Popular "mommy bloggers" and others have already written extensively and very well about all the parent blaming and shaming that have occurred in the wake of recent incidents - the toddler who fell into the gorilla exhibit at the zoo and the two year old who tragically died when he was dragged away by an alligator in Florida. I cannot imagine the grief of losing a child, and I hold the family of that little boy in my heart and pray for them. As other parents have mentioned, this could have been us. One of my three children was definitely the type to wander off in public places as a younger child. I didn't raise him any differently than the other two. He got the same safety talks and the same preparation for outings. I am a fairly vigilant parent. Nonetheless, when he was around preschool age, we lost him once for several minutes at a wildlife park up north. Even more scary, when he was about nine years old, we lost him when he wandered off on a family trip in a foreign country where he did not speak the language. We were lucky. We found him both times, and he was okay.
The moment we become parents, we begin to fear for our children's safety. In various ways and to various extents. Some parents will be more relaxed. Others will be more worried. All parents will fear for their children though. We will want to control things to keep our children safe. But we cannot control everything. There are many, many things outside of our control.
I experienced this very early in parenthood, when my oldest child was born with a heart defect and had open heart surgery at two weeks old. I've written about this in my post "This baby." But here's an interesting thing I remember... In the midst of those weeks of recovery after his surgery, while explaining the surgery, the recovery, all my time at the hospital, the medications, trying to start up breastfeeding again, etc., someone said to me, "I couldn't do it." I was slightly taken aback, but I didn't think about it much until later. You couldn't do it? Yes, you could. You would have to. You have to deal with what happens. Some people also asked me in the weeks afterward, "Do they know why he was born with a heart defect?" or "What happened during your pregnancy?" Well, neither my husband nor I have a family history of heart defects or problems. And I didn't do anything crazy during my pregnancy either, if that's what they were hinting at. Obviously, somewhere in utero my son's heart did not develop normally. We even participated in a study at Children's Hospital to help researchers understand, diagnose, and maybe prevent this sort of thing from happening.
It's okay to ask questions and to seek solutions to prevent further problems or tragedies. It's okay to say that zoo exhibits should be constructed with more of a barrier between the public and the animals. Or maybe even to say, "Should we really have these creatures in captivity at all?" It's okay to say there should be better signage at bodies of water that contain alligators or to wonder about other ways to prevent what happened at that resort in Florida. But it's not okay to blame parents or to shame them. People are upset when they hear these types of accidents or tragedies. They want to think it could never happen to them. And so they comfort themselves by blaming, I think. It makes them feel like they are in control. But they aren't.
I have a child who is going to attend college very far away in a few short months. I am nervous and excited. And yes, I'll be worried. I will not be able to control what happens to him there. But nor am I able to control everything that happens to him while he still lives in the same city and even under the same roof. We cannot control everything that happens. We love, teach, parent, advocate and live to the best of our abilities. We cannot control the world we live in. What we can do is let go of that illusion. We can try to trust more and fear less. And most importantly, we can try to live with more compassion in the face of the tragedies and frailties of human life. That's what we can do.
