Parents, Kids, and Death

With all the news stories of kids going missing and getting killed I sometimes wonder how any survive to adulthood these days. The other side of that is, how can parents today see these stories on the news and then turn around and have it happen to them?

Some of you likely heard the story from East Georgia this past weekend where two children, ages 2 and 3 years, went missing on Saturday prompting a police search, etc. The kids were found on Monday morning in a sewage pond a mile and a half from their home, dead. Currently there are no signs of abduction or violence and the cause of death appears to be accidental drowning as of Tuesday’s coroner’s report.

So it appears that the two children wandered out of their home on Saturday, wandered a mile and a half where they both fell into this algae covered sewage pond and drowned. But let’s look at this tragic story a bit more … not only did the two children wander out of the house … it was the second time that day that the kids had wandered out, the first time a neighbor found the kids wandering in the neighborhood and brought them home. Reportedly one of the two kids was known to have figured out how to unlock and open the front door (I’ve heard it was the 3 year old and that it was the 2 year old so I’m leaving it at ‘one of the two’).

Let me get this straight … you have a kid 2 or 3 years old that you KNOW has figured out how to unlock and open the front door … your neighbor has already brought the kids back to the house once because you obviously weren’t paying attention to where they were or what they were doing … and you do nothing to prevent the situation from happening again, either by watching them more closely or taking steps to make sure that they can’t just unlock the door and wander out again, or both? ARE YOU BRAIN DEAD?

Now cases like the guy in Florida earlier this month that raped and killed the little girl are one issue … though parents should be aware that these nutcases are out there and should be responsible enough to keep a close watch on their kids and protect them from such predators there is a failing in the jail system in this country that gives these people entirely too many chances. The man in that case had something along the lines of 25 prior arrests and had reportedly BEGGED to be kept locked up because he said that if he was released that he WOULD do it again. That, however, is a rant for another day.

How is it that parents … in a world where there is some story about kids being killed, abducted, or otherwise separated from their parents long enough to make it on the news on a weekly basis … can be so mindless and negligent as to let their own kids walk out the front door, wander a mile and a half from the house, and drown. Last time I checked the average 2 and 3 year old weren’t exactly doing 15min miles … When I was 2 or 3 years old … if I’d walked out the front door … at MOST I would have got to the edge of the yard before one of my parents picked me up and took me back inside … and trust me … when I was 2 or 3 our yard wasn’t what most people would call large.

Is the world really more dangerous today? Or are more parents simply extra negligent … or am I’m just more aware of it than I was in the past?