Difficult to Understand?

How difficult can it be for mature minds to understand that they have an obligation to the young children in their care to protect them from real and present harm? How difficult can it be to understand that toddlers and swimming pools make for a lethal mix? The best kept resolves of parents to ensure that their very young children don't come to harm, by taking steps to lock up pool entrances, to keep a wary eye on the child does not always result in child protection.

On the other hand, deciding to do without a backyard pool would do wonders in that direction. Ontario has been experiencing a sad summer of toddler drownings. Just as the death by drowning in a backyard pool of Jeremie Audette, all of two years old, accompanying his sitter to a get-together at another baby-sitter's home was set to fade from newspaper accounts, another child of the same age has drowned in a backyard pool.

All together Ontario has, thus far this year, experienced at least seven deaths of young children who have drowned in backyard pools. It doesn't take a genius to realize that there are choices in life. And if a choice is made that could conceivably compromise the safety of a child in a family setting by installing a backyard pool, then something seems sadly awry with the values and priorities of that particular family.

Ontario's acting chief coroner has plans to review all of those unfortunate drowning deaths of very young children. "The purpose of this review is to identify common factors that may have played a role in the deaths and if necessary make recommendations to prevent similar deaths", explained Dr. Bert Lauwers. "Once complete, the results of this review will be released to the public later in the year."

Common factors? Easily deduced even by the layman, by the casual newspaper reader. Insufficient value placed on due diligence, and on deigning to own a backyard pool until such time as the family's children have attained an independent age, and have been taught how to swim. A recognition of the need never to turn one's attention away from the activities of a vibrant, inquisitive child.

Ah, but then this is the same society that gives children as young as five their own all-terrain-vehicles isn't it? It isn't only summer months when things go badly awry with children coming to great harm. There are all the children, pre-adolescent and of adolescent age who have their own snowmobiles. Fun with motorized dirt bikes also presents as potential hazards to children whose proud parents gift them with these at age 10.

This is a generalized societal ill, reflective of parents whose attention to the needs of their growing children have been supplanted by a generation of parents who choose to believe that their children are capable of doing whatever they themselves can do and where common sense and practical intelligence have flown the coop.