General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: PARENTS are responsible for the safety of their children. [View all]moriah
(8,312 posts)But even if I am not a parent, I know enough helping with my friend's children that toddlers can get into situations faster than you can blink, and everyone blinks.
And I have been to far too many funerals for children I had known since infancy. I think the only reason charges were brought in one case was that was when my best friend's two boys, nearly 3 and nearly 5, had managed to make their grandma think they were still watching TV to sneak out and go swimming instead of waiting for the promised swim after their Dad got home (his parents had offered them a free place to live, a trailer next to an unfenced pond that they'd actually won a lawsuit to refuse to fence it decades before -- never thinking it'd be their own grandkids who could fall victim to the "attractive nusiance" . She was doing laundry, so there were noises from machines, and caring for an infant as well.
She finished diapering her only granddaughter -- had been the primary babysitter for all three of her grandchildren when her daughter's birth control never seemed to work right. Winter Rowan was only born because they didn't wait long enough after the V he got and both condoms and Depo failed. And realized it was too quiet. Saw the chairs they'd moved to climb high enough to undo the locks. Screamed, panicked, they didn't have a phone so ran to a neighbor.
The youngest was found faster --- they had to drag the pond for her eldest grandson.
If it hadn't been so televised, they wouldn't have put her through criminal charges (even if it got reduced and all she had was probation, it was hell on a woman who loved those babies like her own and had probably changed more diapers than either of the parents for all three, since they both had to work just to pay bills and she was too ill to work). There were in-law disagreements and guilt, too, so it totally destroyed a family.
But Winter is still here, even if she wasn't planned. She doesn't remember much.