Yes I totally concede that pushing him on the train was the lazy way out because they didn’t want to have a crying kid that they needed to somehow get on a train. That was surely not the best way to handle the situation.
After having a look at all the information again it seems he was around 6 years old when the incident happened. I’m extrapolating that from the fact that he started to wander around at night shortly before 小学校. I’m honestly not too in touch at the moment how a 6 year old thinks and reacts (my godchild is already 13 now and the closest comparison I have, can’t remember how she was 7 years ago o_O) but emotionally it would probably have been better to have a crying, not wanting to go kid, that you have to force, instead of jumping it on him like that.
Yeah, and the more I think about it, considering the time period, they probably assumed kids can just get over it and shake stuff like that off. I mean, a lot of people probably do still think that way.
But to be honest I’m totally there with you… I have to imagine one way or another it didn’t have to be as traumatic, but I have no firm grip on the mentality of 6 year olds either. I tend to think people underestimate what children can handle if presented to them properly, but I’m truly out of my depths too.
And to extend the most good faith possible, in addition to just miscalculating the impact it would have on him… I mean it’s someone else’s kid that I know through reading a few pages he wrote decades later, heh. I’m just theorizing cause it’s saddening to think about it from his perspective at the time. But sometimes you know your kid well and you have a kid mischievous and cunning enough that given that information he would just slip away and vanish on the given day or something, heh.
The bit about the father’s story was a rollercoaster of emotions…
Oh, no, they live there, this is going to be bad → Thank god they are not there currently, I guess they were lucky to avoid it after all → Oh, no, somebody stop that man!! → ):