What's a child's life worth?

Ohio recently passed Jarod's law, inspired by the death of a six year old boy who had a 290 lb table collapse on him.

It requires inspections of health, sanitary and safety conditions of all public and non public schools.

I truly feel for the family of this boy. It has to tug at the heart of any family to lose a child.

But this was the part of the article that caught my attention.

Many school districts have gotten a look at the draft rules, which they describe as extensive and potentially costly. Jim Bennett understands that districts worry about the costs.

"It's a very valid point that they raise. However, I would say that a child's health or a child's life ... you cannot put a price on the life of a child."

Actually Jim, we put a price on the life of a child each and every day.

Do your remaining children wear helmets all day? I don't see them on the children in the article. What if a brick fell off your house on to one of their heads. Do you drive on the freeway with your children in the car? Do your kids play any sports? Those are all prices we're willing to pay in the form of risk.

The fact is living is risky because death is always a possibility as soon as you get out of bed. But to pass laws in order to legislate each and every potential possibility is ridiculous. Who could have predicted that a ball hit off a kids bat would kill a kid at a little league game? Yet New York passes a law outlawing aluminum bats.

It seems to me all this stuff started with the "Baby on Board" signs. Somehow, we're all supposed Slooooooowwww way down because you have a kid in your car. As if we're going to play demolition derby on the freeway if you don't.

Adults are allowing their fears to take over their sensibilities and we continue to place all these barriers to make kids safer and then we wonder why our kids are fatter then ever. Kids are picking up on this collective neuroses.

I was at a family outing a few months ago and a kid got a nose bleed from bumping heads with another kid. I never saw so many people freaking out over a nose bleed. It's just one of the risks of being a child and sometimes we just can't legislate all the things kids get into.

It seems to me like we all need to take a collective deep breath and trust that God has all the risk associated with our children handled.