I’m going to veer off from my regular topic a bit and talk about the gorilla and the boy. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’ve been asleep for a week, have no internet or television, or are blissfully unaware of the world around you.
I am not following the story, even. I am not purposefully reading articles on it other than a few headlines to see what happened and that the boy is ok. But holy effn shit, is that mom getting crucified on social media. People on my Facebook friends list are posting horrific mean memes about here and even meaner comments. OMG. Of course me, with my big mouth, is speaking up and probably my friends list on Facebook is becoming smaller by the day. Am I defending the woman, saying she’s the pillar of all motherhood? No, because I don’t know. But neither am I calling her names and belittling her on social media. Again, because I. DON’T. KNOW. I wasn’t there.
I do, however, know 4 yr old children, especially boys. I do know what it’s like to have multiple kids in public and having one have a meltdown or an owie or whatever that you have to attend to and for a second your attention is focused on the one child. And in that small space of time, anything can happen. I would never expect that my four year old could that easily get into the habitats at the zoo! And all those judgey-judgies who WERE there, at the moment – didn’t THEY see him, before he fell in the moat? Why didn’t THEY grab him before he fell?
Everybody’s blaming the mom for the death of the gorilla. When it comes down to it, the boy’s life was more important than the animal’s, sorry, that’s my opinion. This is a child. A child who believes in Spiderman and the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus. He couldn’t possibly have understood the ramifications of his actions. The mom wasn’t dangling him over the edge for a picture op, or so he could “see better”, she didn’t toss him over because she was tired of being a mom. She was distracted by another child for a few seconds.
Society, if you want to verbally bitch-slap parents, I’ve got a whole lot of them for you to line up and criticize, but I don’t think this situation, this mom, is one of them. I don’t think the “meanest mom ever ice cream lady” is one either. Let’s save our verbal, anonymous holier than thou lashings for crappy parents who really deserve it. I’ve got all kinds of dead babies beaten to death, or scarred for life by abuse from their parents. Those parents deserve more than a verbal lashing. Those are parents in my opinion you are welcome to whelp on. But a moment of distraction, come on, every parent has dozens of those in their child’s lifetime. Some turn out ok… and some don’t.
–Keeping it Real
-realmom
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