There are people in the world who are simply not qualified to be parents, people who would never understand that parenting is less about raising children and more about nurturing them to become well-rounded individuals with warmth, compassion and love.
These are qualities that this Japanese mother so noticeably lacked when she forced her daughter to swallow thirty goldfishes as punishment.
A country struggling with a high number of child abuse cases, Japan adds this report in their already long list of incidences involving parents and their harsh methods of discipline.
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Yuko Ogata and her boyfriend Takeshi Egami, from the Fukuoka prefecture in southwestern Japan, poured detergent into the tank to kill the fish, local media reported.
And one by one the couple forced Yuko’s teenage daughter to swallow the fishes. No damage had been done to the daughter’s health, but the couple had allegedly been abusing the girl on a daily basis.
Additional reports also claimed that Yuko and Takeshi were indicted last year for, among other things, tying the daughter to a bed with rope, punching her in the face and burning her tongue with a lit cigarette.
READ: How to discipline a child
For forcing Yuko’s daughter to swallow the goldfishes, the couple were arrested for child abuse—their fifth time since last year.
Parents sometimes confuse child discipline with punishment, and although these terms may seem synonymous there is a difference between them.
Discipline is the act of teaching a child to be responsible, self-controlled and obedient, usually done by setting guidelines, rules and expectations for your child.
Punishment, on the other hand, focuses on the misdeed: it is all about making the child feel badly for what they have done (or not done)—in other words it is a single act of displaying disapproval for a child and their actions.
Discipline is having the child’s best interest at heart, with the intent being to teach the child what it’s like to grow and learn from their experiences.
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