Neighbour Dilemma
Hi, I’m not sure what to do here.
My neighbour upstairs seems to have an ADHD kid who throw tantrums and cries often. But rather than dealing with it peacefully, I can always hear the parents shouting and screaming loudly back at the kid in a military tone, asking him shut up, saying he is stupid etc.. thereby causing further stress to the kid.
Being a parent myself, I can understand that the parents are also stressed up and probably tried to deal with his tantrums until their patience runs out. But I cannot see how the adults screaming and shouting back is going to improve the situation! And coming from a broken/ abusive family myself, hearing these scoldings is very traumatising for me. Even without the presence of physical abuse, I believe the kid is going to be emotionally scarred for life.
Every time when I hear the kid’s crying, I had to shuffle between the thoughts of calling on the police or the anti-abuse hotline (which btw is a joke as they only operate during office hours) and even tried to intervene myself by confronting the neighbour, but I think due to that they seem to be more cautious/ avoiding towards me.
What should I do to best help the poor kid and my neighbour’s family? Or am I too sensitive and should I just stay out of it? Help!!!
Here are what netizens think:
- I saw a lady do that to her son in the lift many years back in Singapore. But I can’t remember which place it was exactly (moved around alot). She was basically pinching him and the boy was asking her to stop but she wouldn’t stop and kept hitting him. I told her “You can’t do that to a child. That’s abuse”. Then I think she got scared and let go of his hand. I called after her “Mam mam’ but she didn’t respond. So I took note of which floor she got off at and snapped a picture from the side. You can’t leave a child like this if someone is being abused. You need to get the authorities involved. All I knew was the police number so my room mates helped me to file the report and even went down to check on the boy. He was literally bleeding. How can they do that to a child … disgusting. Imagine being beaten up like that in public
- I think what you need to do is try to talk to other neighbours and let them know about this. Long ago in my area, same case as yours, I told other neighbours and all of us kept watching and gather proofs over weeks. We sent to the authorities and the abusive mother got arrested. The kid returned to his good father. So yeah, try to find out if any neighbours have the same concern.
- At the very least: Call the police. Having the police show up may help the parents realise that the situation they have at home is not normal. At the very least, they’ll know that their neighbours can hear what’s going on really well. It may not help at all, of course. But there’s at least a chance that it jolts them into having some awareness.