After Amos Yee shared a screenshot of the messages he exchanged with his mother on Facebook, both mother and son received many comments from riled netizens, asking her to rethink her parenting methods, and asking him to be more respectful.
In their text messages, the teenager, in petulant fashion typical of him, said to his mother,
“You need to shut the f*** up mim. I think a huge reason why I was turned off from cooking and cleaning was because of how unattractive you make those tasks seem from your constant nagging.
So if you want me to get good at taking care of myself, pretty please with candy and sugar shut the f*** up”.
After five days, Yee’s mother retorted on Facebook yesterday with a lengthy post that was resigned and rather defeated.
With reference to the text messages that Yee posted, she said, “Amos asked for my permission to post that text message and only when I agreed did he post it.”
She also went on to explain, “Amos did bring awareness to how he was upset from how I spoke to him”.
In her post, Yee’s mother Mary Toh made a reference to another of Yee’s Facebook posts, one where he starts off by saying, “I do not love my mother, I do still like my mother though, I rate our relationship a 6.5-7/10, she probably cracks my Top 20 favorite people list.”
She said, “I’m a little upset that Amos very boldly said that he ‘didn’t love me as a mother’. However I don’t think he’s really wrong to say that. He’s right that we’re both very different people whether that’s just inborn or because of random chance. I don’t think parents can or should raise their child to be exactly the way that they want.”
Towards the end of her post, Mary Toh went on to address all of the comments she received.
She said, “I deny responsibility that I should be blamed. If anyone wants to send me concerned messages to send to Amos thinking that it’ll convince him more because it’s from his mother, please don’t”.
“It’s very annoying because not only does he not listen to me, I also don’t think I’m the right person to give him advice because honestly, I am very unsure what he’s doing; I can’t understand the things he’s saying on the internet half the time”, she resigned.
Overall, netizens praised her for being able to let go and for her open-mindedness.
obbana@theindependent.sg