There is no perfect age for parents to start potty training their children.
Most children can use the bathroom by themselves by age five.
But the police were stunned when they saw how this Florida mother punished her child for defecating on himself.
New parents often view potty training as a complicated and difficult undertaking.
Some parents start pre-potty training when their child is 10 months old while others wait anywhere up to 32 months before they begin.
But no matter when the parents start, 98% of children are fully capable of using the bathroom by themselves by age four.
More than 80% of children experience some type of setback during their potty training
The setbacks can be frustrating, which is why potty training requires extra patience from parents.
But potty training setbacks were too much for one Florida mother to manage.
On May 11, a Florida Department of Children and Families investigator responded to a tip on the state’s child abuse hotline about a situation in Broward County, Florida.
Once on the scene, 39-year-old Tania Contreras allowed the investigator to look at the contents of her cellphone.
And the investigator was sickened by what they saw.
The phone contained a video of Contreras’ young son “with feces on his face, chest, and arms” while standing naked in the shower.
Contreras admitted that she “became enraged at her son sitting in his own feces for most of the day without telling her.”
She wanted him to “learn not to defecate on himself again.”
“Tania stated she recorded herself smearing feces all over her son, as a form of punishment so he would learn to not defecate on himself again,” the police report read. “The offender admitted continuously that she knew smearing feces all over her son’s body was excessive and advised she overdid it after she became frustrated with her son.”
Aside from smearing him in feces, Contreras also physically abused the child on multiple occasions.
She told investigators about one incident where she beat the child with a belt after he got out of the car before her and ran to the door of the grocery store.
She also admitted to hitting him on the head with a cellphone so hard that it broke the screen.
Contreras is from Venezuela and told investigators that this was how she was raised.
“The offender advised she was punished harshly as a child, and would show up to school with black eyes,” the report said. “The offender advised physical punishment is normal in her home country of Venezuela.”
But Florida is not Venezuela.
And police arrested Contreras, and she is currently locked up on an immigration hold.
DeSantis Daily will keep you up-to-date on any new developments in this ongoing story.
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Author: rg_jh
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