8-year-old Chinese boy swallows coin to get out of doing homework

Homework is the bane of every student's life. In fact, one boy from China hated it so much, his misguided attempt to avoid it landed him in hospital.

The eight-year-old from Hunan was rushed to hospital on Dec 2 after he swallowed a coin to get out of doing his homework, said media reports.

The boy, who remains unnamed, had started on his homework after dinner but still hadn't completed it by 11pm.

"I heard lots of kids playing happily downstairs. I wanted to play with them but my mother said I had to do my homework first," the boy reportedly said.

Desperate to find a way out of completing his assignments, the boy found a one yuan coin (S$0.19) in a drawer and swallowed it.

He then told his parents what he had done, thinking that it would absolve him of his homework duties.

Alarmed, his parents immediately took him to the hospital where a gastroscopy and computed tomography (CT) scan showed that the coin had entered his stomach.

The coin was extracted the next morning using an endoscopic snare while the boy was under anaesthesia, his doctor, Shen Yueming, told reporters.

While the boy's aversion to schoolwork may seem a little extreme, he's not alone.

Other parents in China have previously expressed their frustration with their child's overly challenging assignments.

Just last month, a mum suffered a heart attack from the stress of explaining a math problem to her son.

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kimberlylim@asiaone.com