Six-year-old Taylor Webster's neck hurt. So her foster mother, Joanne Alvarez, gave her some Baby Motrin: good parenting.
But when the Motrin didn't help, Alvarez attached a pain patch of prescription Fentanyl to the child's skin: bad parenting. Bad, bad, bad parenting.
Taylor was found unconscious in her East Harlem apartment yesterday afternoon. She was rushed to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Alvarez was arrested and charged with criminally negligent homicide. And I can't decide whether or not I think that's a good thing. I mean, it seems pretty clear that Alvarez was just trying to help Taylor feel better - if she wanted to poison the kid, why start with Baby Motrin? But the leap to an adult dose of Fentanyl is hard to fathom. Fentanyl is a hard-core analgesic that's prescribed when milder, oral painkillers have failed. One dose controls pain for up to three days.
There's no doubt that children depend on their guardians to keep them safe, and adults need to be very careful when administering medicine to children. But I can't help but ask myself whether a Park Avenue mom who accidentally overdosed her kid would also be charged with criminally negligent homicide, or whether the police would simply tsk, "Hasn't she suffered enough?"
