Extreme potty training: Dad in China dangles girl by ankles through flat window
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A father in China has drawn ire for his parenting methods after he was caught on camera dangling his daughter from the window of an apartment as part of her toilet training.
The incident was recorded by a passer-by in the city of Shenyang, capital of the north-eastern Liaoning province, last Wednesday.
In a video that has been circulated online, a man is seen holding a girl – later described by the media to be around three to four years old – by her ankles with one hand outside a window. Her blouse slips to her neck as she hangs upside down.
The man is heard accusing her of running around her room and wetting herself instead of using the toilet. She calls him “baba” – father in Mandarin – as she cries in distress, and he shouts at her to stop making noise.
Witnesses told Chinese media that the girl’s ordeal lasted around two to three minutes.
The man continues dangling the girl from what appears to be a second floor window of an apartment building even as other people walked by, at times resting her legs on the window sill or using his free arm to support the girl’s body.
He reportedly pulled the girl into the flat after a woman called on him to stop.
A woman’s rights group in Shenyang confirmed last Friday that the incident occurred in the city’s Tiexi region, adding they had “educated” the man, while also providing “psychological comfort” to the girl.
The man and girl have not been identified.
Users of microblogging platform Weibo where the video has been shared have been critical of the man’s actions.
One commented that the man ought to be dangled out a window himself when he wets the bed in his senior years, while another said his potty training methods were more akin to torture than education.
Others noted how the girl was a slip away from serious injury, given that she was being held with her head facing the ground.
Parenting methods in China have frequently made headlines in the country. In June, a mother reportedly forced her son to throw up cake she had forbidden him from eating because it contained cream.
In February, a six-year-old boy turned the tables and went viral on video-sharing platform Douyin for ranting about his mother’s “tiger parenting”,
A report on the protection of minors in China released in 2022 noted that around four out of 10 minors have been victims of family violence, with the most common forms being physical punishment and verbal abuse.
The report noted that such incidents of violence have the potential to traumatise children, negatively affecting their psychological development and leading to vicious cycles if they imitate and repeat the violent behaviour.
