All parents have their own ways of keeping their kids in check – by lumbering them with chores or taking away screen time, to name but two examples.
But one mother’s attempt to discipline her daughter has been met with horror online after she posted a recording of the punishment to TikTok.
In the clip, the mum – who goes by the username Bosselina – can be seen snipping off her child’s braids close to the scalp, as she tells her: “You thought you were disobeying me today and I was not coming to cut this hair off.
“You’re sadly mistaken because you thought being pretty was so much better than being educated or listening to your mum, right?”
Understandably, the video was met with a stream of concerned comments, prompting Bosselina to post a follow-up alongside her daughter.
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“Do you feel like this form of discipline was a lot better than any other form of discipline, like physical abuse, that I could have used?” she asked.
“Yeah,” the girl replied quietly.
That, too, troubled viewers, with many suggesting she had bullied her daughter into publicly stating everything was fine when it wasn’t.
@alyssaphobium @3ella_3osselina
And so Bosselina, who removed the offending clips from her page, addressed the outcry in a third video.
In it, she filmed her daughter, beaming, as she tried on a glossy new wig while the pair discussed the issue.
“Is TikTok OK?” Bosselina asked, laughing: “They think you’re some type of like victim or something,” to which the girl interjected: “I’m not”.
Her mum continued: “They don’t understand that it’s really this easy to put a wig on.”
“It’s so pretty,” her daughter smiled, stroking the shoulder-length hairpiece.
Bosselina's daughter supported her mother in the follow-up clip@3ella_3osselina/TikTok
“You learnt your lesson, like, the lesson was learnt, no?” Bosselina went on, clarifying: “I warned you even before I put it on TikTok that if you continued with this behaviour – because you like the app so much – that I’m gonna cut your hair off, record it and post it.
“I told you this from three months ago, and I’ve been telling you every week, right?
“So this didn’t come as a real shock to you, you were just shocked that I actually, finally did it, right?”
Throughout, her daughter nodded, looking calm, composed and smiling.
She then confirmed that she “wasn’t hurt”.“What the hell’s wrong with these people,” her mother continued, as the pair laughed together.
Putting her arm around the girl, she stressed: “You guys, this is my baby. This is me right here. So yes, she had to learn a hard lesson today because being pretty is not s**t, education comes first.
"Because you can be pretty all you want in life, nobody is going to sit here and love you just because you’re pretty and want to be with you just because you’re pretty, no. You need education.”
Her lecture went on: “I want her to graduate college, I want her to become something and be something. I own my own business, and this kid is going to have to be able to take part of that business – you can’t do that with no education.
“So what I’m doing to, and for, my child is [...] instilling strength into my child. My child is not a victim, she does not have a victim mentality [...] my kid is good.”
She wrapped her monologue up by saying that, in fact, part of the problem was that she spoilt her kid “so much,” and that she’d previously taken away shoes, clothes and other treats in a bid to teach her a lesson. But from now on, the punishments would be “real”.
She ended by kissing her daughter, who “mwahed” back, telling her: “I love you kid.”
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