Corporal Punishment, An Asian Heritage

I was just joking the other time when I blogged about how asian moms would still instill strict corporal punishment on their child. Modern parents these days would rather resort to reverse psychology instead of insanely thick canes, or so I thought. This week alone, I witnessed two incidents that proved me so wrong.

The first incident was when I was having lunch at a local kopitiam. A woman and a child were entering the same shop but the child got slightly hyper. She started hoping around and singing, I thought it was cute. And just when she was about to spring for her 5th hop, *whack!* the mother slapped her child's shoulder hard. "Stop it!" she exclaimed. She then proceeded to forcefully pull her arms into the kopitiam. The child, though submissive, just turned a straight face and followed the mother. Imagine what horrible fate the child must've suffered everyday back at home.

I didn't have to imagine. 3 days later, my opposite neighbour suddenly went pyscho and started screaming god knows for quite a while. During the first minute, I thought she had won the lottery. Right into the third minute, I thought she was just a terrible PMSer. And by the fifth minute, I thought I had Chester Bennington as my next door neighbour. Suddenly, a child came bursting out from the door and leaned himself on the house gate, he looked frightened.

Crazed Mom: YOU COME IN NOW! YOU COME IN SO I CAN HURT YOU EVEN MORE! AAAAAARGH!
Son: No! No! I don't want to go in! [Desperately rattling the house gate]
Crazed Mom: If you come in right now, I promise I'll leave the biting part out.
Son: ... Fine.

In western countries, the mom would already be sent to a mental asylum and the child, quickly admitted into a special care unit for fear that he may be traumatized. Over here, neighbours would instead just look on with a smile thinking to themselves, "Hey I used to be like that child and therefore he must suffer the exact same fate!". You know, neighbours like me.