I'm trying to heal my son, says 'Eagle Dad'

He Liesheng, a 44-year-old father and businessman in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, aroused heated online debate over what some people say are inhumane child-rearing tactics that he uses on his four-year-old son, He Yide , who he forced to run half-naked in the snow during a holiday in New York in February. A video clip of the incident went viral online and the man was dubbed 'Eagle Dad', as his methods were compared to an eagle teaching its young - by pushing them off a clifftop to teach them to fly.

Your microblog says your four-year-old boy has already started Primary One. Which school does he go to? And did he say anything about school in his first days?

The Yushuiwan International School [in Nanjing]. He attends classes as an observer instead of being officially admitted, because the country's regulations prohibit [children at this age from starting primary education]. He's doing well at school. I asked him the other day whether he likes kindergarten or primary school - he said he likes the latter. But children always change their minds. When I asked the same question again, he said he likes kindergarten. I asked why, and he said there are a lot of toys at the kindergarten.

Did you start using extreme methods, as shown in the controversial video clip, to train him when he was very little? And what was your intention?

Yes. But I'd rather call them 'healing training' rather than extreme methods. He was born prematurely and weighed only 1.9kg. The doctor was too nice to hurt his mother's feelings and wrote 2.1kg, but I saw [the scale] very clearly. These two numbers sounded like a big difference. He had very serious problems - a left brain haemorrhage, haemangioma, hydrocephalus, he was low in cerebroprotein and had pneumonia and jaundice. When he left hospital, his hydrocephalus and pneumonia were cured, but the doctor simply wrote 'in better condition' for the other illnesses. He said we should be prepared that the child might have cerebral palsy or a mental retardation.

Did you seek medical consultation before you used your own methods to train the boy?