She is sixteen years old now, verging on adulthood.  When she was born we were verging on age 60.  When she was nine months old her mother returned to work, and our daughter gave our granddaughter over to us to provide the infant with day care and lots of love.  We had her in our through-the-working-day care until she was nine years old, when her mother moved an hour's drive from our home.  When she was four we placed her in a half-day pre-school setting where we also did volunteer work.

It wasn't easy for us, looking after a vibrant, energetic little girl with a vast curiosity and a stubborn streak, but we managed.  When she was really young I would put her in a backpack child carrier when our daughter brought her over before seven in the morning and we would embark on an hour's ravine walk, then return home for breakfast.  In the winter, we would pull her through the snowpack in a deep-sided sled.

In the summer months we would take her daily to any of the many parks that helpfully dot our neighbourhood, with all the play equipment any child of imagination would enjoy playing with.  There we would see daycare givers with several children in their care, and often enough one woman would have five infants she would be looking after, and we wondered how on Earth she managed.

Imagine, we found it a challenge to look to the needs and affections of one single little girl, and there were caregivers who were looking after four times that number and more.  There is an inquest being conducted in our city at this time, in its second week of enquiry and listening to witnesses.  Last summer one daycare giver of an unlicensed daycare called some of her friends for a daycare get-together at her place.  Other daycare givers arrived with their charges.  And there were thirty children of all ages, in the company of five adults.

One woman who had five very young children in her care, along with her own children, making for seven, lost sight of a two-and-a-half-year-old little boy for a few minutes.  And, needless to say, that's how long it took for little Jeremie Audette to find his way up the stairs of an above-ground pool.  As it happened the daycare giver's nine year old daughter heard another girl exclaim, and rushed over to see what was occurring.  She recognized little Jeremie at the bottom of the pool and, a good swimmer herself, decided to "save him".  Her mother beat her to it, but even after administering CPR, and experiencing the child throwing up, nothing could save him.

The children, the distraught daycare giver testified at the enquiry, were always under "constant supervision", she was always checking on where they were.  She could not recall whether the gate to the enclosed pool had been locked or unlocked.

It doesn't take much, a moment of distraction, a busy mind looking elsewhere, intrinsic trust that all would go well.  Take the mix of five women gathering in one place, the spacious backyard of a friend and colleague, and there is much to talk about, while keeping a wary eye on the playful antics of curious, adventurous children.  In that kind of setting there is much to explore, in the mind of a child.

And then there are other types of accidents.  A prosecutor in Pittsburgh has decided not to bring criminal charges against the mother of a two-year-old little boy.  Whom she had lifted atop the railing of the Pittsburgh Zoo enclosing a cell of wild dogs so he could better see the animals below.  The child stretched himself forward and the mother lost her grip on his waist and he slipped from her grasp, falling into the pit of wild dogs below, the African painted dogs that comprised a part of the display of the zoo.

This was another "tragic accident", where instead of drowning, a child was mauled and killed by a pack of wild dogs, eleven of the animals in the pack.  Accidents happen.  People are not always alert to dangers even when the danger is a conspicuous one; their imaginations somehow fail to inform them that they are required to be particularly attentive and careful. 

The care, and the security of young children is a grave undertaking.