A 6 Year-Old guilty of Sexual Harassment!?

You’ve got to be kidding, right?  No, it’s true!

A six-year-old boy received a three day suspension at Sable Elementary School in Colorado for repeating what is apparently a popular song from a group called LMFAO.  What’s the name of the song?  “Sexy and I Know It.”  The lyric he quoted?  “I’m sexy and I know it.”  Apparently the boy sang or said these words to a girl with whom he was standing in line for lunch—hence sexual harassment.  Really?!

I have no idea who this group is, LMFAO.  But I am vaguely familiar with the song in that I’m sure that I’ve heard a clip of it somewhere—TV, radio, the internet—I don’t remember where exactly.  Nevertheless, I remember hearing it because it’s like one of those dreaded commercial jingles that stick in one’s mind long after first hearing it, due to its catchy melody and easy singable lyrics.  No wonder that a six-year-old would pick it up and easily repeat it.

As far as I can tell, it’s typical MTV like music, young people’s stuff.  By the way, if you’re in my generation, don’t get too smug, some of Frank Sinatra’s best songs are no better for its message (think of “Don’cha go ‘way mad” or “Please be Kind,” songs that virtually endorse extra-marital affairs).  Nevertheless, though much could be said about the song itself, this is not about the song.  It’s about the boy in a lunch line at school who repeated it, sang or quoted it to a girl he was standing next to.  Was this an example of real, bona fide, sexual harassment?  I think not.

Why not?  Because the kid is only six-years-old, because he was repeating something he heard from what is apparently mainstream pop music, a catchy tune with striking words.  In short, he was just being a kid and committed a kid’s level error not an adult level crime.  That’s all.  You don’t have to be a child psychologist to conclude that there was probably very little real sexual interest in this kid’s action.  Upon repeating the song’s lyrics to the girl standing next to him, it’s not like his intent was to say: “Hey babe, you like what you’re looking at?  I’m sexy and I know it.  So, let’s get it on!” the way you can imagine a sexually mature adult, who also happens to be an idiot, might think of saying to a woman.

Real adults should be smarter than this.  Real mature adults need to teach and nurture children, show wisdom and insight in understanding a child’s life, a child’s perspective, a child’s world.  So this!  Suspending a six-year-old for sexual harassment!  It’s over the top.  It’s reactive and insensitive, and shows a lack of depth and thoughtfulness, and a total lack of wisdom.  Such reactive measures teach children little—but to possibly distrust adults as over reactive who understand little and care even less.  Did those in power even try to understand what the kid was thinking when he repeated the lines to this song?  Did they try to understand his actions from his point of view, a child’s perspective on life, the world, and even sexuality?  Or were they just being hardnosed, impatient, dismissive, and authoritarian about it all?

And this is the real problem about this incident.  Adults are proving themselves to be more and more intolerant, mean-spirited, impatient, unkind, foolish and unwise, self-serving, and kneejerk reactive with their dozen-and-one zero-tolerant policies for everything that is disturbing to them.  It’s a show of weakness rather than strength.  It says adults are actually afraid of children.

We adults must truly fear that we really have lost control of things.  Why else would we react with such hardnosed authoritarianism, leaving no room for thoughtful and restorative nurturing action toward miscreants?  When lines are crossed and rules are broken, we apparently prefer to mindlessly resort to applying strict harsh consequences, with little thought and even less insight, and absolutely no processing and consideration of context or situation.

It is rule by authoritarian control, a heavy-handed use of power to exact strict obedience and enforce outward conformity, rather than taking time to nurture the inner life, the inner soul and spirit of a child.  And this is precisely why we lose so many of our children, as they grow into their teen years, to the very rebellious ideas and reactionary causes that so many older adults fear and abhor.