Kuala Lumpur, Sep 18 (ANI): A horny orang minyak, which is supposed to be a ghost in Malay culture, is said to be terrorising about 300 families in Sungai Petani, picking homes where there are young women.
According to Kosmo!, Nurshahirah, 17, revealed that she was awakened at 5.40am on September 14 after she felt a warm sensation on her left ear, and when she opened her eyes she saw an apparition with curly hair and thick moustache standing by her bed.
“I was even more shocked when the ghost took off his kain pelikat and started to fondle himself,” the Star Online quoted her as saying.
Nurshahirah, who lives in Taman Keladi, said she felt powerless to ward off the apparition who started to grope her body, and that it was as though a charm had been placed on her.
In another incident, housewife Fatimah, 42, revealed she heard her two daughters crying out when they were woken up at 5am by dark apparitions that molested them.
Her 15-year-old daughter told her that she had been “violated” by a ghost.
“At first I thought she was talking in her sleep but she insisted that she was molested by a ghost before it moved to the kitchen,” Fatimah said.
She said her 14-year-old, too, cried and ran from the living room, saying a dark apparition had molested her.
“My 14-year-old daughter said she managed to kick the ghost who wore a kain pelikat and black singlet when she felt her body being touched,” she revealed.
“She screamed and the ghost ran out of her room,” she added.
Fatimah said she gave chase with a parang but the apparition disappeared.
She also said the apparition could have placed a charm on her family because none of the neighbours heard her daughters’ screams. (ANI)
Spanking found to have negative effects on low-income toddlers
Washington, September 16 (ANI): Spanking negatively affects the behaviour of toddlers in low-income families, according to a new study.
Published in the journal Child Development, the longitudinal study looked at how low-income parents discipline their young children.
It showed that spanking 1-year-olds leads to more aggressive behaviours and less sophisticated cognitive development in the next two years.
Verbal punishment, however, was not found to be associated with such effects, especially when it was accompanied by emotional support from mothers.
Besides, 1-year-olds’ fussiness predicted spanking and verbal punishment at ages 1, 2, and 3.
The study explored whether mothers’ behaviours lead to problematic behaviour in children, whether children’s challenging behaviours elicit harsher discipline, or both.
It looked at more than 2,500 exclusively low-income White, African American, and Mexican-American mothers and their young children, interviewing and observing them at home when the children were 1, 2, and 3 years old.
All participants’ family incomes were at or below the federal poverty level.
Using their own interpretations of spanking, mothers reported how often anyone in the home had spanked their children in the past week.
The study also looked at how often mothers verbally punished-scolded, yelled, or made negative comments-their children.
It showed that African American children were spanked and verbally punished significantly more than the other children in the study.
The authors speculated that that might be due to cultural factors, such as belief in the importance of children’s respect for elders and in the value of physical discipline to instil that respect.
Moreover, some African American mothers said that in preparing their children for a harsh, physically dangerous, and racially discriminating world, there was little room for error in their childrearing.
The study also shed light on information about the effects of such types of discipline.
“Our findings clearly indicate that spanking affects children’s development,” said Lisa J. Berlin, research scientist at the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University and the study’s lead author.
Specifically, children who were spanked more often at 1 behaved more aggressively when they were 2, and had lower scores on tests measuring thinking skills when they were 3.
Similar findings were made even after taking into consideration such family characteristics as mothers’ race and ethnicity, age, and education; family income and structure; and the children’s gender.
The study also found that children who were more aggressive at age 2, and had lower cognitive development scores at ages 1 and 2, were not spanked more at ages 2 and 3.
“So the mothers’ behaviours look more influential than the children’s,” said Berlin.
Unlike spanking, however, verbal punishment alone didn’t affect either children’s aggression or their cognitive development.
Interestingly, when verbal punishment was accompanied by emotional support from moms, the children did better on the tests of cognitive ability. (ANI)