…parents now are pushing for laws that would make it a felony for a day care worker to give a child medicine without written permission from a parent or a doctor’s order. One state already has passed such legislation.
Last month, North Carolina made it a felony to give children medicine without permission. That law was named for 5-month-old Kaitlyn Shevlin, who died in 2001 after being given the generic form of Benadryl. Her care giver, Josephine Burke, served four months in prison on misdemeanor charges of child abuse and neglect.
This is in light of at least 10 recent cases of day care workers sedating kids with cold medicines and cough syrups.
Four babies died in those cases.
I think it’s a shame that parents have time to wage legislative campaigns but don’t have time to raise their own kids.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average wage for child care workers in America is $9.57 an hour. This is less than we pay people to cut our hair ($10.40 an hour), shine our shoes ($9.95 an hour) and park our cars ($9.87 an hour).
Do you trust people earning $9.57 an hour to raise your kids?
I don’t.
That’s quite a bit less than I pay my gardener, for example, and yet if my gardener makes a mess of my lawn, or even kills it, I can recover from that without too much difficulty.
But when the day care worker kills my kid, that’s pretty tough to bounce back from.
Getting a law named after my deceased young’un? A very, very small consolation.