Spare the scare and spoil the child?
The online community welcomed a video of a mother tormenting her son with a cockroach to the point of tears with a near-unanimous: “You’re a terrible mother.”
In the footage shared online, a terrified little boy of about 2, shrinks away from the ugly damn roach waved around by his mother, who is heard threatening to bite him with it if he does not promise to be a good boy and eat all his food.
This is pretty much how the conversation goes:
Mom: “Are you going to be a jerk to me?”
Kid: “No… please don’t.”
Mom: “I’m not gonna bring it to you. I just want you to swear in front of the cockroach that you will be a good boy. Otherwise I’m going to bring the cockroach to bite you”
Kid: “I’ll be a good boy. I promise.”
Mom: “Are you going to finish your food?”
Kid: “I promise.”
After the anonymous mother released the video on Facebook, she promptly defended herself, saying she’s not sorry at all.
“I don’t wanna beat him because it’s violent,” she was quoted in Daily News. “Cockroaches are not dangerous, it’s just a thing people don’t want near them. I’m not sorry at all that my son is afraid of cockroaches. At least, he’s not afraid of weird stuff like celebrities. He said it himself, ‘I’m not scared of cockroaches because I’m a good boy.’”
Meanwhile, experts weighed in to say: not cool and emotionally damaging.
“This is a wrong way to raise a child,” Anchulee Theerawongpaisan, psychologist of Police General Hospital says, ”Children’s eating problems are very common and parents should discuss their reasons with the children.”
“Punishing them with threats or provoking their fears can affect their mention health and cause stress,” she added.
Reader Interactions