Parents beware of the slap game, what happened to this school boy should not happen to your kids

What has the world come to? While the dust on the deadly Blue Whale game has barely settled and a new game has come to haunt us. Though it has nothing to do with suicides, it is equally dangerous as it could harm your child.

A video has now gone viral on social media that shows a boy slapping his classmate across the cheek in a school in Noida. While the boy is seen slapping his classmate, other classmates are seen giggling at this juvenile game.

The video shows how the boy takes perfect aim before slapping the classmate hard across the face and in this process also damaged the eardrum. The culprit, if we may call him so, was suspended for a month while the ones watching were suspended for two weeks. However, the school urged the parents not to file a Police complaint. 

On looking at this video, which was made for Snapchat, Pathways school has simply called it an 'unfortunate incident'. Now, it should be noted that this wasn't some kind of bullying, but the peer pressure to be famous on the Internet. The slapping was consensual and the freaky new game dubbed 'slap bet' is something a few students have been engaged in, the school explained.  

The slap bet game is sort of a wager which means when you win something, you get the opportunity to slap the other person hard. This would also mean the boy isn’t completely blamed as the slap was consensual. However, the parents of the boy have refuted the claim and said that he was bullied.

The parents have revealed that he has been in distress and stopped eating, and 25 percent of his eardrum is damaged due to a hole. 

According to Hindustan Times report, the father of the victim wrote a letter to school principal Sunanda Sandheer that reads:

“We are writing you this email in respect to the incident that took place with my son (name withheld), within the school premises and within the normal school timings, on 4.09. 2017 around 14:00 hours. The incident has been recorded on video where it can be clearly seen that few students of the school have surrounded my son, and one of them is recording the whole incident on his phone for the purpose of “snapchat story”. It can be further seen that our son is under great deal of stress and fear and is helpless for so many students have surrounded him (sic)" 

The boys were asked to publicly apologise to the victim and his parents. The video is now viral on WhatsApp and Facebook, 

Children are known to engage in such games due to peer pressure or curiosity. There is the need for awareness among children and parents about any game that leads to self damage. And, awareness will come only with good communication between parents and children as well as school authorities and children, which would also mean talking about other lifestyle issues. Things like posting something cool on social media, harming self, cyber bullying and even bullying in should be open for discussion. 

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