Something's going wrong in Milwaukee: in two separate incidents, two six-year-old boys were left in daycare vans that were meant to transport them home. Both boys had fallen asleep and were not seen by the van drivers.
In one case, the boy's mother was out of town; he was being dropped off with two of his siblings into the care of someone else -- someone who apparently had no idea how many children they were meant to care for. The boy slept in the van Friday night, unseen and unclaimed until his mother came back Saturday morning and began searching for him.
The other case involved a boy whose family only took "an hour or two" to begin looking for him. Both cases are being investigated, but it's hard to know how much more the police will find beyond the simple tragedy of neglect. It's a miracle the boy left overnight was happy and healthy when found; Wisconsin nights can get cold in February.
As much as I read these stories as horrible examples of slack parenting, I remember an ex-boyfriend whose mother had six kids, and was always leaving one behind when the family stopped at gas stations on long car trips. It got me thinking: what does it take to forget about a child?
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