Kids slip away from you

VICKSBURG, Miss. (VDN) — On Thursday, a child slipped away from a teacher at Redwood. The child was found muddy but safe. It could have been a whole lot worse. We all understand how bad it could have been, and probably no one understands that more than the teacher who was supposed to be watching the child.

No one is going to make excuses for the teacher and I am certain no one is more upset about this than that teacher. Let’s show that educator some grace. They are probably beating themselves up more than anyone else in the community, including the family. The mother of the missing child said as much in a post on social media and is asking the community to calm down.

When my kids were young, they slipped away from me on two occasions. I can’t imagine trying to keep tabs on 20 kids at once.

My daughter, who was not quite three years old at the time, figured out our door locks and walked out the front door of our house. She made it to the corner before a police officer saw her and took her down to the station for safekeeping. She was there for about 15 minutes total, including a good ten minutes of me explaining to three very angry police officers how the hell my child could have just walked out the front door of the house. To this day, decades later, I remember in great detail every minute she was missing and the terror of it.

My son asked me if he could go to the candy store. He was all of 4, smarter than all of us combined, and had the most active imagination of any person I knew at that time. I didn’t want to ruin his fantasy adventure, and why he needed my okay confused me, but I okayed the imaginary candy run. Not even 5 minutes later, our good friend Ruth is pulling up in the driveway, my 4-year-old in hand, while evil-eyeing me about how my son was crossing the street to get to the candy store on the other side of the road.

Kids sneak out, they know how to talk to you, and in both cases, my children getting away from me could have ended badly for my kids. But they were spared my lacking skills as a parent.

If you’re a parent, you’ve probably also had a heart-stopping moment where your child wasn’t where you thought and it caused you to panic. We’ve all been there. It happens. You learn from it, and you upgrade your skills. Thank goodness it ended well for my kids, your kids, and the young child at Redwood yesterday.

I am certain Redwood is reviewing every procedure and repairing every inch of that fence. Let’s give them some grace and let them do their job. They’re good educators and good people. A mistake was made, and thankfully, no one was hurt. Let’s learn from it, and let’s forgive our neighbor.