6-year-old girl handcuffed, sent to mental facility after tantrum

Chris Spags Founder and Editor

Anyone out there who’s had a small child can tell you what a terror they are. But there may be a bit of a misstep when “misbehaving child” gets perceived as a public menace, leading to a 6-year-old girl getting handcuffed and taken to a mental facility for throwing a temper tantrum.

“These people are going to the extreme,” [the girl's mother Kathy] Franklin said. “She is so tiny. They didn’t have to use force on her.”

St. Lucie County Sheriff reports say Franklin’s daughter, Haley, was being disruptive on several occasions at school, throwing objects, hitting administration personnel and screaming uncontrollably. Last week after Haley wouldn’t calm down, a deputy handcuffed the 40-pound girl to get her under control.

On Tuesday, after another disruption, the girl was put under a law enforcement involuntary Baker Act and taken to a mental health facility. Franklin says the latest events have traumatized her daughter. She is afraid of law enforcement and school, she said.

I think we’ve all seen a kid like this at some point in our life, just a total demon who’s been completely enabled by her mother (whose method of parenting involves shrugging her shoulders and saying that “you just need to let her get it out of her system”). But typically, I can’t imagine a little 40-pound girl being able to do such damage that you need to handcuff her.

Conversely, it’s pretty easy to damage a little kid for the rest of their lives these days. I mean seriously, kids are so sensitive. You can hardly ever handcuff and institutionalize a kid these days without them saying you’ve stepped over the line. Well, Princess, maybe you shouldn’t have insisted on holding onto the toy vacuum with all the popping things in it for longer than the allotted five minutes. Let the punishment fit the crime.

6-year-old handcuffed at PSL school, sent to mental facility after temper tantrums [TC Palm]

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