Kids are a handful even on a good day and entertaining them with their short attention span is not a small task. Sometimes parents are guilty of shoving screens the child’s way for a few minutes of uninterrupted time. Then, it becomes a problem when the child is fixated on the screens and refuses to budge from the couch.
A Chinese couple faced this problem when their eight-year-old son was glued to the television despite the parent’s instructions to do homework and get to bed by 8:30 p.m. When they came back expecting homework to be complete, they saw him flipping channels on the television. Homework was incomplete and he hadn’t even headed into the bedroom.
The boy’s behavior isn’t out of the ordinary since TV gives more instant gratification than tedious homework. What stuck out in this situation was the modern parenting style so instead of snatching the remote, they told him to stay in the living room and continue watching his shows.
While the command sounds absurd on the surface, the parents might be onto something. The parent’s strategy was to increase the pleasure to an extreme level so it slowly turns into pain. If the child is forced to stare at the television for hours without a break, the parent’s hope is that he gets so sick of the screen that it deters him from making the same mistake again.
Their plan may have worked. In a YouTube video, the boy is shown struggling to keep his eyes open and making various attempts to go to his room but his mom wouldn’t let him. She forced him to watch more TV. At around 2 a.m., he can be seen crying and pleading with his mother to be allowed to sleep but she continued with her tough love.
Even when he was knocked out on the couch, one of his parents woke him up to not miss a scene.
Finally, the TV chatter was put to rest and silence filled the room around five in the morning. The boy was able to go to bed with a lesson learned.
Some parents in China are a tough crowd with their “tiger parenting” strategy and the video received backlash for the strict disciplinary actions. This form of abuse proves to be highly effective. Pop some popcorn to fight a kid’s TV addiction.
Source: https://youtu.be/OsxO66WX7ec