Question of the Day: Forcing medication

When your child's home and won't take medication, you may have all sorts of ways to get it down -- crushed up, tucked into applesauce, consumed with special fruit juice to dull the taste, delivered with a bribe or incentive of some sort. But what if your child has to take meds at school, and refuses? How should school staff handle that particular problem? When a student at a Flagstaff, Arizona, elementary school got agitated on a school field trip, became hard to handle back on campus, and then refused to take his Adderall, he was restrained by his teacher and an aide and had the pill forced into his mouth until he finally swallowed. Despite a complaint filed by a special education advocate, no charges were filed against school personnel, although the principal has since been reassigned. Do you think the adults involved here did the right thing? Click on an answer below, and use your browser's back button if you want to choose more than one.
1) Yes. Obviously, he needed the meds.
2) Yes, but it should never have come to that.
3) No, they should have sent the child home instead.
4) No, they should have brought the parents in to handle it.
5) No, force in this instance was inappropriate.
6) Force is never appropriate, for any reason.
7) Giving meds in school, no matter how they're administered, is inappropriate.
8) No, and they should all be fired and jailed.
9) No, and the family should sue the school, pronto.
10) Other
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