsh for kindergarten kids, but I don't think it is ridiculously harsh. Sometimes a suspension is more to wake up the parents than the student.
btw, the suspension was for a day, so she's already back.
Personally, I played those kind of games in the 1950's and we killed Germans, Japanese, Indians, and Yankees at every opportunity. But we never played those games at school.
Heck, we even shot each other with guns. Rubber band guns, spoke guns, potato guns, cap pistols, and rarely, BB guns. And we shure as heck got in trouble if we got caught having one of those things at school, but we didn't get suspended. Just a confiscation and a brief beating was sufficient.
Can you imagine the Internet lighting up if they had paddled the kid for this?
I really thought this story (actually watching the story and not just reacting to the headline) would be different, and that the mom might be unreasonable. I was wrong. The kid meant no harm.
It was not that she was using a stick as a gun, it was that she was using it to "play" shoot other people. The school has a no tolerance policy on pretend killings of students. I totally understand the policy.
Now, would I enforce the policy on a kindergarten kid, no I would not. I would give the kid a pass on the first one and explain the rule to her.
In my kids school, if you use pretend guns to shoot imaginary "bad guys" or go imaginary hunting, it is fine, but once you use the imaginary gun on a fellow student, its a problem. I get that.
Most school districts that I am familiar with have a Zero Tolerance Policy. There is no exceptions, no negotiating, etc. So if you got a young kid, stress this point. Right or wrong, public schools are going this route.
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