If all the world’s a stage, then the internet is its courtroom, judge, and jury (gavel down, sentence delivered, forever and ever, amen). This is particularly true when matters of parenting blow through the headlines; and most profoundly true when children are at the center of tragedies.

In the past month, we as a plugged-in society have born witness to a child at a zoo surviving a fall into a gorilla exhibit and a toddler being snatched away by an alligator on the shores of the Seven Seas Lagoon at Disney World. In the wake of these tragedies, thousands of faceless typists have made their opinions known commenting on news stories or their neighbors’ status updates.

Those who are at least tempered with empathy tiptoe along the lines, “I pray for those parents who let their guard down. If only they had heeded the signs. If only they had been vigilant.”

Those with less of a filter blare like air horns, “That would have never happened to me because I always watch my child! Those parents are neglectful!”

These two opinions, while differing in their stridency, are two sides of the same coin of defensive attribution. This is a mental mechanism used to avoid the worry that you too could become a victim or the cause of something bad. In these cases that translates into the belief that you are far superior at monitoring your children than the parent of the harmed child. As an added mind-bending  bonus, the more similar you are to the parents, the more likely you are to assign blame: “There has to be a reason this happened!” If there is a reason–some fault that can be pinpointed–then the protective portion of your brain reasons YOU could avoid such a thing. This reaction of placing blame on the parents becomes more amped-up as the situation becomes more serious. In short, this helps you feel less worried that bad things will happen to you and your kids.

I would say a child being snatched by an actual predator at the happiest place on Earth counts as a nightmare of what can happen if you let your guard down. The thing is, I can put myself easily in these parents’ places. I have walked along the sloping sandy shores of the beach surrounding that lagoon with my own kids throughout the years. I have strained my mind’s eye to recall if they ever touched the water, but I can’t remember because nothing horrible happened to etch it into my memory. I will be honest and say a “No Swimming” sign does not mean “Don’t Go Near the Water” to me, and I also have never once thought about alligators on the Disney property.

While I have a harder time relating to the gorilla incident, I never had the hubris to judge that mother, especially without all of the facts. Just like I can’t remember if my kids ever waded into the Disney lagoon, I can never know how many times my parenting vigilance slipped because by the grace of God, they were not the critical moments. They were not the moments that would write a chapter of tragedy into my life.

We as a species react to risk in an emotional way–a tendency that can heap added pain onto those who are enduring the most tragic event of their lives in the glare of the media spotlight. But the good news is we can cognitively understand our reaction. We can understand we assign blame to convince ourselves that an accident couldn’t possibly happen to us. We can understand that we need to believe we are untouchable because we are too smart or too attentive or too good or too whatever it takes to avoid the heartache.

Why is this good news? Because when our brains tell our hearts that accidents happen, empathy wins out over judgement. “But for the grace of God go I” is a sound way to live because you never know when you may need a little empathy for yourself.

-Ellen 

You can follow us on Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Check out our books, “I Just Want to Be Alone” and “You Have Lipstick on Your Teeth.”