[Mindi]

Mephisto,

Addressing your points:

1. They actually have specialized pillows so they can't roll over now and accidently suffocate as this poor child did. There are other methods that people use to make cribs and sleeping in general safer for a baby. Of course there are no guarantees.

2. Babies should only be left for hours during the night when parents are sleeping. I would think at 4 months however you would still be using a baby monitor and be getting up during the night to check on the child as well. Granted, this does not guarantee a baby will not suffocate, but they are basic safety precautions that most parents use to ensure they know if their baby is in trouble. And the fact remains that in this case they chose to leave a baby alone for 5 hours with no one in earshot to hear if the child was in trouble or to check on the child. In the states if you did that and the authorities found out, your child would be taken from you and put in foster care until you got some parenting courses and proved you were a fit parent along with dealing with criminal charges of neglect.

3. Playing a computer game is irrelivent, the neglect is not. I purposely said that the baby died from neglect and not a computer game as the computer game did not suffocate the baby, nor could it. I see this as a selfish act in which they are now responsible for the death of their child. What they were addicted to that they chose to put priority above their child is irreleveant--they could have been partying, at a bar, shopping, whatever--that doesn't matter. What matters is that the parents were neglectful and negligent in their daughter's death by leaving her, a 4 month old baby, in a house by herself for 5 hours. The implication from the parents that it would have been okay if they left her for only 1-2 hours by herself as usual completely boggles my mind. It shows that their parenting is lacking as is their judgement. Especially considering there was someone living right upstairs that could have watched the infant, but they chose to leave her alone anyway.

Just my $.02