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I have wondered how those parents cope also.
Similar in my opinion to the parents that leave a child to die in a hot car.
Same sort of guilt I would think.
When my husband died I made up things to blame myself for.
Like things I should have known medically even when his team of Drs didn't
know. Germs I should have protected him from while in the hospital.
I cannot imagine how a therapist deals with that guilt when the parent
was negligent and caused the death.
It's an interesting question and I'm not sure that much has been written about it. Seems just about the worst thing that could happen to a person.
When DH and I were going to college we rented a small house on a farm which had two homes on it. The owners lived in the other home. About ten years before we moved there the father had been pitching hay for the cows by the barn door. He didn't know his young son was in the barn and when the child ran out he caught him in the head with the pitchfork.
We lived there several years before anyone mentioned it. Once the mother took me up to his bedroom which she had maintained the way it was the day he died.
I was young and didn't really know how to respond. We remained friends with them for years and neither mentioned the child again. They lost another son in a farm accident on the road some years later.
The mother died in her fifties of cancer.
I've thought so often over the years of all the guilt and feelings of blame that had to be dealt with in that family. And they were raising other children at the time so there were their feelings added in as well.
The remaining children grew up to be responsible and hard-working people and still seem well-adjusted. I doubt very much that anyone in this family ever had any therapy. They were your typical old-fashioned, stoic northern Europeans. You do your job and you deal with whatever life hands out.
I don't know if anyone ever knew their thoughts and feelings. It seems odd in this day and age where we need therapy for the smallest things but it's been apparent to me that some personality types seem capable of grieving and coping without it.
I personally believe that the stress caused by not vocalizing emotional pain may cause unwanted behaviors or stress-related illnesses. But, paradoxically, I also believe that therapy for some people may not be beneficial and may even be harmful.
In short, a person has to be able to verbalize a problem and want help for it.
I knew a large family who grew up on a big ranch. There were many outbuildings and several homes located on the ranch. Anyway, one of the married daughters was visiting her parents on the ranch with her young children, and her father at some point backed his pickup truck over one of those very young children, his grandchildren. That two-year-old died.
From what I could tell, this large extended family never mentioned the incident. Unless you happened to know of it, you would never know it had occurred. Nobody acted guilty or grief-stricken, least of all the cheerful grandfather, although by the time I knew the family it was a few years since the accident.
I think maybe they decided to put it behind them and live their lives as best they could.
I'd like to say that this story made me check behind my car each time I started it. But long before I heard that story, I would not move my vehicle unless I knew EXACTLY where both of my young children were. I was compelled to do a visual check on both of them, and also to make sure that my husband or another family member had them contained, before I would dare to move my car in any direction.
I stopped all that when they were tall enough that I could easily see them standing behind, in front of, or alongside my car, like any other pedestrian.
This is one of my worst fears. If my children are playing outside when I back out of the garage (and when anyone else is coming or going from our driveway) I insist they stand "in the grass" where I can see them, and they are clear of the driveway. When they were littler I was so afraid one would bolt, so I kept my eyes trained on them as much as possible until I made it out of the driveway.
Even now that they're a little older, I make it a habit to call/text "heads up: when you pull in the driveway, be aware the kids are playing outside" when I know someone is en route to our house. I also remind the kids to be extra vigilant if we're expecting someone to come down the driveway.
Cars in parking lots...oh my goodness...
These scenarios worry me far, far more than stranger abductions or someone hurting my kids or any of the other things parents sometimes freak out about.
My mother told me that her old pastor accidentally killed his daughter when he was backing his car up. He became an alcoholic afterwards. I felt so sad and sorry for him.
There was a video being shared on Face Book recently of a 2 year old following his dad's truck out of the driveway. Both the kid & dad were saying "bye, love ya" over and over.
I commented that it was a recipe for disaster to encourage the kid to run after his dad's truck. Everyone thought I was being negative
You have to find a way to move through the pain. My sister had a very hard time visiting our father's grave because the grave next door was the two year old son of a guy she went to high school with, who accidentally ran him over. The little guy loved story time, and he and his wife started a foundation to get books to schools, daycares and kindergartens for story time.
Alcohol masks the pain...but emotionally you never grow, so when you stop medicating, you're right there at the beginning again. At some point, you need to deal with it.
But nothing takes the pain away. My grandmother lost her first born to pneumonia (this was in 1920, way before antibiotics) and when she was in her 80's, she told me about him and got teary eyed.
You know, it was a huge fear with my daughter for me. I am so glad for back up cameras now, but when she was little, we didn't have them. My daughter has some insecure attachment issues from adoption and sometimes would panic when I was leaving, even if moments before she was fine. She would bold after me. Even backing out to go to the store would leave me in a cold sweat if she was home, even if she was inside. It didn't help our driveway was all cracked up back then.
I never worried about it with my other kids, too practical and safety conscious and not prone to freaking out.
I think somethings would be really hard to recover from. Accidently killing your child would be one of those.
Last edited by HighFlyingBird; 04-15-2017 at 01:41 PM..
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