Up Front - American mother’s plight concerns me

Emily Plihal
Express staff

I read in the Edmonton Sun last week that a mother in the United States turned her back for five minutes, only to find her two children had disappeared.

She searched high and low for her children, only to call emergency response teams 45 minutes later, thinking they may had been abducted.

After the emergency crews arrived, they searched the home high and low, finally finding the children dead in the trunk of the woman’s car.

Somehow while playing, the children managed to open the trunk and crawl inside. With temperatures well over 30 degrees Celsius, the children died of heat exhaustion.

As per usual, when I hear about stories like this, a number of questions popped into my mind. These questions included: How did the children open the trunk? How did the children go unnoticed for so long before the mother noticed they were missing?

The two children, a five-year-old boy and a four-year-old girl managed to evade their mother, which ended up being their last mistake.

It would be easy for me to critique the mother, but right now I’m envisioning what it would be like to be her.

Children generally have to be observed for 24 hours each day when they are that age. Unfortunately, as life predicts, times do arise when 100 per cent of the focus cannot be put on the child.

Many of the details of the story were not printed, so I cannot comprehend exactly what happened that day.

If the mother had just gone shopping and left her trunk ajar, why did she not realize the children could possibly be in there?

Where were her keys for the car? If the vehicle was locked, there is essentially no way those children could have gotten inside.

Now, it would be very simple to sit down and blame the mother, but can you imagine having both your children die at the same time, partially due to your negligence.

This mother will have to live for the rest of her life thinking their death was her fault.

I seriously doubt she told her children to climb into the vehicle, and I hope she was a diligent mother, otherwise my sympathy is being unduly wasted.

I can’t imaging her fear when she realized her precious babies were missing.

I can only envision the blood rushing to her face as she thought of all that could have happened to her children.

What kind of steps can a parent take to avoid this kind of mishap from occurring?

Children are curious, anxious, excited, overly energetic human beings. The children were probably trying to play hide and go seek with their mom, and would never have thought of the consequences as they entered the vehicle’s trunk.

Can we start by explaining to a four and a five year old the dangers of hot temperatures. Will they comprehend getting into a tight enclosure in the summer could kill them.

Children have very little understanding of death, if any at all. The mother may have told them to be careful playing around the vehicle in the summer, would they have understood?

This poor mother will have to spend eternity thinking about what her children’s last few minutes of life were.

My heart goes out to this woman, and all the sympathy I can muster goes directly to her.

Your children are not supposed to go before you, especially in this manner, at those young ages.

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