Children deserve best

As the world watches in beautifully orchestrated unison, there is not a soul among us who does not rejoice for the joyous reunion of 12 precious Thai children, their coach, and their families as they emerge safely from the bowels of the cave. We are glued to our televisions, smartphones and sound systems as an amazing international team of experts come together to carefully and cautiously extract these children, the world’s children, from darkness into the light of their known world.

On the other side of the same world, some 2,000 of the earth’s children are torn from their families and segregated as animals because their parents crossed into the United States illegally. To date, countless children from these families are separated by thousands of miles within a system that touts the care they receive because they have food and shelter.

How do these scenarios compare? In both, families are separated from their children; in both, parents grieve and wait and pray for safe return of their most precious babies. Hope, faith, and love permeate the hearts of families in each of these circumstances, yet, somehow, the fate of children whose parents sought a better life for themselves is somehow forgotten.

When we fail our children, regardless of who gave birth to them or what color their skin is, or where they live, or even where they were born, then we fail ourselves. We place in our children hope, joy, dreams for a brighter future, and yearnings for a better world. Our children deserve our best efforts, period.

PATTY KOHLER Conway