Letter: Grieving family hurt by column

Thursday, April 18, 2002 | 9:01 a.m.

I read Susan Snyder's April 9 column about child inattentiveness, and believe that she severely overstepped the boundaries of what should be considered a private family matter.

Since, as she said, this is a "delicate" matter, she should not have handled it "indelicately." I, too, am a writer, and would never dream of writing about something so sensitive and potentially damaging. Her column made me cry.

Our child drowned in a bathtub earlier this year. She can have absolutely no idea what we as a family have gone through the past few months to try to rebuild our lives while maintaining a nurturing and positive family life for our 3-year-old daughter. If she did, she would not write such a column.

We consider ourselves to be good parents; safety locks on all doors, guard gates at the top of the stairs, self-locking patio gate around the pool, locks on all kitchen utensil drawers, etc. To classify all parents to whom this type of tragedy has occurred as bad, selfish, uncaring parents is not just. Obviously, we wouldn't have left the bathtub for the minute we did if we thought for a moment that our child would drown, but I should not have to justify my actions to her.

We will live with our tragedy forever. But our daughter deserves a happy childhood and we will do everything in our power to give her that. We do not need to read columns such as hers that only add fuel to a very painful fire.

There are plenty of other, more appropriate things to write about.

J. HAYDEN