Video shows children at a day care with boxing gloves, punching each other in an alleged fight club. Photo / ABC
Video shows children at a day care with boxing gloves, punching each other in an alleged fight club. Photo / ABC
A mother is suing a daycare centre after footage captured teachers encouraging preschool children to fight.
Nicole Merseal has accused the teachers of organising a fight-club inside a Missouri daycare in 2016.
The mother says her then 4-year-old son was encouraged to fight another child, claiming teachers Mickala Guliford andTena Dailey permitted another child to "intimidate and harm" her son.
Speaking to ABC news, Merseal said her son was "afraid" and couldn't understand why his friends wanted to "beat him up".
"My son was very afraid," Merseal told ABC News. "He didn't understand why his best friends beat him up. These are children that he's been around for a couple years. He described them as his best friends. He just doesn't understand why they punched him in the face. ... I don't know any parent that could watch their children go through this and not be upset."
The fearful mother also claims her two older sons witnessed the event, taking footage of the incident before sending it back to their mum.
Video shows children at a day care with boxing gloves, punching each other in an alleged fight club. Photo / ABC
"[They] were watching their little brother get beat up," she said. "They knew it was wrong."
"When I got the video, I was just in complete shock. I immediately left work," she said. "I also called the daycare immediately and told them to go stop the fighting."
According to her sons, the teachers didn't attempt to stop the fighting [that occurred in December 2016].
In documents released by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, Jennifer Scott, the director of the centre, said that Guliford had told her that the children "were bored" and that "we ran out of things to do", according to the state's documents.
Documents stated that two unidentified children were interviewed and they said the teachers had allowed them to play with "Hulk Hands," large, green gloves, and fight each other.
"It happened a lot of times," one unidentified child said, according to the report.
The teacher admitted to making the kids fight.
"I meant for the fighting with the Hulk Hands to be a stress release exercise."
"It did not last more than three or four minutes. ... No children got hurt but it was still a bad judgment call on my part," she said.
