I posted Jim Wright’s maxim of “There are no accidents with guns. ” to a Twitter thread about that, and got a one-word reply of “Disagree ” from someone.
Depends on the perspective.
The 3 year old had an accident with a gun. The person who left it available for a child to have an accident with didn’t.
And since it is, ultimately, their responsibility, it’s not an accident.
To the three year old who has to live with having killed her sister, I would stress that it was an accident on her part. She holds no fault here.
That poor kid is going to be in therapy for life.
They were visiting somebody else’s home where the gun was unsecured. Unbelieveably tragic.
My 4-yr-old daughter once found an unsecured loaded handgun at a close relative’s home during a large 4th of July party. Luckily she came to me and brought me over to it. I had no idea this relative could be so stupid.
She’s three - she won’t likely even remember, unless it is constantly brought up to her.
I don’t have a whole lot of memories of being three, but I do have some, and I would certainly remember shooting my sibling dead.
And even if she doesn’t, unless you are deliberately keeping things from her, she will remember having a sister, and wonder what happened to her. How long would you recommend lying to her? Do you think those lies will help when she inevitably finds out the truth?
The idea that it would have to be “constantly brought up” in order for her to know what she did and feel tremendous guilt over it is a ridiculous assertion.
My cat had to be put down, he was old and suffered from an abcess that eventually broke his jaw, so he could not eat. Heatbreaking, but he was 17 so not a bad run.
My daughter was around 2 at the time. She’s now almost 8, and remembers that cat, and misses him. She knows I took him to die.
That poor kid is in for a really shit life. 3 years old is plenty enough to remember trauma like this forever.
I may be (possibly even likely am) wrong. For her sake, I hope not.
I’m hoping that at worst she remembers she had a sister and she went away. Realizing it is not a documentary, something like Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman in Rainman.
I have almost no memories of being 3 years old except for when I had surgery, and I remember being in the hospital pretty vividly. Some memories can stick.
When I was about 10, I used to have a group of ‘friends’ on the street that I’d play RISK with. One kid, and his brother, shared a third floor ( 2 BR and one Bath). Sometimes we’d play there, in his room. One day, he told me that some of the dice were missing and to get them from his older brother’s night stand. I toddled on over and opened the top drawer to find… the dice… And an old fashioned long barreled .38 revolver. Loaded.
.
I brought back the dice.
That was RISK all right.
Nevermind
I can’t see any way around this, either.
The human mind is great at repressing traumatic memories, especially with children.
Maybe. Sometimes.
But definitely not a large percentage of the time.
And often that repression just hides the reason for trauma, but doesn’t repress the trauma itself.
There may be some hearing loss as well…
In more gun & toddler related news, Man with 2-year old in car opens fire during road rage incident.