My heart sinks to my stomach when I read about how little kids around us lose their lives. My heart goes out to every parent that has had to suffer the loss of a young one. Bahrain being a small country all the death reports of children losing their lives are often in the newspaper and very difficult to forget. Here are some news that have got very close to my heart and by reading which I hope you will all take measures on how to avert such happenings and protect your kids and kids around you. I will not get into the horrific details as it is painful to me as I explain but will leave them to your imagination.
Bus: Recently there was an incident. I must mention that the temperature in Bahrain at this time of the year is extremely hot and humid. A young kindergarten boy fell asleep in the bus on the way to school that he was still asleep when the kids got off at school. The driver unaware of the sleeping child in the bus, closed the doors of the bus as he got down at home. At around noon when he came back to the bus to go back to the school he heard a muffling noise. He rushed to the bus to see the boy lying in a pool of blood and gasping. The boy was rushed to hospital, yet he couldn’t survive.
Pool: A group of women went swimming. A common practice here for girls/ women to reserve a pool for few hours or a day so that they could swim without men around. They took their kids too along. As the moms talked and cooked, the kids splashed around. One of the boys went too far in the pool and drowned. The mom in question noticed her son missing, spotted him at the bottom of the pool and screamed for help. What happens? None of the women there knew how to swim! With lot of screaming and wailing when they could get a man from outside to pull the child out, it was again too late. He too couldn’t be saved.
A pool incident reminds me of something that could have happened some years back. My family and a few family friends reserved a pool to go swimming. My brother a 2 year old baby at that time too was with us. We got him an inflatable swimming tube so that he could stay afloat in the water. The tube that comes with an underwear kind of seat for kids. As we all swam around and had fun he was at the front end of the pool where the water was 2 feet approximately. In between swimming we would go kiss him, play with him on his side of the pool and return. All the kids were in this area. After the pool party when we were packing our stuff into our cars we noticed something strange. The plastic seat had reduced to one thread, so thin that it could have snapped any moment when he was in the water. Keeping in mind he wasn’t a very heavy baby it was too strange to happen. We couldn’t understand how that had reduced to a single thread. It is said that kids can drown in a single inch of water and this was around 24 inches! What if he had slipped and none of us had noticed for a few seconds/minutes? We kept thanking our luck that nothing had happened but the giant ‘what if’ was there to haunt us for days!
Door: A baby boy lay playing near the main door to his house as his mom indulged in household chores. His uncle who had gone out to pick up clothes from the dry cleaners came home with a huge pile of hangers and clothes. Since his hands were occupied on reaching the door to their house, he kicked the door open. As rotten luck would have it the baby was right there and ended up being knocked on the head by the door. Thus a nephew ended up accidentally being killed by his uncle!
Pesticide: Two working parents who happened to be working on a weekend when their two young kids of 4 and 7 were home, decided to lock them in their apartment till they got back from work. The adjacent apartment happened to be sprayed with pesticides and insecticides which seeped in below the doors of the children’s flat and poisoned them. At evening when the parents returned the children looked fine but by midnight the entire family began throwing up. This story had many variations in the paper. Once it was said the children’s apartment was recently sprayed, the other said the neighbour’s apartment was sprayed. Either way the children died of pesticide poisoning. The parents too were hospitalized as they too had inhaled the gas but it was the children that were affected most.
A few days back I was walking near my house. I probably had to go buy something. Instead of choosing the straight lane I decided to go through the alleys. It was around 8 in the evening, dark in our side of the world but yes the streetlights were on. I noticed two siblings ahead of me who had just gone to a store to buy candies for themselves. Seeing them I was shocked thinking how their parents could let such young babies outside without an adult. One was a boy aged 4 and the other his sister probably half his age. Though the boy was protective enough by holding the little girl’s hand he suddenly realized he had forgotten something at the store. He stood there in the alley instructing his baby sis to go back home. She stood there confused amidst the criss cross lanes and I stood there shell shocked. How could the boy tell this baby to find its way? Lucky I’m there, what if I wasn’t there and this kid was alone in this road? How will I ask this child where her house is? She’s too young to speak. With these thoughts in my head as I walked towards the girl, she was so scared and confused she wailed out loud. The boy who hadn’t got too far in the opposite direction came running and then took her home.
Kids tend to run into the road especially if you are driving through an alley. Drive slowly and keep honking whenever you reach each end of the road. This way the kids are aware of an oncoming vehicle and in turn you too are safe.
Imagine you and few friends are out walking at night in a calm place. Each of you have your kids too along. You see your little baby who doesn’t yet speak going ahead of you. You can still see him, so you let him get ahead yet keeping a watchful eye on him. He gets a bit too far and then suddenly there’s a blackout. How would you react? You could call out to your child but how would he respond to you? What if he doesn’t let out a cry as kids would normally do, and what if he decides to move somewhere else in the dark? How would you find him? A very scary situation, it’s not my imagination but this happened to be one of the nightmares I had.
It’s very important to care for kids, but more the ones than haven’t begun communicating yet. We never know when they could get into trouble or what is going on within them unless they cry or begin speaking. What would you do in all the above situations? How would you prevent these from happening?
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