“Children have one kind of silliness, as you know, and grown-ups have another kind.” — C.S. Lewis

As a fourth-grader in Mrs. Carr’s classroom, I made a big, stupid mistake.

While I drew pictures for some art project for Mrs. Carr, a classmate of mine came over and started joshing me about my drawing. Long story short: As we joshed around, I said the n-word.

Mrs. Carr, who was Black, heard me. My use of the word hurt her deeply. She sent me to the principal’s office.

A quick aside: My mother taught me one of the most important lessons of my life that day. She made me write an apology letter, and my first draft largely blamed my classmate for starting the joshing and saying the n-word first. My mom made me rip that letter up and start over. Take responsibility for your own actions, Mom told me, and let God worry about other people.

But the point I meant to make with that anecdote is that kids say stupid things without thinking.

We have to give them grace.

Mrs. Carr showed grace, forgiving me my sin that year and actually nominating me for the fourth-grade Principal’s Award at year’s end.

I’ve thought a lot about that anecdote as our community has dealt this school year with incident after incident related to school safety: Threats that closed Alpena’s junior high and high school and could lead to criminal charges. A supposed threat at Rogers City High School that school officials say was actually just a fight between two students. Multiple students sent home over threatening language or inappropriate online activity.

Just last week, school administrators removed an Alpena High School student from the building under police watch after the student allegedly made a TikTok video referencing explosives.

I won’t say that school administrators made the wrong call on anything they’ve done this year. It’s too easy to Monday-morning-quarterback such decisions. Neither I nor anyone uninvolved has all the details about who said what or how or when they said it. Without that information, it’s too hard to judge the appropriateness of the school district’s actions.

But I will say this: We have to give kids the freedom to say and do stupid things, because that’s what kids do. They learn to do the right thing by coming to understand the consequences and the seriousness of their actions, but the consequences of one stupid thing shouldn’t necessarily ruin their lives forever, robbing them of the chance to learn good lessons on other things and prosper in the future.

I don’t begrudge school administrators for the position in which our times have put them. They really are damned if they do, damned if they don’t.

They aim ultimately to keep kids in class and learning as much as safely possible, so every decision to remove a student from class — even temporarily — runs counter to that goal.

They must make a judgement call about the danger of whatever a student said or did: Was the student serious or joking? Was he or she just parroting something they heard on TV or in a movie or in a song or on social media? Does he or she pose a legitimate threat to himself or herself or others?

Rarely do the answers to those questions clearly present themselves.

No school administrator wants to end up like those in Oxford, who sent Ethan Crumbley back to class before he allegedly opened fire in a school hallway, killing four students and wounding six other students and a teacher on Nov. 30.

Even if that worst doesn’t happen, the school administrator who fails to discipline a student or otherwise react might face the ire of parents angry he or she didn’t do more, as happened in Rogers City.

But neither does the school administrator want to crack down a student who made a dumb mistake, ruining that kid’s future with an expulsion or criminal charges over one lapse in judgement, one angry tweet, one flash of irate stupidity.

I feel for kids who now feel trapped in a glass bowl, open to the prying eyes of parents and school administrators, anxious about making the wrong kind of joke in the presence of the wrong person or just plain saying something dumb.

They need to learn self-control, but this is an intense environment in which to learn it.

I also feel for school administrators who just have to hope and pray they’ve made the right choice in the moment.

We need to make sure we’re giving grace all around and operating with compassion for our kids and those we trust to teach them.

Justin A. Hinkley can be reached at 989-354-3112 or jhinkley@thealpenanews.com. Follow him on Twitter @JustinHinkley.