Life

Harambe and Yamato made it a bad week for parenting globally

It's one of the toughest jobs in the world and when it goes wrong it can go spectacularly wrong – as it did last week when a rare gorilla lost its life and a seven-year-old spent a week in the wilderness, writes Leona O'Neill

Yamato Tanooka, the seven-year-old Japanese boy left on the side of a forest road by his parents as a punishment
Yamato Tanooka, the seven-year-old Japanese boy left on the side of a forest road by his parents as a punishment Yamato Tanooka, the seven-year-old Japanese boy left on the side of a forest road by his parents as a punishment

LAST week bad parenting was on the global stage. In America we had a child falling into a gorilla enclosure, leading to the animal being shot dead.

And in Japan we had parents leave their child in bear infested woods as a punishment.

In Cincinnati the parents of four-year-old Isiah Gregg were vilified over social media for being neglectful of their child. Isiah fell into the city zoo's gorilla enclosure and was met with a 420lb lowland male gorilla called Harambe who, although he did not attack him, dragged the child through water and, according to experts, displayed some aggressive behaviour. Zoo chiefs decided shooting the gorilla dead was the best course of action to save the child.

Within hours of the footage going viral on social media, petitions and pages were set up calling for justice for the animal, calling on the parents to be prosecuted, for their remaining children to be taken into care.

Here's the thing. Yes, it's awful that a beautiful and endangered animal such as Harambe had to lose his life but unfortunately the life of a child has to be prioritised. And experts the world over have stated that the gorilla would have killed the child, either accidentally or intentionally.

No, I doubt the parents were actually neglectful. Anyone with experience of children knows that they get up to all sorts, in the blink of an eye. Small kids make it their life's work to do stupid stuff. But yes, the zoo needs to seriously look at its security.

Parenting is the craziest job in the world. You can be the best mum one minute, the worst the next. When my oldest son was 18 months old and my middle son eight weeks I remember answering the door to my new neighbour with my toddler in his arms.

While I was feeding the baby, my older son, still in his pyjamas, had climbed up and opened the front door, making a bid for freedom across our garden. I got concerned when I noticed it was too quiet in the house, that I hadn't heard anything being broken in at least 20 seconds. I called him and he didn't answer so I went to look for him when I heard a knock at the door.

I'm sure I made a really great impression on my new neighbour, answering the door with the whole MC Hammer T-shirt with baby puke on one shoulder, a sleeping infant on the other, wearing a 'I haven't slept in two months plus my son has run away from home', deranged expression as he handed me over my missing child.

This all happened in the space of two minutes. Kids do that, it's their thing. Parenting is a lot of things, one of them is looking after a crazed kamikaze-style small person who can, despite how kick-ass you are at parenting, get themselves into all sorts of bother.

Now, if you want an example of level seven bad parenting you need look no further than Japan, where a mum and dad abandoned their seven-year-old son in the woods as a punishment.

Mum and Dad stopped their car on a mountain road because Yamato Tanooka was misbehaving and ordered him out into the bear-infested woods as a punishment. Apparently he had been throwing stones at cars and people. The parents had originally told police the child got lost when they were hiking.

Seven days later Yamato was found after a major search. He had trekked his way across three miles of forest and took shelter in a disused military base.

Speaking to reporters after his son was found alive and well, his father said their behaviour as parents had gone "too far".

“We’ve raised him in a loving family but from now on we’ll do even more to love him and keep a close watch on him as he grows up,” he told journalists. “Our behaviour as parents went too far, and that’s something I’m extremely regretful about. I thought that what I was doing was for his own good, but, yes, I realise now that I went too far.”

Yes, you could say that, Mr Tanooka. Most of us would have just banned the kid from the X-Box for a week for playing up. Turfing him out into a wood with bears is a tad extreme. Mr Tanooka's actions were exactly what the hashtag #ParentingFails was invented for.

So, parents of Northern Ireland, despite the fact that our children may be enjoying the third bake-bean based meal this week, were sent to school wearing odd socks or we use the iPad to get an hour's peace, we can rest easy: I doubt any of us will ever be on the same level as dropping a child into the gorilla enclosure or throwing him into a bear-infested woods.