Facebook and a Child Drowning

A thirteen month old boy died on September 20, 2010 from "anoxic brain injury, cardiac arrest and drowning." How did this child drown you may ask, well, he was in the bathtub. Where were his parents you ask? His mom was in the living room...on facebook. Colorado woman, Shannon Johnson (age 34) was arrested last week on count of child abuse. If she is convicted, she will face 16-48 years in jail. Johnson put her son into the tub, noting that the water was slightly higher than she normally puts it, then she went into the living room to check out facebook. She had started leaving her son by himself in the tub about two weeks before the incident happened, saying that "he really wanted to be left alone; he was a very independent baby." Her mother had had a conversation with her about leaving her son in the tub by himself, but Johnson didn't recall the conversation. About a month before the incident took place, the child had been treated for a seizure. Johnson did check on her son and found him playing happily with his toys, then left him once again. About three minutes later, she didn't hear him playing anymore, went in to check on him, and found him sideways in the water. The baby was airlifted to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. 

I know lots of people complain about social networking sites such as facebook, saying that we rely on them too much and waste so much of our time on those sites when we could be doing something useful. To a point, I agree with those people, and this article will be more fuel for their conversations. First, this lady must have been screwed up at least a little, or at least not have her priorities straight. Who leaves their 13 month old baby in the bathtub by his/herself? Not only does she leave the child on his own, but she goes on facebook, plays games, reads her friends' statuses, while her son is in the next room drowning.. yeah, I guess she thought reading what her friend did last night was more important than the life of her child. Then, her excuse for leaving her 13 month alone was that he really wanted to be alone and that he was a very independent baby. Are you kidding me? At 13 months a baby is just getting walking down pat and is barely talking. How do you know a child really wants to be left alone if they can barely talk? Yes, you can tell if a child is independent at a young age, but it still doesn't matter, as a parent you should know better than to leave your young child alone when they are in the bathtub. There is plenty of other time during the day that she could let her son be independent. In this case, Johnson should have been even more wary about leaving her son alone because just a month ago, he had been treated for a seizure. Maybe he had a seizure before he drowned, and if she would have been in there, she could have helped him. She did so many things wrong in such a short amount of time. I really think she should spend some time in jail, because of her actions and lack of common sense and poor decisions, she killed her son. Nothing can take that back.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/01/18/colorado.mother.charged/index.html?hpt=Sbin