Father faces backlash for asking toddler to fill bowl with her tears for watching too much TV

Father tells toddler she could ‘watch TV again when your tears fill up this bowl’

A father in China is facing backlash after a video of his three-year-old daughter crying into a bowl as punishment for watching too much television went viral on social media.

The toddler was asked by her father to fill the bowl after she burst into tears when he switched off the TV during dinner time.

The incident happened last month in southern China’s Yulin city in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region in what is being criticised as the latest example of parents using harsh punishments.

The father told the daughter that she could “watch TV again when your tears fill up this bowl” after he saw her not eating her food and being engrossed in TV.

The video showed the girl holding the bowl in her hands and crying and squeezing her eyes to collect her tears.

But soon she became tired and said she would not be able to do it. Her father then told him to smile for him and the girl grinned with teary eyes.

“Educating the kid like this will make them develop negative character traits. Kids have learned that they can solve the problem through extreme means,” a user said on Chinese social media app Douyin.

While corporal punishment was banned in China in 1986, parents are often criticised for using harsh punishment methods to instil good behaviour in children.

The issue of tough parenting prompted lawmakers to adopt legislation on family education promotion in 2021.

Under the law, parents and guardians could be reprimanded and ordered to go through family education guidance programmes if prosecutors found any criminal or “very bad behaviour” in their children. It also prohibits parents from using “violence” to educate children on how to behave.

In 2022, Chinese parents in Hunan province forced their eight-year-old to watch television all night as punishment for watching too much TV. The parents took turns to keep a watch on the child so they could force him to stay awake. The boy kept crying during the night as he was not allowed to sleep until 5am, according to the report.