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Apparently the parents are getting some support in Japan. "Raising kids is hard" seemed to be the collective sigh heard around social media, TV talk shows, and
by abhi3 10y ago
Apparently the parents are getting some support in Japan.
"Raising kids is hard" seemed to be the collective sigh heard around social media, TV talk shows, andproverbial water coolers.
One famous morning talk show host, Tomoaki Ogura, sympathised with the parents on Monday, onhis Fuji TV show "Tokudane!". Mr Ogura said: "To say 'If you're so bad, we can't take you along, just stay here' is a valid way of scolding a child."
Many recalled how they too were shut out of their homes as children, left throwing a tantrum on the toy shop floor, or shut in a dark closet.
A well-known literary critic, Yumi Toyozaki, tweeted on Tuesday: "I was a restless, rambunctious, cantankerous child, so I feel very much for the father who left his child in the woods for a bit in order to discipline him. I hope people stop condemning him."
The incident has had many sharing childhood memories of how parents pretended to leave them or their siblings for refusing to listen.
The lost boy and Japan’s parenting debate - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-36441875 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-36441875
- cardamomo 10y agoThank you for adding some cultural context!
- abraae 10y agoI feel for the parents too. They were just digging deep into their bag of parenting tricks to try and get little Yamato to stop throwing stone at people and cars (though the presence of bears in the woods made their strategy a little ill-advised). But mainly I feel sorry for them for the monster they may have created now. Yamato charted his own course. He didn't just sit there sobbing and chastened. Instead he hiked for miles, demonstrated incredible self-sufficiency, survived against the odds and became a national hero and treasure, while his parents have been vilified. He will be the one putting his parents out of the car from now on. And he's only 7, so they have many years more to come. He's probably filling his pockets with stones right now.
- illumin8 10y agoThis is a pretty clear cut case of negligence. Leaving your child unattended in the woods where brown bears are known to be located is negligence, plain and simple. The fact that it is common in asian cultures to discipline children in horrible ways, like locking them in dark closets, or corporal punishment, doesn't excuse the parents from these horrible crimes.
- jcoffland 10y agoNonsense. There would be no debate if this was a "clear cut case." The child had to have actively avoided being found for this to happen.