Lego and Piss

Admist the sounds of a crying child, I heard the snappish voice of her mother.

"Go ask your papa to buy you clothes!"
"I want mama to buy me clothes!"

The above exchange was repeated at least twice before the mother, having a sudden inspiration, threw in the line, "give me back my lego!"

Amazing isn't it? And all this happened while the mother was storming indignantly along the common corridor outside my flat while her crying child tried valiantly to catch up on her short legs. One wonders what kind of example the mother was setting for her daughter. One of childishness and spite, perhaps. I know not the background of their family; maybe the parents are divorced, leaving the mother broken and bitter. One innocent remark made in favour of her father and the daughter finds herself the perfect outlet of her mother's frustrations.

If what I witnessed was a snapshot of their daily lives, then I fear the child will probably grow up with a distorted perception of gifts and love. Insecurity will haunt the girl through her growing years and if coupled with a few choice relationship or friendship problems that life will without doubt dish out to her, she's finished.

As I was walking to th MRT station from home today, I saw a child's bare ass. Her legs were sticking in the air, held together by her mother's arms. Apparently, she had just finished peeing as her mum was shaking her as a man would shake his member to get the last few drops of pee out.

The washrooms were at most, 20 metres away from the grass patch that the mother took as an ad-hoc toilet.

Stellar examples of parenting. Suitable to be filed along with incidents of kids running up and down the train with their parents yelling threats of caning without actually carrying them out. These kids grow up with the impression that empty threats are all their parents are capable of. When they reach their teenage years and totally ignore the advice of their parents, the parents complain in hapless frustration that their teengers are rebellious, oblivious to the fact that they were the engineers behind such behaviour.