Brian and Todd’s “28 Hours of Hope”

Over the last couple of weeks, the whole country has been delighted by the video of the baby who laughed at paper being torn up.

(Except when Matt Lauer did it.)

It was posted at K99.com- lots of other websites—“You Have To See This!” was the mantra.

Millions of people did see it– who doesn’t want to see a baby capturing the spirit of joy and surprise of life in a one-minute-50 second video- “Sure, I’ve got time for that…”

Years from now, you have to imagine that that baby’s parents will eventually hear a different mantra involving the same child:

“I HAVE to HAVE that!” “Please, Please, Please!” “I HAVE to HAVE it!”

Millions of parents will experience the same scene- whether it’s for a gumball, the new awesome shoes that everyone has, Call Of Duty 7, or an iPad 4.

I don’t have kids, but it seems that it must seem be part of the trade-off- you get the joys- they get the toys.

Millions of couples across the country say to themselves: “We want to experience those joys that come with raising a child! We have to have that!”

Brian and Todd’s event- The 28 Hours of Hope is about getting the joy back into these children’s broken lives and the joy back into their families.

Millions of people across the country probably wouldn’t be clicking on a video of what’s been happening to these kids.  You’re not going to see a Matt Lauer segment with the child and adult featured in said video.

Mostly, because there would not be a video. Child abusers are not looking for views on YouTube.  They’re not sending out a link and saying “Hey-check out my ‘epic-fail’ as a human!”

The abusers hide their shame. They do these horrible things, and then again use their power over the child to push them to keeping it a secret.

Kids, generally, aren’t great at keeping secrets. For example–it was supposed to be a secret when my brother and I were getting Mom a ring for Mother’s Day when we were about 6 and 9.  “It’s only $7 Mom!” ..Whoops..

That secret lasted about 9 minutes.

Child abusers take their position of power to commit their crimes, and then use their power to shame the child into keeping those crimes secret: “We have to keep this between you and me. We have to.”

So the child does keep it a secret- more scared of the abuser doing worse abuse than trying to get that secret exposed.

Eventually, the secret will get out. The adult will have to face up to what they have done; the child will face- down the line- that they were not bad, nor deserving of what happened in any way.

Brian and Todd’s 28 Hours of Hope raises money to help the kids who’ve been abused. Money to help the families the abuse has affected.  The money also goes to preventing child abuse—teaching children what IS wrong- what an ADULT is supposed to act like with children, and HOW to notify someone if something wrong is happening.

Briand and Todd do The 28 Hours of Hope – because WE have to help.

We HAVE to help.