Speaking to FMT, Nagayam said children nowadays were maturing at a “fantastic rate” and parents needed to take this into account. He said it was this quick maturing process that made possible the recent case of a runaway girl faking an abduction.

He was commenting on the case of 14-year-old Nur Amirah Atirah Abdul Majid, who ran off from home to be with her boyfriend.

“A lot of people are too traditional in their parenting outlook,” he said. “Though there are moral teachers talking about being good and such, there’s nothing to teach us to cope with modern life and its challenges.”

He added that parents as well as authorities who deal with children needed to find ways to become more approachable and to close the generation gap.

He also suggested the setting up of support groups for parents with children who are hard to control.

“In the UK, there are programmes where parents get together and discuss how to deal with their children who have gone beyond control. These programmes have achieved a 35% success rate as the parents learn different methods of how to help their children.”

Nagayam said it was likely that Amirah was the kind of girl who could connect only with her peers because of the generational gap between her and her elders.

“The majority of girls who go missing are between the ages of 14 to 16 and are mainly influenced by their boyfriends,” he said. “People have to understand that the culture these days is different.”

He said Malaysian adults were often harsh on children like Amirah, choosing to pity their parents instead of trying to get to the root of the problem.

“Do you think dealing with this girl in a harsh manner is going to change her? You can punish her but deep down she isn’t going to change,” he said.

“The words pain, threat, discipline, authority are bad words to children who are beyond parental control.”