Mom Writes About “Distracted Living” After Close Call With Daughter

A Connecticut mom’s blog post on how an email almost killed her daughter is striking a chord with parents everywhere.

Jennifer Meer wrote on her blog, My Jenn-eration, about placing her 4-year-old daughter in the bath and hearing the ping of her iPad. She went to check the email and returned to the tub two minutes later to see her daughter slumped over.

 "I screamed. I slapped her face. She didn't wake up. But she seemed to be breathing and was otherwise all right, just asleep," Meer wrote in the Oct. 7 post.

Her daughter was OK, but the traumatizing experience inspired Meer to pen a post about the incident to in hopes of sparking a national conversation about our compulsion to multitask. A version she posted on The Huffington Post, where she is a contributor, has been the subject of more than 11,000 Facebook shares and 200 tweets so far. More than 300 commenters have chimed in, some sharing similar scares.

"Becoming a parent during the rapid rise of the era of tablets and smartphones, I have lost the ability to be present and do one thing at a time. It scares me," she wrote. "And on this night, my inability to focus could have cost me everything."
 

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