Suffer the little children

In a span of two weeks, two young children died senselessly in Malaysia.

The first case was that of Dirang, a 5-year-old girl who was kidnapped when she went to buy noodle at the shop near her house. Her burnt body was found a few days later. Arrests have been made and we are now awaiting the trial of this case.

In the second case, a 2-year-old child drowned in a lake while on a picnic trip with his mother and auntie. The police have classified the case to be a sudden death.

I don’t know about you, but I am highly distressed about both these cases. While I do sympathize with both the children’s families, I have to point out that these tragedies could have been avoided. The so-called tragedies should not have happened.

The first case brought to mind the case of Adik Nurin who went missing after going to the night market near her house alone. Months later, her body was found stashed in a sports bag, and post mortem revealed that unspeakable crimes had been committed on her body, crimes that only a person with a sick mind and an evil heart is capable of conflicting on a little girl. I am still traumatized thinking about the pain and suffering that she must have gone through, but as the Malay proverb says…berat mata memandang, berat lagi bahu memikul (if it’s hard for the eyes to see, it’s even harder for the shoulder that has to carry the burden). This case happened a few years ago now, but it remains fresh in my memory as if it was only yesterday.

The world that we live in today is very different from the world many of us knew when we were growing up. I grew up in a village where people stick to the old adage that it takes a whole village to raise a child. The mentality is your child is my child and my child is your child. If my child is hungry, please feed him. If your child is hungry, I will feel him. If my child is naughty, please tell him off. If your child is out of line, I will tell him off. You keep an eye on my child, and I keep an eye on yours. I grew up being able to roam freely with my friends or go places on my own. Those days are gone now. After Adik Nurin’s case, we all know that monsters live among us, there are predators who prey on the young and the vulnerable, and we know that things will never be the same again. Ever.

So that is why Dirang’s case makes me so angry. No matter what the reasons were for letting her go to the shop alone, we have to remember that Dirang was only 5 years old. She was an innocent child, naïve in the ways of the world. On the back of Nurin’s case, it is beyond belief that any parent would think it's OK to let a young child wander off on her own. After Nurin’s case, it is not acceptable anymore for parents anywhere to think that a young child can be let out of sight alone, even just for a minute.

In the case of the toddler who was drowned, I blame his mother’s lack of common sense. Letting a child of any age out of sight is in itself a crime, but I personally feel that letting a child of two out of sight near a LAKE is a gross act of negligence. A body of water, no matter how small, is a danger to young children, and yes, we are talking about a lake here, not a teeny weeny puddle.

Which brings us back to the reason why I’ve said these two children have died senselessly. Their deaths could have been avoided had the parents had any common sense at all. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case.

I have seen many cases where parents have shown a lack of common sense in dealing with their children. Once, in a crowded shopping mall in Hong Kong, I approached a young boy no older than three years old who was crying his eyes out for his mother. He was obviously in distress for losing his mother and I stayed with him until his mother arrived. Imagine my shock when his mother told me that she  had purposefully left the boy on his own because he was misbehaving. Now, what if I WAS a predator? I could have taken the child away, and nobody would have thought anything suspicious about a woman with a crying child. The mother would never see her child again! Parents, never ever leave your child out of sight in shopping malls, for whatever reason. If they misbehaved, then take them home, don’t walk away from them. Somebody might be watching for the right opportunity to snatch your child.

I really do not understand the mentality of parents who think it is OK to ask their young children to go anywhere on their own, be it to the night market near the house or the shop downstairs, because going with them is inconvenient for us. So while we chat with our friends in the mall, or near the lake, we conveniently let them out of sight because we are too busy/tired/having too much fun to attend to the child. I have known parents who ask their underage children to look after the younger ones at home while they go out to go wherever. I have also known parents who would feel no qualms about leaving their child home alone, completely unsupervised. What if a fire broke out, or a stranger might have been watching these comings and goings, and what if the predator had managed to persuade the children to come to the door, or worse, managed to go into the house? Yes, some people might say that they can depend on their children to be responsible people. Well, if that is the case, why don’t we just suit our children up, and send them out to the office every morning so that we can just stay home and pursue our hobby? The thing is, children are only dependable until ‘tragedies’ happen. The real tragedy here is that these parents have failed their children in more ways than one. Maybe what I am saying here might seem harsh to you, but I am not making any apologies here because are not the deaths of these two young children enough to make you want to go to these parents and slap some sense into their heads?

In this time and age, our children’s safety should be our top priority, for isn’t that’s what we are for? Even animals are very protective of their young, that they would do anything to ensure that their young survive into adulthood because they know leaving them alone would mean a matter of life or death. Shouldn’t we humans be more than well-versed in this survival concept by now, or has our evolution from cavemen into modern day homosapiens been for nothing? No more senseless deaths of our children. No more avoidable ‘tragedies’. There is no point crying over spilt milk…especially when we are the ones who have done the spilling.

Comments are welcome.