ALL parents mess up, so don’t rush to judge
IT GOES without saying that the lives of parents Paul and Louise Fogarty have been blighted forever. For the young married couple, who tragically lost their baby daughter, a hot summer’s day will never again come wrapped in the promise of a trip to the sea or a cold drink in the garden. If they look skywards, they will see black clouds of looming disaster, the kiss of death rather than the caressing heat of the sun.
For years to come the beat-the-clock scramble to work will not just be part of the daily grind but a long painful pilgrimage where the road signs lead to heartbreak and the loss of their seven-month-old baby.
Their suffering at their daughter Chloe’s agonising death will be terrible and not a day will go by where Paul will not berate himself for forgetting to drop the baby off at creche on his way to work.
He will torment himself that, in a momentary lapse, he lost sight of what was most precious to him in life – his little daughter.
On an ordinary day his sin of omission would not have resulted in tragedy. Little Chloe might be traumatised and weak with hunger after such a long stretch trapped in a vehicle.
Paul would be horrified but his focus would be on consoling the child and perhaps bringing her to the GP.
He might even comfort himself that she was too young to escape from her car seat, release the handbrake or get up to high jinks.
In time, he might talk about their narrow escape, in much the same way as David Cameron may recall the day he forgot his child in the pub, driving off without her. The most cautious mothers and fathers have stories from the parenting trenches that make them cringe.
Accidents miraculously avoided, near misses and decisions taken too lightly – like the McCanns leaving their children alone on holiday – which, in retrospect, seem far too risky.
It’s easy to condemn families for being negligent, to ask what sort of a parent could leave their child in the car.
Nothing prepares us for parenthood and the minefield of child safety.
It’s a life of constant vigilance where a momentary lapse can have horrific and unimaginable consequences.
By leaving kids alone in cars we run the risk of their being snatched or choking on something but, in this country until now, we have never countenanced them suffocating in the sun.
There are well-publicised cases of infants deaths similar to Chloe’s in hot climates.
Last summer a Mississippi mother didn’t realise her two-year-old daughter was dead in the back seat of her car until she went to pick her up at creche to be told she had never dropped her off that morning.
A dentist in Florida accidentally killed his infant son when he forgot him in the back of the car.
Two weeks after that tragedy, American Ed Hynes forgot to leave his sleeping daughter at daycare and spent eight hours at work before discovering her lifeless body in her car seat.
The golden rule of child safety is to keep our children close to us at all times or in the care of a responsible adult.
But, knowingly or not, most of us, if we are honest, have bent that rule on a few occasions and got away with it.
As the Fogartys face into a sentence they don’t deserve, rather than rush to judgement we should recall that familiar expression of compassion: ‘There but for the grace of God, go I.’