easy child's classmate brought a knife to school

Mattsmom277

Active Member
easy child is in grade 6. A boy in her class today brought out a pocket knife in the school yard and was showing it to easy child and another boy. He wasn't using it in anger but she was scared since this boy has a history of anger issues and physical incidents. She didn't know what to do. She came home from school and told me right away and asked me to do something. I told her I was proud of her and we discussed what to do (and not do) if something like this occurs in the future. I contacted her school secretary whom I've known now for about 14 years, since Matt started JK. She will pass the information to the principal and she will decide what action to take. I was able to assure easy child that nobody would be told that she was the one who brought it to their attention. Like any school, there is a zero tolerance policy. This school tends to not be very great at enforcement for minor things that other schools go over the top about (normal kids stuff that we all did as kids). But they are very strict for more serious infractions. I have confidence the school will handle this in manner correct to the situation.

I just can't believe any kid at this age would be so foolish. I'm very proud of my easy child for coming to me right away. I'm also glad she and I could then discuss how to handle it in the future. She just had no idea what to do at that moment. She just went "oh yeah" and found a reason to go to a group of kids nearby to "mingle" to get away from him. She didn't feel threatened as he was more bragging about his knife than anything. But she knows how not okay it is to bring a weapon to school and I think she did the right thing in not pointing it out to him. We discussed how if it happened again, she could do as she did, but then find a discreet way to speak to someone on staff. I even suggested if she felt very uncomfortable she could write it in a note and put it on the teachers desk if that made it more comfortable for her.
 

susiestar

Roll With It
She is a great kid and you both handled this very well. I am sure the school will handle things and she won't be named as a "snitch". Even if that DOES happen, she very likely saved someone from getting hurt. Kids with anger issues who have been physically violent are NOT good candidates to trust with any knife unsupervised because you don't know when/if they will choose to hurt someone. So she kept someone from getting hurt the next time he got angry!! The more he gets away with taking it to school the more he will continue to take it to school and the more trouble will be risked.

She did an awesome job!!
 

gcvmom

Here we go again!
I just can't believe any kid at this age would be so foolish.

Well, you haven't met my difficult child 2, have you? He took a Swiss Army knife to school in 5th grade, supposedly so he could use the magnifier on it to look at rocks during recess, which happened to be his current manic obsession. But because he'd been the victim of bullying for some time and one of the instigators started in on him again that day, difficult child 2 pulled it out of his pocket and made a verbal threat to the kid to get him to back off. It worked. But it also landed him in the principal's office, then suspended for 3 days, then subjected to a crisis intervention meeting with his teachers, his case manager, the principal, vice principal, school psychiatric and two reps from the district who ultimately concluded that there had been no malice aforethought, that difficult child 2 reacted impulsively due to his disorder, and that he was in fact a repeated target of bullying (one of the bullies was the principal's SON). The school let him come back and they promptly implemented a campus-wide anti-bullying campaign the rest of the year.

I don't think even 6th graders are beyond stupid moves like this, especially a difficult child (and potentially that boy is one).
 
H

HaoZi

Guest
I think most guys carried a pocket knife when I went to school. So did a lot of the girls, for that matter. I can't think of a guy I knew back then that didn't at least own one.
 

Marguerite

Active Member
difficult child 1 took throwing knives to school when he was 17. He had not meant to; he happened to have left them in his bag after taking them to a friend's house where they had been throwing them at the back fence. He got suspended for three days, but there were other issues with the school not handling it right, that was the last straw, we pulled him out and enrolled him in correspondence over that three days.

Kids do stupid things. Good on your daughter for reporting it. If the kid doesn't have a knife on him next time when the school checks, he'll probably only get a warning.

Marg
 
I'm proud of your easy child too! Both of you handled the situation really well. I remember when the worst thing that ever happened in the sixth grade was when someone got caught smoking a cigarette in one of the bathrooms... SFR
 

DDD

Well-Known Member
Bless easy child's. You have every right to feel proud of her and yourself.

on the other hand I'd love to see statistics that show how many little boys with prized pocket knives at home make the mistake of taking them to school without evil motives. Personally I've heard of quite a few....and many were not difficult child's, just little boys who forgot to analyze that school is not the same as your neighborhood abd wore the same jeans two days in a row.

We are in a rural community where young boys own lots of knives, guns, bow and arrows etc. We also are in zero tolerance land. The most popular teacher at the local middle school gained the greatest respect of the young teens when a truly "good" farm boy realized that he had his little knife in his jeans pocket. He went to this one teacher as soon as he got off the bus and spoke to him privately. The teacher took the knife and locked it in his desk and then had the parent come pick it up at the end of the day. I've often wondered if that teacher would have been axed due to his decision. on the other hand, the boy never before or after made a mistake...graduated with honors. If he had gone to the Dean the police would have been called and he would have been ousted. DDD
 

GoingNorth

Crazy Cat Lady
Times have sure changed. I wore braces and carried a small lockblade so I could use it to cut up apples and the like.

I had that knife out in the lunchroom many a time and was never hassled about it. Despite my being a difficult child and despite my being bullied horribly from Middle School on, it never occurred to me to pull that knife on school grounds.

Off grounds might've been a different story. My dad had taught me how to use that knife to defend myself
 

susiestar

Roll With It
One of the schools Wiz went to had a policy that ADULTS could not have pocketknives on school ground. Didn't last long because one of the teachers (female) kept a knife in her purse and took it to the teacher's union. It was her last year there before retirement and she thought it was stupid. I still think it is crazy that kids get expelled in some schools for bringing plastic knives to school!! We are still a fairlyrural school with a LOT of ag students and clubs and many of those kids keep pocketknives at least in their cars. Our principal transferred from a big city and had to seriously readjust his expectations because the school board didn't back him up on suspending an ag student for having a 2" pocketknife in the car a few years back. Most of us thought it was kinda funny but we have been here enough to know how rural many families are.

Kids of any age can lose their temper and do things they shouldn't. I wish all schools had good anti-bullying campaigns.
 
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