An online video posted recently by a Taiwanese man who claimed to be disciplining his son has drawn a flood of both criticism and support.
In the two-minute video on YouTube, a young boy is asked to kneel facing a wall in punishment for having scratched a neighbor’s car.
The child, who looks about four or five years old, cries out loud, asking God to come down and rescue him.
“The crying is heartbreaking, but it’s cute and hilarious at the same time,” one netizen commented.
Since the video was posted on June 5, it has attracted more than 96,500 hits and hundreds of comments.
It has also given rise to debates on whether the child’s father had used an appropriate form of discipline.
Some netizens commented in support of the father’s method, saying it was “not a big deal.”
When a child does something wrong, he or she should be punished, not spoiled, some people commented on the site.
However, others expressed strong opposition to that type of discipline, with one netizen describing it as “child abuse.”
“Parents should review their bad teaching,” a netizen -surnamed Wu (吳) said. “Discipline is important, but it should definitely not be like this, watching a child crying out loud helplessly.”
Still others said it was alright to punish the child in that way, but not for the father to post the video online.
“I simply don’t find it amusing, especially the part where someone is laughing at the little boy,” one person wrote in the comments.
With the increasing popularity of social networking Web sites, more and more people are posting material that they think is interesting without considering the immense reach of the Internet, one netizen said.
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