There seems to be a lot of finger pointing over this kid who jumped into the gorilla enclosure. A lot of the ire seems to be focused on the parents. I’ve got to wonder, do any of those folks have any experience at all with four year olds? At all? Four year olds get away, they hide, they run away.
Every parent can think of at least a few times where your child has gotten away.
God gave us free will. And sadly, that includes four year olds.
Sherry Antonetti wrote this and she nails it:
If you read the com boxes, follow Facebook or engage in any sort of social media, you will find all of these responses.
How they know the parents failed to safeguard their child? The kid fell into the Gorilla pit! It is a neat and tidy argument. Who could argue with the neglect which must be involved for a kid to fall into a Gorilla pit? After all, no one else’s kid ever fell into a Gorilla pit!
I will.
I will because I have woken to find my kids standing on top of three legged stools holding a broom in the air, trying to bring down a balloon that escaped, not noticing they are in danger of falling. Not noticing they could break the light fixture in the room where the balloon is, not noticing anything but the balloon.
I’ve had kids put syrup on their fingers and try to leap to the wall to stick like Spiderman. I’ve run after my son barefoot in the snow when he learned how to open the front lock and bolted for the street.
I have stopped my children from bringing the hairdryer near the sink, stopped them from falling into a pool when they couldn’t swim, fished quarters out of their mouths and told them NOT to ferret something out of the garbage when they wanted more snack!
The point is, we watch kids all the time. We warn kids all the time. They still do stupid things.
You can read the rest of Sherry’s piece here.
