A bad week for parents – but we shouldn’t rush to judgment

Hell hath no fury like a parenting mob online – as the onslaught upon the unfortunate mother whose four-year-old son fell into the gorillas’ enclosure at Cincinnati Zoo showed this week.

From some of the comments, you would think a few people might have been happier if the zoo workers had turned their rifles on Michelle Gregg, rather than shooting dead the 17-year-old silverback gorilla Harambe, who had grabbed her son, Isiah Dickerson.

It’s true that she clearly didn’t have a close eye on him at the fateful moment he climbed over the barrier, but how many parents can truthfully say they have never been distracted from watching their children? Only for the really unlucky ones does such a lapse turn into a real tragedy.

But even for those of us who try to empathise with parenting mishaps rather than judge, the immediate reaction to news of a Japanese couple abandoning their seven-year-old son in a forest to teach him a lesson had to be: “What on earth were they thinking?”

With the caveat that global media plays its own games of Chinese whispers, it appears that Yamato Tanooka’s parents thought leaving him alone for a while on a mountain road was just punishment for throwing stones at cars. But there was no sign of him when they went back a short while later.

It seems a very extreme version of “time out” – or perhaps they intended it as just a short spell beside the “naughty tree”.

Granted, consequences for bad behaviour by young children should be as immediate as possible. But getting down to his level, looking him in the eye and explaining why what he was doing was wrong would have been the more appropriate response.

Happily, they and their son didn’t pay the ultimate price. Yamato was found after six days in a military hut last Friday, about five kilometres from where he went missing.

While it seems to be unspeakably cruel of Yamato's parents to do what they did, it's another rush to judgment to condemn them unreservedly. They didn't plan to play out a "Hansel and Gretel" type scenario (and at least the fabled children had each other for company). It was more a very bad decision in the heat of the moment. After the rescue, Yamato's emotional father Takayuki Tanooka, conceded he had "gone too far" when he ordered his son out of the car in the forest.

Almost all parents, everywhere, no matter what their circumstances, want what’s best for their children. Some just don’t know, or have questionable beliefs on, how to achieve it.

Closer to home, there was more potentially dangerous foolishness, it seems, by the parents who reportedly left their newborn baby alone in the car on a hot day in Cork for 20 minutes. A concerned onlooker, who intervened to open the car door to keep the baby cool, recounted last Tuesday’s incident to RTÉ Radio’s Liveline.

It was certainly a week for high-profile parenting "failures", for which condemnation might seem justified. Although former Neighbours actor and mother of six, Madeleine West, is not taking any of it for her revelation that she sometimes puts her children to bed in their next-day clothes to save time getting out of the house in the morning.

That’s a much more trivial case of one parent’s shortcut being considered downright slack by others. But again you would wonder about the self-righteous commentators who go straight for the jugular.

Muddling through as best we can is what most parents do. It’s support not criticism that’s needed. It might take a village to raise a child, but that’s supposed to be constructive help, not yelling from the sidelines.

Social media’s amplification of tut-tuts can erode a parent’s confidence. It’s hard to follow your gut instinct and really enjoy raising children if you are riddled with self-doubt and trying to second-guess the naysayers.

Of course we are going to make mistakes. And who hasn’t had their near-misses?

I stick feel sick when I recall turning around on the top landing of our house to see the little feet of my youngest son, then aged five, disappearing over the banisters as he fell to the flight of stairs below.

We were lucky, he somehow landed on all fours like a cat; the result was nothing more than a bloody nose and shock all round. Don’t judge me, I’m a parent.