Zymere Perkins’s mom admits hitting boy, 6, with a belt before her lover allegedly beat him to death with a broomstick

“Maybe I didn’t pick up on the lessons they were giving me. I didn’t cherish it. I didn’t hold onto those lessons they taught me," Perkins said.

“Sometimes I wouldn’t be bothered with him, because I (didn’t) have the energy or because (I was) too tired."

She also admitted to slapping Zymere with a belt because her "hands weren’t healthy" as a result of Lupus.

Sometimes I wouldn’t be bothered with him, because I (didn’t) have the energy or because (I was) too tired.

Geraldine Perkins

Perkins described how they met outside her old apartment building and described Smith as "a father figure" to Zymere.

Smith is on trial for second-degree murder for the brutal death of Zymere in their filthy, maggot-ridden Harlem apartment three years ago.

In the September 2016 slaying of little Zymere, Smith allegedly "beat him with a stick like a piñata," “waterboarded him,” and hung him on the back of a door.

He reportedly became enraged when Zymere accidentally defecated in the living room and tried to hide his accident.

But it wasn't just the alleged physical abuse the little boy reportedly suffered at the hands of his parents.

Prosecutors said Zymere slept in a makeshift bed in the apartment, where flies laid eggs in the fecal matter embedded in the carpet.

Cops released footage of the horrendous conditions Zymere endured in the months leading up to his death.

A tour of the filthy Harlem abode showed mounds of dirty dishes, piles of clothes and mirrors smeared with dirt.

A bucket of mysterious brown liquid almost overflowing from a white plastic bucket is also visible in the shocking footage.

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In what was presumably Zhymere's bedroom, there is a bare green mattress strewn with old clothes, shopping bags and dead bugs.

The tour of the bathroom where the little boy died is particularly disturbing, showing the bath smeared with red stains.

Previously, Assistant District Attorney Kerry O’Connell said "this child had more fractures than he had ribs" during opening arguments.

She said he had been starved and forced to take cold showers before being "waterboarded him in the shower," and bludgeoned with the shower rod.

Waterboarding is a torture a torture technique that simulates drowning by pouring water over the face, making it difficult to breathe.

O'Connell argued that Smith encouraged Perkins, 28, to "emulate" his violence against her son under the guise of discipline and that he began abusing him from the get-go.

She told jurors that Smith controlled Perkins' Lupus medication, as well as her cellphone.

O'Connell added that she had put her partner's "importance" over the welfare of her little boy.

Smith's defense team alleges that Perkins is a "liar" and say there is a lack of evidence against him, however.