Before you Pass Judgement…. {A Response to Recent Tragedy}

Judge not, that ye be not judged.
People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

These two thoughts popped into my head when I read about the terrible tragedy that occurred this week when a mother left her child in a hot car. Mostly because I found out about it not on a news site, but from a “perfect person’s” social media post to my neighborhood FB page. That post and most of the comments below lamented the tragedy then attacked the mother. The same woman who now has to live with the consequences of her mistake for the rest of her life. Nothing anyone can say to her will ever be worse than she will say to herself about this mistake.

And it was a mistake. A terrible, awful mistake, but a mistake nonetheless.

We are all human. We parents are especially imperfect humans just trying to get through the day without major incident. Every single one of us can look back and recall an incident that may very well have turned out as tragic as this one. All because I made a mistake.

Here is mine.

When my daughter was 15 months old (the same age of the little girl lost this week) we were rushing to the aquarium for a toddler group play date. I was sleep deprived, stressed, arguing with my husband over who was responsible for getting my son ready for his activity that day and already late. I put my daughter in the car and started to back down the driveway. My husband came out to ask me where something was. Angry, I shoved down the emergency break, hopped out of the car, yelling about having to do everything myself. I went inside the house still yelling. When I came out I found the car not in the driveway but the street. See, in my anger, I had applied the emergency brake but forgot to put it in park. Luckily it was a slow roll and it came to rest at the curb. Even luckier, as we live at a busy T intersection, no cars had been coming. No harm done, my daughter was oblivious. The worst thing that happened was the embarrassment as I explained to my neighbor what had occurred. But it haunted me for weeks.

We all have a story of a near miss to tell. Every day we make bad decisions, do things without thinking, things that could have terrible consequences. We get lucky. Most of these mistakes aren’t fatal and they are not witnessed by the world to be judged. So next time you feel the need to judge someone for a mistake, especially one of this magnitude, please try to look at the situation with grace and perspective. Because it could just have easily been one of us.