Former Miss Hong Kong winner Grace Chan married TVB actor Kevin Cheng in 2018. The couple have three sons – Rafael, Yannick, and Carlos. However, recently, a moviegoer took to social media to recount an experience while watching Spider-Man: Brand New Day at a cinema, claiming three children were disruptively loud throughout the screening and the person was surprised to discover that the mom was Grace Chan, who allegedly did nothing. Coincidentally, Grace Chan had posted a now-deleted Instagram Story showing she had taken her sons to the movie. The incident sparked criticism online, with netizens accusing the 35-year-old actress and KOL of failing to control her children. One boy is said to have kicked the back of a woman’s seat while Grace apologized. Others disputed the allegations and said things only escalated when the woman allegedly poured cream onto Grace’s son’s head by the end of the film.
Grace Chan addressed the issue for the first time when attending a cooking show. She admitted that, as a mother, she is responsible for her children’s behavior. “Perhaps there are some habits we have with our children that we don’t always notice. In public places, the volume of their voices may be considered noise to others. Especially during a movie, children can get excited and react loudly. If their behavior disturbed other people, I sincerely want to say sorry.” She added that while such reactions may seem normal from a parent’s perspective, that does not invalidate how others felt. She also clarified that no one approached her to complain during the screening.
Grace Chan confirmed that the “cream incident” did happen and her second son, age 6, was frightened after having cream poured on him. The family has since reported the matter to law enforcement, so she said she is unable to disclose further details while the case is being handled. Hong Kong media reports that the case has been classified as common assault.
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HL
In my Country, there are screening times for family and kids. You can imagine how lively the cinema are… but such relaxed and lively behavious are expected. I used to bring my kids to those family screening hours.
Coralie
no matter what, you don’t assault others, especially not 6 year olds. what on earth is that woman thinking. if they have a problem, talk to the parents. geez.
grace is giving them too much grace. but i understand that sticking up for them online is just giving ammunition to these ppl.
Jack
No, you do assault others (even kids) if its in self protection.
I’m not necessarily saying this is the perfect example of when to do so; but 6 year old children know how to use guns (its easy demonstrated in cartoons all over the world).
There was a hidden camera study with 2 and 3 year olds about gun control conversations and how effective they are. In the study a police officer goes to the children’s daycare room and tells them about how if they see a gun they should never pick it up and instead leave the room and tell an adult what they’ve seen. The police officer leaves the daycare and then the next day an empty unfirable gun is planted into the camera watched playarea. Not a single child went and left the room to get an adult when the gun was discovered. Most picked it up and immediately started pointing it at fellow toddlers or looked down the barrel while pulling the trigger. More than half pointed it at the teacher/daycare provider when she went back into the room while pulling the trigger.
Also the boy here got sticky, not slapped or spanked. A shower, a snack and a cuddle with hopefully a conversation as to WHY he had a drink poured on him would have been the best way to handle this after the fact. Plus an appology to the victim with paying her the cost of the ticket. Not like Grace did which was file a police report in overreaction to what is basically her family’s fault in the first place. When someone points out that your kids are disruptive at a public place where its expected that there’s reasonable quiet stationary behavior, you quiet your children or take them out of the theater so you don’t bother others.
Also, Grace means polite, kind behavior with thoughtfulness towards others. Grace Chan does not live up to her name’s meaning.
Wendy
I looked up more about the situation on the internet and there’s some information missing from this article. The woman who threw her drink on the kid; she apparently was sitting in front of the child and the boy kicked her theater chair the whole movie while the other two children were not reacting to the movie as much as just talking to each other loudly (so they could hear each other over the movie). The woman multiple times asked the children to stop and to speak quieter and instead the children got rude and worse. She asked the father (Kevin Chan) and mother (Miss Hong Kong winner Grace Chan) to control them multiple times and both parents ignored her pleas. The woman suffered popcorn thrown at her by the children and mocking throughout the movie making her have a miserable experience when she’d saved up to buy the Spiderman movie ticket. In my opinion she felt like since she’d had a terrible time why should the child tormenting her go unpunished? Their behavior pushed her to this impulsive emotional response.
If you search Kevin Chan and the keywords “rude child” you’ll find that this family has made news multiple times for their children’s beastly behavior. Apparently both the father and mother don’t discipline or educate their children on public behavior. The father was quoted as stating that he wants the kids to ‘be natural and unconstrained.’ And the mother refuses to take well meaning criticisms of their pubic behavior. There’s footage of this same boy ripping a poster of an idol out of a person hands to throw on the ground and stomp on it. He did that at four and the father just said the boy doesn’t listen to him because its the boy’s nature. Frankly this family is rude, arrogant and vindictive. Only they can light fires. If the upper beam isn’t correct the lower beam won’t be either. Finally, Grace Chan actually hasn’t really appologized meanfully for what she acknowledges her child did do; instead she is twisting the situation to make it seem that the victim is unreasonable for being upset by her boys ‘just being boys’.
Kai
In 10 or 15 years’ time, these kids might make headlines again as drugs users, criminals, sex abusers, involved in organised crimes etc. They are most probably already bullies in school. By that time, even if the parents are sorry they did not discipline their kids well at this stage, it will be too late.
XZF
@Wedny
if these statements are true about their children – these parents seriously need to seat their kids down and teach them about right and wrong behavior. How to behave in public and respect others. If they don’t want to have three monsters in their house later on.
Lisa
Grace obviously doesn’t feel that bad since she filed a police report. I agree that we should not resort to that behavior against a 6-year-old child. But I can see how any normal person would love their temper if they had their chair kicked throughout the entire movie. Honestly, if your child cannot behave in public, just wait until the movie is out for home viewing. It’s a public space, other people are using it too. I’m usually a proponent of sharing spaces with children like babies on planes, but these ones sound entitled.
Lisa
**lose their temper
Una
These are not babies anymore. The 2nd son is already 6 years old, already schooling. I am generally quite accepting of toddlers’ behavior, but by the time they are 3 or 4 years old, they already know how to reason and analyse and learning self-control. These are self-entitled, spoilt brats without a doubt. And their parents make them so. The mum probably would be that mum that demands a school teacher resign because she reprimanded her son for not completing his homework.
wedowhatwewant
Calling the children drug abusers, criminals and sex abusers
Making excuses for the adult’s “impulsive emotional reaction”
Feeling entitled to “punish” because “they made me miserable”
Rude, arrogant and vindictive is correct
If its a free for all world, an eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth
Be prepared for retaliation anytime from anyone
Because everybody is right and nobody can be unhappy
Coralie
some kids really are difficult to control, especially when there are multiples of them and esp boys. my kid would never misbehave in public, but I won’t give myself credit for that. sometimes it’s nurture and sometimes it’s nature.
i only have one child and i pay her a lot of attention at home. she throws temper tantrums and cries and acts out in private a lot, but knows public propriety or doesn’t like to be embarrassed in public, so she would never do the same thing outside.
whereas other kids are not embarrassed by their behavior or maybe don’t get enough attention at home, so they will act out in public. like my nephew would run up to any stranger to say hi, because he likes the attention. while my kiddo gave everyone death stares when she was younger, because she didn’t feel safe with anyone else and would keep to herself.
someone looking at this from the outside might think my daughter is a very well behaved kid and for the most part, she is. but it’s not because i taught her to be that way. it’s her nature. i would actually like it if she misbehaves more in public, because it shows she’s not afraid or anxious around other people or her environment. ofc i wouldn’t like her “acting out,” but it’s a controllable behavior and we can talk about it together, versus her never acting out and then us never addressing her discomfort because she isn’t aware she’s suppressing herself.
in any case, a 6 year old is a child who doesn’t have all their reasoning faculties built yet. whereas an adult has all their brains developed (i hope). how they’re taught at home doesn’t always translate to how they act in public. it’s not always the parent’s fault – I’m not a parent apologist, but even serial killers can have great parents and still turn out badly. whereas an adult in this case is deliberately holding a grudge against a child. it feels vindictive, and vicious. i would never teach children a lesson this way. talk to management at the theatre or to the parents themselves after the movie, not attack a kid.
Jack
But the parents are already teaching the children that the kids can ignore an adult reasonably asking them to quiet down and stop kicking seats?
A 6 year old is young but they should already be able to recognize that when someone is telling them that their behavior is disruptive the kids should understand that they are harming someone else. Yet these did not and its because the Chan parents are teaching their children to ignore the harm they bring to others; disrespect of other’s suffering is okay from their entitled parents’ view and social demeanor.
Remember, they misbehaved throughout the whole movie and the victim multiple times asked the children to stop, the victim also asked their parents to intervene to stop the behavior and the parents refused to. The victim didn’t want to ‘supress’ herself anymore after enduring hours of phsyical and verbal assault and acted out impulsively, basically teaching that rudeness begets rudeness.
There are consequences for harming others; she is teaching them the lesson that their own parents will not.
I understand the woman’s frustrated response. She was harassed for hours by children and the children’s parents amplified the hurt by disregarding her reasonable requests, likely making her feel emotionally dismissed and demeaned. Remember she paid money for that ticket believing she was going to have a great time at the theater and instead met this terrible experience which could have been entirely avoided had the Chan family behaved like descent people.
I don’t know if you’ve ever had your chair kicked but it feels like a physical assault because you are sitting (a vulnerable position) and your back is exposed. The vibration goes throughout your whole body and you can’t relax or feel safe. Plus other theater goers in that showing complained that the Chan’s kids were loudly conversing about topics not related to the movie throughout the movie, so she likely felt like her ears were hurting too.
Children are naturely cruel because they haven’t learned empathy or experience the pain that they are causing to others, that’s why so many torment bugs and each other until they themselves get hurt and realize that the behavior they did to others is painful.
The boy got splashed with a drink and was probably sticky and smelled like a dessert on the way home. He wasn’t slapped, he didn’t get kicked back and wasn’t screamed at like he’d done to the victim and his injury was only to his heart and his parents’ entitled pride. He’s lucky; in America a man was shot to death at a movie theater for throwing popcorn at another customer. The only reason we know about this is from the multiple upset theater goers and from Mrs. Chan filing a police report because she wants to control others through punishment but not her own kids.
Coralie
it’s self defense to what degree? someone insults you with words and you retaliate with a punch? that’s lawless behavior, even if it seems morally fair.
i agree that IF someone had complained to grace and her entourage or saw that her child was being disrespectful/disruptive, it is absolutely her duty to discipline the kids. but again, there are ways to go about it. the way this was done was absolutely asinine.
if this was on an airplane, you talk to the people involved or you flag an airline attendant. you don’t go splashing your drink behind you. no matter how you slice it, the woman overreacted. she went from being a victim (which she was), to being a criminal now. was it worth it?
Lisa
I agree with you that two wrongs don’t make a right. The adult should behave better for the most part. But I don’t necessarily agree with assuming they’re vindictive and vicious or holding a grudge. You have no idea what the person was going through. Perhaps they are already dealing with a lot of stress at work or home. Perhaps the kids were relentless and they did try to ask politely multiple times throughout the movie. Perhaps they managed to keep their cool for the first hour and just couldn’t hold it together anymore by the end of the movie. None of us are perfect and sometimes make bad decisions. However, a respectful parent should’ve taken their child out of the theatre if they can’t get them to behave and not continue to let them bother other people watching the movie. When my son gets unruly in a restaurant, either I or my husband would take him outside until he calmed down. I understand the child might not be able to control his behavior. While I don’t condone the behavior, I even understand how the other stranger lost their cool. What I totally don’t understand is the parent’s lack of respect for other people in a public space.
Coralie
it kind of goes both ways. if the kids can’t be controlled, don’t take them out. but if the *adult* can’t be controlled, maybe they shouldn’t go out, either?
the difference here is that this is an adult vs a child. like you know they ask if you’ll bite a dog back if they bit you? i understand the adult’s feelings here. she’s frustrated. but still, this is a child. talk to the adults, take it out on them