A video of a woman berating a small boy —slapping and hitting him repeatedly— went viral on Saturday (Sept 17).
Although the video is only a minute and a half long, the person who posted the video said that the woman dealt with the child for around half an hour at the Hougang Swimming Complex on Wednesday (Sept 14) at around 4:30 pm.
The mum hit the child, who appears to be around three or four years old, on his buttocks and cheeks, and he hit her back a few times.
The woman can also be seen roughly pulling him up by his arms and yelling at him.
While some netizens said they were shocked at how the woman treated the child, many commenters said that this is merely part of parenting and scolded the poster for taking a video of the incident.
A Ms Lara sent the video to crowdsourced news site Stomp.
She told Stomp, ”The woman slapped the child once and he mirrored her action LIGHTLY. However, she went into a full-blown adult tantrum by pulling, dragging, and slapping him for the public to watch.
The child was lying down and weak from crying and being hit, but the beating went on whether he was lying down or seated.
The whole ordeal that I (and 20 over people) witnessed went on for about 30 minutes, with pulling and dragging involved.”
She added that her “intention is to create awareness and help the poor toddler” as well as his mother and that she did not file a police report.
“To be honest, I wanted to approach the woman to ask if she needed help.
If this can be done in public for the world to watch without anyone bothering to intervene to help the poor kids, I cannot imagine what is happening behind closed doors.”
Many netizens, however, felt that the mum had the right to parent her child in the way she saw fit, as dealing with a child in the middle of a tantrum is not easy.
Some of the commenters mentioned that they themselves had been subject to the same type of discipline.
But others seemed to agree with Ms Lara and were alarmed at how the woman treated her child.
/TISG