My two year old was throwing a tantrum recently. He has learnt that if he cries, his caregiver, the maid, would give in to his demand. But it cuts no ice with his five older siblings and his parents who were not about to give him any face.

As he was throwing his temper, he was made to stand and face the wall. Soon enough, he learnt that no one was paying any attention to him and so he decided to take his bottle of milk and lie down quietly to drink and fall asleep.

Too often, I have observed that parents nowadays are afraid to let their children suffer a little inconvenience or even pain. It has been a standard practice in our household that if any child so choose not to eat his meal at meal time he will remain hungry until the following meal time. There will no snacking or cajoling the child to eat junk food so that he does not remain hungry.

Recently, it was reported that a 17 year old JC student hit a bus-driver despite pleas from the bus driver to stop. The boy called his father crying when he realized that the police had been called. Instead of letting the boy face the music, the boy’s father was seen kneeling down in front of the bus driver to seek forgiveness for his son. Later, the boy claimed, in a written response through his school, that it was a misunderstanding and the violence ensured was accidental.

If one of my children is found to be in a similar situation, I would not bail them out. They have learnt from young that like Newton Law of Physic, for every action there is a reaction and they have been trained to face the consequence of their action. Moreover a violent act is seldom accepted as an accidental act.

Once, one of our children hit the maid. We did not side with our child and blamed the maid nor did we claimed that it was an accident and brushed the incident away. Instead we investigated and discovered that indeed he has committed a transgression for which he was punished appropriately. In addition he was made to apologies to the maid.

I can only guess at the possible reason why the father of this JC boy did what he did. Perhaps he did not want the boy’s bright future to be blemished by a police case. Maybe he was being over-protective. Or he could have pinned all his hopes and dreams on his boy who was studying in a premier junior college along Bukit Timah Road.

Whatever the reason, this incident has forced me to reflect on how far a parent should go to sacrifice in the name of parent’s love.

The father, who went on his knees to beg for forgiveness on his son’s behalf, has deprived his son of an opportunity to learn an important aspect of human relationship. He should have play his role as a parent and insist that the son kneel down and beg for forgiveness for his rash act.

Many parents, in their pursuit of academic excellence for their children, have failed or neglected to develop any moral values in their children. They made the critical wrong assumption that academic excellence would somehow automatically transform someone into a morally upright, ethical citizen of society.

Values like respect for others, care and concern for fellow human beings and honesty and integrity have to be developed from young. These values are best developed in the home with the gentle guiding hands of the parents to lead the child on the right path when he goes astray.

Enrolling a child in an elite school, however, is not a protection or a guarantee against creating a violent monster.