Missed this big New York story in the Daily News last Thursday. Seems that a week earlier a 5-year-old boy threw a tantrum in a Queens elementary school, was taken to the principal's office, and then was handcuffed by the school's safety officer and taken to a nearby psych ward. The child's babysitter was at the school before the child was sent away by ambulance but the security officer wouldn't let the 68-pound kindergarten student go. The boy suffers from asthma, has been diagnosed as having A.D.D. and has speech problems, according to his mother. Schools chief Joel Klein the next day said he was troubled by how the incident had been handled but he wasn't prepared to condemn it.

Our society has, for a long time, feared adolescents and teen-agers because of their unpredictability. Are we now afraid of kindergartners and pre-kindergartners? (By the way, as of Sunday the original article had drawn 337 comments on the Daily News' Web site. Disturbingly, quite a number blame parents for failing to control their children.)

Dennis Rivera and Jasmina Vasquez (New York Daily News photo)