A mother in HCM City has denounced a local kindergarten teacher for using sleeping pills on her two-year-old child.

 Nu Cuoi Kindergarten

The mother, from District 6, said that her child would often come home from school with a lack of appetite and insomnia at home. When she asked teachers at the school, Nu Cuoi Kindergarten (Smile Kindergarten), in Binh Tan District, about this they reassured her that everything was fine at school.

"I used to make surprise visits to the school and always found my son deeply asleep. That seemed unusual to me, so I decided to take off a day of work to check everything out," the mother said.

She and a relative watched the activities in the school from the outside on the day of March 19. The mother said that she saw a teacher mix medicine into her child's milk bottle. She said she ran into the room as the teacher was about to give the bottle. The teacher explained in a clip that the mother and the relative recorded that the substance she added to the milk was cough medicine.

"I was so horrified that I immediately took my son out of the class and forgot to take a look at the pill bottle, but by his lackadaisical behavior, I'm convinced that it must have been some sort of sedative," the mother said.

 Headmistress explains teacher's behaviour

Nguyen Thi Ngoc Yen, headmistress of the school, admitted that the teacher had added medicine to the milk, but claimed it was the cough medicine Pectol.

"The teacher who gave the medicine is also trained to deal with medical and food hygiene issues. She said that the child had a cough and was only treating the symptoms. Still, this is a serious issue and the school has reprimanded the teacher," Yen said.

Kindergarten teachers are not allowed to administer medicine without prescriptions or agreement from families. The mother claimed that she saw her child deep asleep at during times which were not regular nap times.