Blog 13-To restain or not to restrain?

We all have diverse students in our classroom and in my personal opinion we are seeing more and more students with labels and unique situations. If you live under a rock or have a perfect classroom I’m talking about emotionally disturbed students, special education students, autistic students, etc. I had a large number of classes on these disabilities but I don’t think anything can train you for the real life situations. I currently have an emotionally disturbed child but his meds keep him in control and I’ve been lucky so far this year but that doesn’t mean I haven’t restrained a child. I work in a school with six classrooms (only K and 1) so we find out pretty quick if a child is losing it and if back up is needed. In the last couple years we have had a large number of students with emotional problems that cause them to be physically dangerous to themselves or others. Our district did its part and provided free training on how to properly deal with these students. The first steps are to prevent blow ups and the last resort is physical restraints. You might think, great you should be set to go but sadly I feel far from trained. I can’t even remember what the official class was called or the exact procedures.
I have had to restrain two separate students and it was very interesting. Neither of them were my students but I was a backup in one situation and I was the one teacher right there who had to handle the student before they ran away. It was a very tiring process and we honestly did not have any other option although I can say those two situations have been the only two in the last two years. Sadly, this isn’t the case in Texas.
I read an article from The Texas Tribune that stated there were 18,000 restraints used last year in their schools. There have even been a number of situations where a student was injured and in one situation a student died of suffocation when a teacher was sitting on him to restrain him. The article includes pictures of one injured student. Many Texans are outraged over these statistics. I understand that these statistics are scary but many of these situations are very dangerous at times. In one situation in Texas a student was restrained after he stabbed his teacher, call me crazy but I think restraints were necessary here. Another example I have happened right here in ND. A first grade student was going belligerent and could not be controlled but restraints are very much not urged. The special education teachers were doing their best without restraints and he ended up kicking a window and breaking it. Do you think a restraint should have been used before a window was broken? Have you had to restrain students? What should be done? Some schools have hired professionals that are very educated to handle these students but many schools might not have this privilege. What are your thoughts?