"Eagle Dad"

In the video, the little boy runs towards his father, who is filming him, in thick snow with only his shoes and underpants on, at times crying and pleading with his dad to take him in his arms.

In a flagrant instance of child abuse, a visiting Chinese family took a video of their four-year-old son running through a snowy street in New York City. Nothing unusual about a child running along a snowy street, other than that this child was wearing sneakers and underpants, nothing else. Effectively unclothed, inadequately shod and visibly miserable. The father of the child insisted that he must run along the street in the snow.

The mother of the little boy, also present, was heard to snicker at her child's dilemma, and take turns urging the little boy to do as his father wished him to. Which included rolling in the snow, which instruction the child, reluctantly, also obeyed. The father, He Liesheng, a businessman who operates of all things a bed linen company in the city of Nanjing, had no compunction whatever about ordering his son to obey him.

It would make a man of him. He stated as much. "He agreed to go out to run in the snow naked or else it wouldn't be possible for me to take his clothes off", reasoned Mr. He. This man whose business produces items of comfort, would give none whatever to his son. The little boy begged for some symptom of love from the harshly demanding father. He wanted to be held, to be hugged, but neither of his parents was moved by his pleading.

The video shows the little boy running toward his father, pleading, crying for his father to pick him up and hold him. This man has been named the "Eagle Dad". His concern for his son is so great that he has embarked on this implacably stern method of raising the boy to ensure that he will not be frail nor succumb to failure of any kind.

"I also give him cold ice cream on cold winter days to train his stomach to get used to the cold. He rarely has a cold or fever." No one, I take it, suggested to the father that he fully mentor his son by himself disrobing and running alongside him in underwear in the winter cold. That kind of partnering in misery might have convinced the child that he was not being singled out for dire punishment.

Presumably, the father had no interest in causing discomfort and pain to himself, only his son. Reasoning perhaps, that he had himself already achieved perfection, and had no need of improvement. His focus was entirely on advancing his son's ability to surmount any obstacles that life might throw his way. The greatest obstacle this child will ever face is evident enough; to survive his father's love.

If He Liesheng lived in Canada this dreadful abuse would never be countenanced. The child would be taken into the care of child welfare authorities. The parents would be charged with child abuse, with failing to provide the necessities of life to a dependent child. The child would be horribly unhappy no doubt, to be removed from the loving bosom of his family.

But he would be rescued from that constant state of abuse.