When tragedy strikes a celebrity it is going to be big news. When Adrian Peterson’s son was tragically beaten to death by his son’s mother new boyfriend, of course everyone sent their sympathies to Peterson. This goes beyond football or celebrity, a young child was murdered and I think that hurts everyone.
People are wondering how Adrian Peterson with his son in a coma, could have went back to practice and now that his son has passed away can play on Sunday. Most of us who are parents, would be devastated to the point we wouldn’t be able to function at all.
The truth of the matter is that Adrian Peterson just found out the child was his not to long ago and the first time he laid eyes on the child was when he was in the hospital. While he had planned to spend some time with the child soon, the fact he had another son was still new to him.
At this point you can only imagine the range of emotions that Peterson is feeling. He never even had an opportunity to build any type of relationship or bond with his son thanks to this monster. His has another son Adrian Jr. who he has been with since day one, who he has had time to build a relationship and emotional attachment to. If this was Adrian Jr. or his daughter Adeja and not a son he just found out about would his reaction be different? No one can say for sure, but maybe in time he would have built that same type relationship with his new son, but he will never get the chance and that is heartbreaking. These are the type of situations, we can’t worry about what we would do or how we would react. You have to let the person in the situation deal with it the best they know how.
Even though the headline was Adrian Peterson’s son (and we are guilty of that headline as well), there was someone else in the situation (the woman’s Ex-Boyfriend, not the current one who is in jail for the murder) who was acting as the child’s father for the last two years. There is another man grieving over a child, who he thought was his son for almost two years. There are family members who have been there every day of the child’s life grieving as well, so we don’t want to forget them in our thoughts and prayers, while we are also sending those out to Adrian Peterson. Being a biological father doesn’t make you a dad. Being a dad is being there in the child’s life and proving a positive male role model for that child.
Before you pass judgment on Adrian Peterson just remember this wasn’t something he was aware about until recently. It wasn’t like he knew the whole time and kept the child a secret. What he would have done in the future we will never know, but I would hope that he had planned to treat the son he just found out about as well as he treats his own son.
It isn’t a simple situation and it doesn’t have a simple solution. Adrian Peterson thought it was best that he return to to the team and play on Sunday, while you might disagree, it isn’t your call to make.