Like those ladies you read about, who somehow lift an entire automobile off their child beneath it. I’d like to think I’d lift an automobile off my child if need be. Or that mom you hear about on the local news who rescues her child from a burning building. I’d like to think I’d do that. And if my kids were sick or worse, I’d do anything for my kids to make them better and to improve their quality of life.
That’s one reason the story of one Iowa mother, Leatha Kaye Slauson, had such an impact on me. After Slauson told her husband and her community that her 5-year-old daughter Riley was terminally ill with cancer, Slauson gave her daughter cannabis oil (medicinal marijuana) and posted the photos on Facebook. She raised money for her daughter’s care and took donations from kind strangers, friends and neighbors.
The problem, according to the KETV in Omaha, is that Riley didn’t have cancer. Her mother had concocted the entire story to prey upon kind-hearted locals who wanted to help. Slauson even went so far as to shave her daughter’s head to make her look like she was in treatment. Even worse, according to police reports, she made her daughter’s father think the story was true. She made him think his own daughter was dying of cancer.
Slauson was arrested after administrators at Riley’s school caught on to the scheme. She’s now facing drug and child endangerment charges.
Along with the moral and ethical issues, the trauma to the 5-year-old girl, and the pain the father must have suffered, what about the karma of it all?
I may be superstitious, but what mother is anything but superstitious in regards to her child’s health. I would never consider faking my own child’s illness for fear it might come true. Whether or not you believe in karma, why experiment with it on your kid?
Because what if. What if the worst thing happens to your kid? To her kid? I don’t like talking about or even thinking about anything bad happening to my kid. I’m not messing around with my children’s lives or future. I’m not joking about it. I’m not lying about it. I’m not exaggerating about it. And I’m not creating a scheme so I can get some poor neighbors to give me their savings account so I can take a better vacation at their expense.
I’m not putting anything out into the world in regards to my children that isn’t positive and helpful. I don’t want to find out if you really do reap what you sow. Because lying about your kid’s health is one terrible way to find out that, yes, indeed, you really do reap what you sow. Or, if you do lie about your kid’s health and she gets sick? It could be an awful coincidence, but you deep down inside you would never know. What if?
Photo: Getty
