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ANGRY with his two children for lying to him, he chased them out of the flat.
With no one else to turn to, the 13-year-old girl and six-year-old boy slept outside their friend's flat in a nearby block.
It wasn't the first time, according to their friend's mother.
Sometime last year, there was another occasion when their father hadn't allowed them to go home.
"So they showered and slept at my place," said the 51-year-old housewife.
This time round, the children weren't so lucky and had to spend the night in the common corridor outside their friend's flat.
Their friend's father was uncomfortable with the idea of taking them in.
The girl said: "It was very cold and uncomfortable, so I used my legs as a pillow for my brother."
She added that sometime that night, some of her friend's neighbours walked by and asked her why they were there.
When they heard that she had not been allowed to go home, they wanted to call the police, she said.
"But I begged them not to, because I did not want to get daddy into trouble," she said. They were locked out of their home on Feb 6 and were allowed home only the next evening.
The New Paper understands that both children are not in school.
The parents of some of the children's friends in the neighbourhood have expressed concern at the father's disciplinary methods.
The 49-year-old man, a Singaporean who conducts industrial safety courses, lives with his children and his mother in a four-room flat in Jurong.
His wife, the children's mother, is an Indonesian and lives in Batam.
When we visited the family last Wednesday, the father, who was shirtless and looked weary, came to the door. The children were home, and the family had just finished dinner.
The flat was sparsely furnished and the family's dinner was made up of leftovers from their lunch. The father confirmed the incident the previous Sunday.
That day, he said, his children had asked to go out in the morning to buy bread.
He said irritably in Mandarin: "I said okay. But I should have known - they were using it as an excuse to go out and play."
It would have taken the children only about 15 minutes to get the bread as the convenience store was nearby.
But the children, who left home at 10am, returned only around 1pm.
They had gone to their friend's home nearby to play after buying bread.
When they got home, they lied to him, said the father.
The girl told The New Paper: "I was afraid daddy would get mad at me.
"So I told him two lies. I said there was a long queue at the shop, and that they didn't have the usual bread we eat, so I had to go to another shop to buy it."
Her father said he saw through their lies and flew into a rage.
"Lies, lies, lies. They're always lying to me about things. I'm sick of it," he fumed.
His daughter said she lies because she longs to go out. The siblings do nothing but watch television and play games by themselves all day long.
After their father found out about their lies, he said he told them to leave the flat.
He also forbade his 80-year-old mother to let them back in.
So with the loaf of bread in hand, the siblings went back to their friend's flat to play. The friend, a 13-year-old girl, lives a few blocks away.
They have been friends since 2009 - after the siblings, who were born in Batam, came to Singapore.
At 8pm that day, the children were playing at the neighbourhood playground when they saw their father, holding two packets of Vitagen, walk towards them.
The girl said: "I thought he was going to beat me. Instead, he went on his knees, gave me the Vitagen and begged me to swear not to go home."
She did so, but not before bursting into tears, she said.
When asked why he told his children not to return home, the father muttered repeatedly: "I'm tired, so tired. Taking care of them is so difficult. Do you want them? Take them. I can't do it."
That night, the siblings slept along the common corridor outside a friend's flat.
The next morning, they wandered around Jurong Point, where the girl used her ez-link card to buy food from a 7-Eleven store for them to share.
Tired and hungry, they finally made their way home that night.
The girl said her father was silent as they approached the door, and let them in.
Their father revealed that besides the siblings' disobedience, he was also frustrated he could not put them in school here.
He had brought his children, both of whom are Indonesians, over from Batam in the hope of getting them to study here, but he has so far failed to.
He said his daughter, who studied until Primary 4 in Batam, had missed the registration for primary school here last year, and then failed the Primary 3 entrance test last month.
As for his son, he said he finally found the boy a kindergarten after many unsuccessful attempts. But he could not get his son a student pass from the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA), he said.
Already frustrated about his children's school problems, he said their frequent lying made things worse.
Counsellors told The New Paper that these frustrations should not be ignored and that the family should seek help.
When we were at their home on Wednesday, the man asked his daughter: "Do you promise not to lie? Do you promise to tell me the truth if you want to go out?"
She then nodded and apologised to him. She also added: "I know you're trying your best to help us go to school, daddy. I want to go to school and be clever and have a lot of friends."
But the father, his eyes red, said with a sigh: "I'm not a good father. I smoke, drink, and I can't send my children to school."
When contacted, the ICA spokesman said they do not discuss individual cases in public. But they confirmed they are looking into this matter.
WAS the father's way of disciplining his children justified?
While they do not approve of the method, counsellors told The New Paper that they could understand why the father did so.
Said Dr Augustine Tan, a counsellor in private practice: "He probably acted the way he did because of his sense of helplessness and frustration."
Senior counsellor Harry Low agreed, adding that the father was probably "at his wits' end".
"Plus, his children were outside, and he did not know what was happening with them," he said.
Dr John Tan, executive director of Children At Risk Empowerment Association, too, said he understood the father's anger at his children.
But he added: "Parents should never discipline or lash out in anger. If the child lied, the parents should try to understand why the lying took place."
He feels that the father's actions could lead to negative reactions such as fear in the child, or passive obedience without understanding.
The father also needs support, he added.
"We tend to ignore the adults, especially the men, but they need help too," he noted.
Having previously worked at a Family Service Centre (FSC) for about seven years, Mr Low suggested that the father go to a nearby FSC to seek help. There, he can receive training in parenting skills.
The children, too, can attend workshops and programmes there, he added.
"FSCs are like resource centres. Even if they don't have what you want, they can point you where you can find what you want," he said.
Dr Augustine Tan also feels that intervention from social service providers would help the family navigate "the system", as they could be referred to relevant agencies.
He said the children need to go to school.
"They have to have a proper environment for them to develop age-appropriate social and emotional skills," he explained.
Dr John Tan agreed: "The children cannot continue this way.
They need to go to school to learn not just curriculum, but also to respect authority."
This article was first published in The New Paper.
