Calif. Teacher Plea: No Contest to Sleep Pill Case

slimvictor

slimvictor

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A Northern California preschool teacher is facing jail time after pleading no contest to slipping sleeping pills in toddlers' water cups.

Santa Clara County prosecutors say 59-year-old Deborah Gratz entered the plea this week to a charge of attempted child endangerment.

Gratz worked at the Kiddie Academy in Morgan Hill.

Prosecutors say she told police she slipped Sominex in the cups because she wanted the children to sleep longer during naptimes.

cont at
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/calif-teacher-plea-contest-sleep-pill-case-19105675#.UYQ--79K7SE
 
Wtf!? I swear, every other week I hear about another daycare horror story. As a working mum to a toddler this sort of thing scares me. Totally irresponsible lady. I wonder why people like this even get into childcare.
 
wow...that's so wrong.

a simple dosing mistake and you'd have a toddler that goes to sleep but doesn't wake up. why not just get the kids to do a lot of physical activity - like sports - before nap time so they are really tuckered out and sleep longer..

Or maybe every once in a while the kids could have some turkey for lunch? The tryptophan in the turkey should make them a little more sleepy than average, right? I'm not even sure where I stand on what I just typed, the thought just came to me so I edited this post and wrote it down.

Technically speaking, what I just said with the turkey is the same as what this teacher did - intentionally giving kids something to ingest to make them sleep longer. The two "drugs" being used are tryptophan in the turkey, and diphenhydramine in the Sominex. I could sit here and type for about 30 or 45 mins making points from different perspectives on what I just said (turkey vs Sominex), but I'm not here to ramble on about this because some people may take it the wrong way, which is not what I'm trying to do at all.

It's just a thought to came to my mind, and I wanted to post it, just so people could think about it, even if it's just for a second.

I still stand by my initial opinion at the beginning of my post, what she did was wrong, plain and simple.
 
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a simple dosing mistake and you'd have a toddler that goes to sleep but doesn't wake up.
Click to expand...

the active ingredient in sominex is either diphenhydramine or promethazine, not exactly notoriously toxic drugs. they're still quite ... powerful sedatives, and a child especially would be in no good state to do anything for about 4-8 hours.

drugging kids without their parents permission, or even drugging them for trivial reasons like "to sleep longer at naptime" is still morally reprehensible.
 
Tiesto said:
Technically speaking, what I just said with the turkey is the same as what this teacher did - intentionally giving kids something to ingest to make them sleep longer. The two "drugs" being used are tryptophan in the turkey, and diphenhydramine in the Sominex. I could sit here and type for about 30 or 45 mins making points from different perspectives on what I just said (turkey vs Sominex), but I'm not here to ramble on about this because some people may take it the wrong way, which is not what I'm trying to do at all.
Click to expand...

I like this point. It is similar to what I like to say about the difficulty of defining a category of "drug" that doesn't include food. And yet, I share your intuition that giving the kids Sominex is wrong, whereas giving them turkey - a much less "scientific" (accurate dosing, etc.) way of providing sleep-inducing chemicals - is not a problem.
Strange, eh?
 
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