3-Year-Old Chokes To Death On Kinder Egg Toy, Internet Wastes No Time Blaming Mom
A three-year-old French girl died after choking on a small toy that came with her Kinder Surprise Egg. According to French police, the girl was with her mother when the incident occurred.
According to The Independent, “the girl put the toy, described as having wheels, into her mouth. It became stuck in her airway and she could not breathe. Firefighters who were called to the scene managed to resuscitate her but she succumbed to brain damage caused by the lack of oxygen.” Every parent’s worst nightmare.
The internet wasted no time blaming the mother — a mother who’s grieving because she just lost her child. Here are just a few of the hundreds of comments placing the blame on her for her child’s death:
The toys are not ‘hidden’ inside. You don’t just crunch into a toy at one point. These parents could have easily taken the egg out from inside to give her the chocolate, and followed the warning on the label. It sucks, and it does happen once in a blue moon, but it’s nearly always the parent’s fault.
The toys are in giant plastic orbs so if your little child chokes on a toy it really should be the parents who are responsible for the unfortunate accident.
Oh, for Pete’s sake – it’s not as if the parents weren’t aware that there is a small toy in there! If your toddler has not outgrown the stage where they put everything in their mouth, common sense would be to not give the toy to the child.
The toys inside are tucked into a plastic egg like container and the parents are supposed to take it out and put it together for them! Shame on those parents for not watching their child!
It happens time and time again – parents blaming other parents when a tragic story like this surfaces. If we can convince ourselves that a parent made a “bad decision” that resulted in this tragedy, we can also convince ourselves it’s a decision we’ll never make — thus our kids our safe. Even though deep down we know it’s impossible to keep our kids safe at all times, we convince ourselves that we can. This convincing requires a scapegoat. It requires someone to do something “wrong” so we can be “right.” We sit in our homes, looking at our children who are brimming with life, convinced that our superior parenting skills will guard us from tragedy.
And hopefully we’ll be right. Hopefully we’ll never have to live through a tragedy like this. But accidents happen. They’re terrifying and awful, but they happen.
These eggs were banned in the US because a non-edible object that poses a choking risk hidden inside an edible object like a chocolate egg simply isn’t safe for small children.
This story is tragic and terrible, but if you find yourself reaching to blame a parent, you better be damn sure you don’t have a singular anecdote of discovering your child doing something unsafe. We all do. We’ve all caught our children in compromising situations — it’s a terrifying part of parenthood. And if you haven’t, you’re either damn lucky or a damn liar.
