There’s a depth of sensitivity that comes with having a child with a disability that is hard to imagine for others. First, it’s a child. Second, it’s a child who is different. Third, it’s a child whose difference makes them a target for others. Fourth, it’s a child whose difference leaves them vulnerable. And finally, it’s your child.
James Jones is a father of such a child. From ABC News :
Authorities arrested a central Florida father Thursday after he boarded a school bus and reportedly threatened students who were allegedly bullying his daughter.
James Jones’ raw and obscene rage was on caught on the school bus’ security camera.
He was charged with disorderly conduct and disturbing a school function in Lake Mary, Fla.
There is no question in my mind that Jones was doing what fathers do, and especially what fathers of a child with cerebral palsy do: Protect their children. And it appears that he had reason to do so, as other students were “taunting, hitting and even throwing condoms” (condoms?) at his daughter. Nice bus ride, right?
There are some preliminary questions that come to mind. What of the bus driver’s responsibility to keep students safe from bullying on a bus? What about the school jumping on top of a situation like this, where a young girl with CP is subject to abuse? No, this is not to suggest that the bus driver should have flagged down the SWAT team or the school administrators expel the miscreants, but merely put a stop to the crap being pulled on the bus. Separate the kids. Have someone ride the bus to keep things under control. Deal with kids being kids, doing stupid, harmful things to other kids.
But when nothing is done and your child is subjected to “taunting, hitting and even throwing condoms,” what’s a father to do?
The answer is not what James Jones did. The rage is understandable. The conduct is not.
“I’m gonna (expletive) you up.…this is my daughter, and I will kill the (expletive) who fought her,” Jones said.
Jones reportedly threatened not only the students but the bus driver as well.
“If anything happens to my daughter I’m going to (expletive) you up and everybody on this (expletive),” he said.
This is pure, unadulterated rage. It’s hardly surprising that the bile welled up in Jones’ throat and made its way out of his mouth, but it can’t happen this way. Indeed, it’s almost surprising that Jones, a rather healthy looking man, didn’t beat a child given the extent of his anger. Thank God he didn’t. No doubt he would have done serious harm to another child.
The fact that Jones’ anger is understandable, even laudable in a peculiar sense, doesn’t mean that any adult can lose his cool to the extent that happened here. But then, it should never have reached the point where a father had to come on to his child’s bus to address this situation. There have always been schoolyard, and bus ride, bullies. Schools know that these things exist. Bus drivers are supposed to be responsible for the children in their care. These situations are hardly abnormal and there’s no reason in the world for these things to happen without recourse.
Whether James Jones could benefit from some anger management is a very real issue. Most of us, angry though we may be, would not have dealt with the situation, with young children, the way he did. He was very wrong in action, if not motive. Whether that means he should be saddled with a criminal conviction for it is another matter, assuming there’s nothing else in his background to suggest that this was anything other than an angry father engaged in aberrational behavior to protect his disabled daughter.
But one real lesson is that no father, and no child, should be forced to deal with this situation. The other real lesson is that schools, in dealing with such situations, need to do so in a constructive fashion rather than the typical zero tolerance, scorched earth fashion that ends up in some child being sacrificed for the lack of reasonableness and proportionality.
These situations always seem to end badly. And yet there’s nothing whatsoever unusual about kids being mean to other kids.
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Serve the school’s legal department with a lawsuit and the problem will be fixed tomorrow. No school administrator wants his name tied to accusations of allowing a disabled child to be bullied without consequence.
Sounds righteous to me. I would suggest to him in the future to approach the school first and, if an option, the parents of those picking on his daughter.
I’m also willing to bet the dad’s actions will improve the behavior of the bullies 100 fold over any other form of discipline they might realistically encounter.
Not to belittle law enforcement or the legal profession here but this looks to be a self-correcting problem that honestly doesn’t require either of their services.
This probably goes without saying, but there isn’t much point in “suggesting” anything to him since, well, he’s not here and, well, he didn’t ask for your suggestions. Just to avoid confusion.
Thanks. Your suggestion is duly noted. 🙂
I seem to remember that in Florida, any threat uttered with the word “if” prefacing it is not a threat under the law. So if you say “I’m going to kill you”, that is a prosecutable offense, but if you say “If you harm my daughter, I will kill you”, you’re just stating the natural conclusion to a hypothetical scenario.
Looks like this dad made both kinds of threat, according to the report. Still, arresting him was a bogus injustice and the fact that the local police department had the time and resources to take him to task for his actions tells me that his local police force is overfunded and overstaffed.
While I would agree that the rage was righteous, I would question the part that you title wrong.
Disability aside, I hold a firm belief in taking a stand where life demands it. Going to the school board is one possible solution for those that have bullied this child. Doing as this man did puts another on notice that his/her inaction to deal with the problem will not be tolerated either.
Dealing with it on the school bus is one thing. Threatening to kill kids and a bus driver? That’s a different thing.
Actually, I’m willing to bet the outcome of this will make the bullies *worse*.
Kids bully girls, girl’s father comes on bus to vent rage, kids laugh at father, father is made to apologize to bullies & gets arrested.
Message: Bully on!
Totally agreed. The worst thing that the kids could have ever expected to happen to them has happened and the person doing it to them has been excoriated for it. That makes them invincible. They’re now protected.
Sh*t MY Dad says: Being ‘right’ is expensive.
I agree that he went overboard with the threat.
The question unanswered that needs to be is had he tried other ways of making the bullying stop first. Whatever the answer is, I sincerely doubt a jury of 12 would convict him.
And of course there is the obligatory comment at the end that “these 11 year olds may face charges of their own.” Of course.
While there’s no specific information on this, the story reads as though this was Jones’ first effort to deal with the bullying. But it was a doozy.
If you had kids, you would be a terror.
I do. I just don’t know where they are.
Check the shower drain.
Lee: Really just 3 I know about for sure: Evansville, DC, your house.
Dad?
Evansville!? New Years Eve ’84!?? That would explain sooo much.
Eww.
Having said that, I applaud this Dad’s willingness to stick up for his daughter. But drive the kid to school for a couple of days while you have a conversation with the police and the principal and the bus driver. If he had time to be on the bus, he had time to drive her to school.
Son.
You’re kidding right? If not, looks like you got her body and my energy. (Do you have sudden urges to do pole dancing at rural watering holes?)
Are kids really that emotionally fragile now? Is that the way they’re being raised?
Stuff thrown at me on the bus that actually hit me
Apples
peaches, half peaches, peach pits.
Text books
The obligatory spitballs
except for the spitballs, I’m pretty cwrtain they all hurt a bit more than a condom or two.
Stuff I got hit with close range, usually over the head.
Books
Metal lunchboxes.
Yeah, all of that hurt. Especially the lunchboxes. And it was way more than once.
Plus in winter they’d steal my hat. And once when the school demanded that it be returned(The only action taken in 4 years)they cut it into narrow strips first.
And they weren’t the worst. One bus had an annual Nair fight as a tradition.
What counts as “bullying” these days sounds like a pleasant ride.
I’ve no doubt that kids are more fragile today than they used to be, but then I walked ten miles uphill both ways to school in the snow while you took a bus. It’s all relative.