Kids grow up fast, but probably not as fast as administrators at Greer, S.C., elementary school think.

According to an April 3 WYFF News 4 report, Skyland Elementary school administrators gave a 6-year-old boy a disciplinary referral for making suggestive comments about a kindergarten teacher. A teacher filed a complaint to the school’s principal after hearing the boy call another teacher “a hottie” and asking if teachers like to “sleep together.” The boy’s parents are worried this incident will become a part of their son’s permanent school record, according to the report.

This situation is ridiculous in many different ways, not least of which being how the school handled the boy’s comments. Instead of either telling the boy to stop his behavior or going to his parents to help correct the problem, the teacher went straight to the principal to file a complaint. Even if the boy’s comments were one of many inappropriate comments he made at the school, the parents should have been involved before giving the boy a disciplinary referral.

Why was there such an overreaction to the boy’s comments? The teacher certainly couldn’t have believed he understood what he was saying, a six-year-old couldn’t possibly know what connotations the word “hottie” has in the adult world. Young children do a lot of things just to get attention and it’s more than likely he was parroting something he heard on TV or something an older family member might have said.

The worst part about this situation is how this may end up going on this boy’s permanent record. Having him being labeled as a “sexual deviant” this early in life will only damage his development into a young adult. The school needs to look at how this disciplinary will affect this boy when he probably didn’t even understand the negative impact of his words in the first place.