China's teenagers are becoming increasingly violent towards their parents, the Shanghai Youth Daily reported Monday.
Last Sunday a faint middle-aged woman wearing dark glass walked into the Citizen Advice Centre in Luwan district, and shocked staff when she took her glasses off showing three stitches across the sclera of her badly injured left eye.
The woman's 16-year-old daughter had inflicted the wound in a succession of beatings, the paper said.
"If I ask her to come back earlier, she beats me; I ask her to study, she beats me; and even if ask her to have dinner she beats me," the mother told staff at the center.
Teenage violence hit the headlines earlier this year when a high-school student in south China's Zhejiang province killed his mother after she pressured him to study harder.
Such cases are becoming increasingly common in Shanghai and surrounding areas, the paper said.
Recently, a 14-year-old in the city's Jingan district stabbed his mother with a fruit knife because she would not allow him to play video games.
And, a child in Shanghai's suburbs threw a brick at his father leaving him with five stitches on his forehead because he disliked his father's redecorated lobby, the paper said.
Meanwhile, a 17-year-old student in Hongkou District threw a microwave oven at his parents after the couple refused to give him more pocket money and shouted at his father to shut up when teachers from his school came to investigate, the report added.
Zhang Bingquan, director of the Teenagers Psychology Clinic said he has handled 20 cases of extreme violence towards parents over the last year up from zero five years ago.
Due to the mounting numbers of one-child families, parents are doting on the children allowing them to have their own way, while in other cases a single child is forced to bear the brunt of violent parent's wrath, Zhang told the paper.
Increasing violence in films and television programs has exacerbated the problem, the paper reported.
"Up to 90 percent of teenagers with violent tendencies will become criminals in the future. Psychological treatment is not very effective on them and they fundamentally can not control their behavior," he added -- SHANGHAI (AFP)
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