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Experts try to flesh out meaning of student's stick-figure violence


Suspension - A first-grader kicked out for a drawing is thought by some to be too young to make a real threat

Friday, November 16, 2007

KATE TAYLOR
The Oregonian Staff

The stick-figure drawing that ignited controversy and prompted a southern Oregon school to suspend a 6-year-old student this week had experts debating the ability of young children to grasp violence as well as how school officials should respond to trouble signs.
Little Butte School officials in Eagle Point on Tuesday suspended Ryan Weathers, a first-grader, for drawing a stick figure shooting another stick-figure in the head, and possibly for threatening to shoot fellow students.
"At that age, there's a disconnect between the action and the consequence -- it's hard for (children) to connect behavior with outcome," said Megan McClelland, associate professor at Oregon State University's College of Health and Human Sciences. "The part of the brain that's involved in planning and thinking long term is still developing."


The boy's family could not be reached, and school officials didn't return phone calls Thursday. But school officials earlier stated in a disciplinary report given to the boy's family that besides the offending picture, the boy threatened to shoot two girls in the head, according to the Medford Mail Tribune.
It's not clear how the threats occurred, but parents who learned of the drawing complained to school officials. Then school staff suspended the boy for at least one day. Douglas Weathers, the boy's father, told the Medford paper earlier this week that his son's picture mimicked a drawing displayed by a character in an episode of "The Simpsons."
In a 32-year early childhood teaching career, recently retired West Linn teacher Coleen Ahmann said she'd rarely seen violent pictures drawn by students. But one thing she learned through teaching is that what adults see is not always what children have drawn. Before acting, school staff must be sure they've done enough listening to the child, she said.
"If something like that happened in my class, I probably would have taken some private time to talk to the little guy or gal and clarify" what was going on, she said. Then, if the situation merited it, she'd involve a counselor, and then, perhaps, a parent. Together, they'd do a lot of talking as well as listening to the child.
On Thursday, she and other child development experts debated whether such a young child could understand what a threat is, let alone carry it out.
"I would say they (children) would have a poor sense of what threatening was," said Deborah Sipe, child development center director at Portland Community College's Sylvania campus. "It's more likely that they would understand wanting to strike out in a general sense because they feel someone's causing them problems or causing them pain."
There are simply too many steps in the structure of a threat for such young children to grasp, McClelland of Oregon State University said.

"They don't understand 'If I do this, you will die,' " she said. "They are just starting to fill in the gaps."
Yet Katherine C. Pears, a research scientist at the Oregon Social Learning Center in Eugene, said that by age 2, children generally begin understanding that other people have different feelings and perspectives than they do.
Which, she said, is why adults commonly address trouble between children by asking "How would you feel if . . ..?"


"By 6, kids ought to be able to take another person's perspective," she said. Children should understand "the message that you caused pain in another person's world. Of course, individuals vary widely, and some kids may not be there yet, while other kids are way up in moral reasoning."
Discussion and support are vital, said Sipe of Portland Community College.
"It's good to pause," she said. But not to simply oust the child to protect others. Schools must summon their counselors, call the family in, gather around the child and find out what's going on, she said. They shouldn't isolate the family, she said.
Besides being gentle, the intervention should be swift, said Pears.
"There's a great deal of research showing that the earlier you intervene," she said, "the better your chances are of having positive outcomes for the kids."
But Douglas Weathers said school officials overreacted.
"He's not a violent kid," said Weathers, who planned to hold his son out of school until early next week. "He did not mean any harm."


Kate Taylor: 503-294-5116; katetaylor@news.oregonian.com