Apparently the parents are getting some support in Japan.<p><i>"Raising kids is hard" seemed to be the collective sigh heard around social media, TV talk shows, andproverbial water coolers.<p>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."<p>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.<p>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."<p>The incident has had many sharing childhood memories of how parents pretended to leave them or their siblings for refusing to listen.</i><p>The lost boy and Japan’s parenting debate - <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-36441875" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-36441875</a>
Just a suggestion for parents of young boys. Joining the Boy Scouts of America is a great way to learn a lot of outdoor survival skills in a gentle and fun way that will stay with them for the remainder of their lives.<p>In one of the Summer Camps that I attended as an adult leader, many of the boys from my troop attended an overnight survival training in which all they could take was the clothes on their backs and their "10 Essentials". They had to go to a nearby location away from their normal campsite and make a shelter and sleeping arrangements with only the things that they could find or forage and stay the night.<p>You would think you will meet a bunch of frustrated and unhappy boys the next day but what I found instead was a bunch of the happiest boys asking when they can do it again.<p>I don't know what all they learnt but I was comfortable that they could survive at least one night in a national forest after that experience.
Surviving a week in the wilderness isn't a big trick. You need water, and someplace warm enough not to freeze. He wasn't in a desert or a frozen wasteland.<p>With the headline you wonder if people expect to die if they are out of contact with civilisation for 5 minutes.
What I don't get is how they didn't find him sooner. Apparently they did a sweep of the base and missed him. Was he asleep? Signs of someone being there should have been obvious..