A chilling missing child case in Tucson, Arizona has one set of parents terrified that they'll never see their 6-year-old daughter again. And here's betting the search for Isabel Mercedes Celis will make bedtime harder for parents across the nation tonight. Can you imagine putting your first grader to bed at night, then waking up in the morning to find her gone?
I don't want to imagine it. But I guess I can. Parents have to sleep. And -- like it or not -- that means we have to give up a little bit of control.
But the way Tucson Police are describing Isabel's last moments before her disappearance strikes right at the fear that exists in all of us over those hours when we're passed out in our beds. They say her parents last saw her around 11 p.m. on Friday night before they went to bed. But when they got up at 8 a.m., they told police, she was gone.
Within 15 minutes, they'd called the cops, but despite a day and a half of searching, so far they've come up with nothing. Right now police say Isabel could have been kidnapped, or she could have walked off by herself.
I'm ashamed to admit I'm neurotic enough to have pondered both over the years. Cases like that of Elizabeth Smart -- the Utah teenager kidnapped from her own bedroom a decade ago -- have made me manic about locking the windows and doors of my house. And I won't lie. The day my daughter learned how to unlock and open a door was bittersweet. I wanted to be proud of her dexterity, but all I could think of was the child in my area who was found dead outside her own home a few years back. She'd left the house in the middle of the night, but couldn't make her way back in, and her parents were sleeping through the whole thing, innocently unaware that their child was dying of exposure.
Now we have Isabel Celis. She's this tiny little girl -- just under 4 feet tall, 44 pounds. And she's gone, seemingly disappeared into thin air. It's hard not to want to grab our babies and not let them go until Tucson police give us an answer.
I refuse to be one of those helicopter parents who is so afraid to allow their child some breathing room that they have a 6-year-old sleeping in a trundle bed in their own room. But if we completely ignore these types of news stories, we do so at our own peril -- there's usually something worth learning from them. I'm just hoping that what we learn from Isabel Celis' case comes after she's found safe and sound.
What are your biggest fears when you put your kids to bed for the night?
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Comments 45
The idea that the cops said she may have walked out on her own really hit hard. A few years back my daughter started to sleep walk and talk. I would find her sitting in the living room , in hue dark staring at the tv. Sometimes she comes to my room and tries to talk but I know she is sleepwalking because she doesn't make a lot of sense. I just turn her around and send her back to bed. A few times she snapped out of it and was confused but most mornings she does not remember doing anything. It has been a fear of mine since that she will start unlocking doors , Windows etc. During an episode. We now have a better idea of what triggers her sleepwalking, for her stress and fatigue seem to be the culprits. If she goes to sleep way too late or a stressful event is coming up, like the first day of school. The doctor says she will grow out of it. God, I hope so. Every bump or thump at night wakes me up and I check on her. I have become a super lite sleeper.
I hope this girl is found alive and safe my thoughts are with the family.
Every little bit helps.
I have none of these at the moment. But we have been trying to decide between 2 different security systems, so we should have one inside the next 10 days.
I dread the outcome of this case. Too many of these have gone badly lately
There have been several news reports lately of attempted abductions around my area and things like this just freak me the hell out. Luckily my husband and I recently decided on adding security alarms on all our doors and we never sleep with our bedroom doors closed..our rooms are very close together and Im a very light sleeper.....Whatever you can do to keep yourself secure!
I hope this girl is found safe :(
i hope she is found too,but it usually ends up being the parents. some people shouldnt have children
I find it hard to believe these stories anymore. Not that it doesn't happen, but more times than not the parents have killed and stashed the child's body somewhere. I hope she is found alive and well, and I hope the parents had nothing to do with it ... but now a days, you just never know.
When my son was 3, his father and I found him at 9 p.m. in the dark, talking to a strange man in a car. He had crawled out the window. After being terrified beyond belief, his dad spanked his butt and nailed the windows shut!! Thankfully, it never happened. Happily, he's now a 49-year-old father of 3 terrific boys and an upstanding man but when I think what could have happened even back then, it still chills me to the bone.