A very bewildered five-year-old little girl found herself suspended from school last week for defending her imaginary castle.
According to the Washington Post (who, as left-leaning as they are, even seemed to think this story was a bit ridiculous), little Caitlin Miller was hauled into the principal’s office at her North Carolina elementary school on Friday and given the temporary boot after teachers saw her pretending to use a stick as a gun during recess.
The little girl told her confused mother that she and a few friends were pretending to live in an imaginary castle, and she was simply defending it from intruders. Oh, and by the way, here’s a picture of the Big Bad Dangerous Stick, via the mother's Facebook post:
In a note sent home to Caitlin’s parents, including her Army dad, school officials defended their decision to suspend Caitlin for a day by saying their daughter was “turning a stick into a gun and threatening to shoot and kill other students.”
Naturally, Caitlin’s parents thought this was a giant load of crap. Via the Post:
“One minute she’s playing with her friends and the next her teachers are dragging her to the principal’s office,” her mother, Brandy Miller, told WTVD. “She’s confused. Nobody explained anything to her.”
Caitlin didn’t understand what a suspension was, or why it was happening to her, her mother wrote on Facebook. Miller struggled to explain to her daughter that it was wrong to play certain games at recess, because she felt a child her age should be allowed to play make-believe games. She didn’t want to have to discuss school shootings with her daughter, or tell her that she’s not “allowed to play like that at school because people do bad things to kids your age.”
She told her daughter, “you can’t say you’re going to shoot and kill people.” And Caitlin looked at her, confused, saying “I never said that?” her mother wrote on Facebook.
Now, Caitlin’s mom says her still-baffled daughter feels embarrassed and ostracized at school, as if “all the teachers hate her" (which is the understandable reaction if you're a little kid who just got berated and kicked out of school for...well, acting exactly like a little kid). Her mom is now asking the school to apologize to Caitlin for their overreaction.
This is where we’ve come to in this country: the government says it's A-O.K. to let little boys waltz into little girls' bathrooms free and clear, citing "equality." Then they shove tens of thousands of un-vetted illegal alien adults children into classrooms with younger kids, and somehow, everyone’s shocked when a 14-year-old girl ends up raped in a bathroom.
But yeah, suspend the kindergartener for playing with a stick. That’s helpful.