A father in China has attracted controversy for telling his three-year-old daughter to fill a bowl with her tears as punishment for watching too much television.
The incident happened last month when the father, who lives in Yulin, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region in southern China, was preparing supper and told his daughter to come to the dining table, Yantai TV reported.
The father, who was not identified, realised the girl, nicknamed Jiajia, was so engrossed in a television show that she had not heard him.
In a rage, he switched off the television, which made his daughter burst into tears.
He then brought a big empty bowl to her and said: “You can watch TV again when your tears fill up this bowl.”
A viral video filmed and released on Douyin by her mother, showed the little girl holding the bowl under her face to collect her tears, and squeezing her eyes in an effort to produce more.
More than 10 seconds later, she told her parents her hands were exhausted from holding the bowl and said: “It is impossible for me to manage this task.”
Her father then told her to smile for him. The image of the girl grinning with tears on her face amused her parents, the mother said.
The clip of the tearful girl trended on mainland social media, receiving 220,000 likes on Douyin alone.
While many people said Jiajia was an adorable child, others left comments criticising her father.
“When you are old and cannot take care of yourself, your daughter will give you a bowl and tell you to fill it with your tears before you can have food,” one online observer said.
“Educating the kid like this will make them develop negative character traits. Kids have learned that they can solve the problem through extreme means,” another person said.
Stories about harsh parenting are popular in China.
In 2022, a father in central Hubei province asked his rebellious 11-year-old daughter to dig for lotus roots in the blazing sun for hours so she would realise the value of academic study.
Other parents adopt the opposite approach by overindulging their children.
Earlier this year, a father in Shanxi province, central China, knelt before his teenage daughter in the street and apologised because he could not afford to buy her an iPhone.
