A Tale of Too Stupid

First of all, go and read this post. Then come back.

The upshot is that this mother, in her nightly struggle to get her pre-school-aged daughter to bed and to sleep, in her frustration, wondered aloud via Twitter if it would be acceptable to smother her daughter in order to get her to stay in bed. A woman who follows her on Twitter, who clearly doesn't know her, her morbid sense of humor, or the deep and abiding love for her child that is so obvious to anyone with the common sense God gave pistachio nuts, found this tweet to be objectionable.

Shortly afterwards, the police appeared at her door. At 11 o'clock at night, this woman had to show them her sleeping child in order to prove that she hadn't murdered her own daughter.

I am totally dumbstruck by the ardent stupidity of this entire situation. I am absolutely horrified for this woman, and so sorry for the mortification and abject humiliation she must be feeling.

Dan is a teacher, as are several of our closest friends. They are all required by law and their jobs, not to mention simple human decency and civility, to report suspected physical, emotional, verbal, and sexual abuse of all children they come in contact with. In a thousand years, I cannot imagine anyone legitimately interpreting what this woman was saying as a threat of actual child endangerment.

Not a month ago, I threatened to tape Max in a box with a couple bottles of water and a couple of sandwiches and Fed-Ex him to my parents. Did any of you--seriously, anybody at all--interpret that as something I would publicly brag about doing, let alone actually do? Even for a minute? Did anybody sit down and give it any thought at all, whether that was something I was capable of?

Honest to God, I know my readership isn't enormous or anything, but really--anybody?

People don't brag about murdering their children on Twitter before they actually go and do it, for fucking Christ's sake! Especially not rational, sane, loving parents--as this blogger clearly and obviously is. People abuse children secretly, then they bury the body, or burn it, or chop it into pieces and stow it in their freezer! They don't write about what they're doing on the internet--especially before they do it. Come the fuck on.

That's the point. I've admitted my parenting shortfalls right here on this blog--a year ago, when Max was biting, I admitted to biting him back once. I admitted how terrible it made me feel to have physically done something that made him cry. I've admitted that I'm not the most patient parent on this earth, that I have a tendency to tune him out when I'm deeply involved in something else. Does that qualify as child neglect in somebody's mind? Quick--call child protective services.

This is busybodying run totally amok. This is a woman with not enough to do (and there's a link to her blog at the first link; I won't link to her because, frankly, I don't think she deserves the traffic) and too much time on her hands and too little to think about. I won't go so far as to call her stupid or ignorant, because name-calling is a little inane even in a case like this, but really, I'm starting to think that there ought to be a common sense or I.Q. prerequisite in order to connect to the internet, if for no other reason than to protect us normal, sane, rational human beings.