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neglect

For the fourth time this summer, a friend on Facebook posted an article about the number of infants in America who have died (24) because their parents forgot them and left them in a carseat.  Invariably, a lot of opinions came out, many of them throwing out the neglect charge.  I will say this last friend has worked with foster children quite a bit, and has seen a large amount of neglect the last twenty years and knows all too well the horrors it reaks on a child's life.

And yet, I'm not ready to hurl that charge someone's direction just because they forgot a child.

Parents do forget children, especially young ones. I've seen it happen a number of times at many churches and schools. The first two times friends ranted about undisciplined partents forgetting their kids on Facebook, many of their friends immediately started sharing stories of times when they had forgotten their own children.  By the time person number six shared their story, the poster had to re-consider a lot of her condemnation.

I think it was last year (time seems to run together for me) when North Carolina started requiring car seats to be turned backwards for infants under a year old and first responders had very mixed reactions. They all agreed it was safer for a child EXCEPT the mother would not be able to see her child while driving AND would be more likely to NOT see her child when she exited the car in a hurry. They feared more cases of children being locked in cars and being forgotten would happen.

And I'm always amazed by the number of people who talk about how people are so distracted today and not focusing on what's important and that's why parents can forget their children. In my mother's infancy, car seats did not exist. A baby wouldn't be left in a car because it was behing held by someone or resting in the floor/seat beside the mother.  Then my generation comes along and there are carseats, not required, that can be placed where the mother can view the child. When something is in plain view, it makes it a little more difficult to forget about it. (We won't talk about getting to the bank and realizing you've left the check at home, etc).

For those of us who long for children but have not found that chapter written into our lives, there are many scenarios such as this one that are very hard to comprehend or fathom. And I find that what I consider neglect is not the same thing that others consider as neglect. Granted, almost everyone agrees not feeding a child, etc constitutes neglect, but there are many grey areas to this issue as well.

Chris Fitzsimon, who speaks on NC Spin about policies of the day has remarked on more than occasion that parents/teachers who teach their children dinosaurs roamed the earth 2,000 years ago are depriving their children of a good education.  I know thousands of children who are taught this by their teachers, and I would never charge them with neglect. Yet he and many others would.

I've known countless children who struggle with bedwetting. Most eventually outgrow it. One or two parents who've found themselves in that situation refuse to wash sheets every single day. To me, that borders on neglect. To a very tired, overworked Mom, it's a time-saving measure. And in those cases, I bite my tongue. I don't walk in their shoes day in, day out. And I also know how many times people have criticized my housekeeping, when they've never had to be a caregiver or keep my schedule.

So I cringe when someone lambasts another person who is facing one of the most heart-wrenching and desperate situations a person can face. I can be just as judgmental and haughty as the next person. To see such posts on Facebook forces me to look into the mirror at my own self, and it's not always a loving and compassionate portrait looking back at me. Charges of neglect are usually reflections of our neglect to see others with the love and compassion Christ has shown us.

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