SC mom and her tragic mistake

A SC mom was arrested for leaving her three young children overnight by themselves in their home while she went out ALL NIGHT with a friend. She came home the next morning to find the children totally scared and the police waiting to arrest her. What a tragic mistake.
http://www.wyff4.com/news/15402927/detail.html

The moment I heard this story I thought of the kids in the family I work with here in DC. Their mom left for months, sadly. They all have a permanent hole in their hearts and broken lives.

While the media creates a demon out of this mother...I think of the kids. I cannot imagine more horror for a young child to endure then, after a harrowing night wondering about mom, each child is taken from her and a whole new nightmare begins. My #1 hope here is that this mother is shocked at the prospect of losing them and gets immediate help. What these kids don't need is to enter the system right now. Hopefully, they can stay with a relative while the mother gets therapy, has fines to pay, takes a parenting class and perhaps defers jail time. If this is her first contact with the social services folks, then there ought to be a creative solution.

Losing their mother now will create broken children, permanent and incurable heartache and lifelong issues.