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Originally Posted by liquidlight
I don't know where your wife teaches, but even when I was in school, and that's been more than 15 years now, teachers were not allowed to have direct physical contact with the students pretty much under any circumstances. Even for emergency situations like CPR or choking there was only one teacher authorized to administer the treatments because of the necessity for physical contact. It was policy at the school to limit liability because of the litigious nature of society, a rule designed under the "avoid the very appearance of evil" thought process and I wouldn't doubt that this school has a similar policy.
Personally I prefer this method of deterrence, however there are times that it's simply counter-productive. You said yourself that often this behavior is simply a method for getting attention, so how do you justify giving additional positive attention as a viable recourse in deterring the behavior? Unless my logic is seriously off here, if doing something gets you more of what you want, why wouldn't you not only continue to do it, but only amplify the behavior?
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liquidlight, you raise some very important questions.
First of all, I will preface this by stating that I am not a clinical psychologist. While I was conducting my undergraduate education in sociology, I took numerous social-psychology and human development courses. I am currently in my second year of a Ph.D program for criminology, law and society. I do, however, have personal experience in that I spent a large part of my youth in institutions for troubled children as well as sites for criminally deviant children (and that bled into my adult years, aka, prison).
My wife, however, is working toward her Master's of Family Therapy. The information I am providing is gleaned from my introductory level pschology and human development courses and her advanced material.
Any information provided here should not be taken as the advice of an expert, but from a personal experience of what works and what doesn't supplemented by both of our education.
My wife works as a therapist in a juvenile shelter. In fact, she works in a place not dissimilar from where I spent most of my youth. Their rules are not the same as public schoolteachers, but they are also not supposed to touch the clients as a general rule. However, all of the counselors know the importance of love, physical contact, and the absense of them children have felt in their lives. Furthermore, this situation was not ordinary. I notice a number of people, yourself included, keep referencing the spector of a lawsuit. The threat may be real, but the school is still being sued. A lawsuit doesn't matter so much as liability. I ask myself whether, as a member of a jury, I would find the teacher guilty of hugging a disruptive child or handcuffing one. I would sympathize with the teacher on the former, the parent on the latter. I doubt the parent would sue a teacher for hugging her daughter to calm her down, but we don't know. Those rules were incorporated to reduce sexual molestation. I think common sense is in order here. No jury will find a teacher guilty of an offense if she hugs a disruptive child and tells her she loves her.
You ask me how can I advocate providing positive stimulation as a means to reduce negative behavior?
What we have to realize here is that both responses, the teacher hugging the child and the police officers cuffing her, serve as positive responses to her behavior. You are correct in stating that positive reinforcement will likely result in more behavior, but that logic applies to the police actions, as well.
What we need to consider is the fact that children model from their environment. When we meet violence or disruption with violence, they learn violence is acceptable and appropriate responses to things they do not agree with. When they associate love and kindness with disruptive behavior, they will begin to use those kinds of behaviors.
Over time, the love and kindness route will reduce the amount of violent outbursts a child expresses as a means to obtain attention as she learns socially acceptable methods to ask and obtain it. That is, she learns to ask for a hug when she wants one instead of throwing a tantrum.
Or she can learn that every time she feels the need for attention, she simply becomes violent and will receive all the violence (or attention) she desires and more.
Of course, she is only a young child. She is not sitting there calculating her needs versus responses. It's our responsibility as adults in our society to rear children in ways we think are beneficial for our society. But if we remove violent interaction from the classroom, and from the home, and the child is still acting violently, we need to start peering around and find out just where she is picking it up from. Children do not have inherent behaviors, they learn them.