The fear Black parents hold deep inside in order to survive

A 14-month-old was restrained and suffocated to death at daycare after a nursery worker 'tried to make him sleep.'

The fear Black parents hold deep inside in order to survive

The senior prosecutor in Noah’s case said the toddler’s death was down to “dangerous and reckless sleeping practices”, but Black people know these dangerous “practices” all too well.

OPINION BY MELISSA SIGODO

MARCH 29, 2026

Noah Sibanda was sent to daycare where his parents were told he would be safe. But instead of being gently lulled to sleep, he was placed face down on a cushion, covered with a blanket over his head and restrained by the leg of a nursery worker.

The senior prosecutor in Noah’s case said the toddler’s death was down to “dangerous and reckless sleeping practices.” But then we must ask, how does restraining a toddler with a leg become a practice? How does putting a blanket on a child’s head and placing them face down and unable to escape become practice? But once the shock of the prosecutor’s statement lifted, it hit me. After years of reporting on the Black community, it’s evident how such unfathomable horror becomes practice.

It becomes practice the same way Black children are disproportionately strip-searched without an appropriate adult. It happens in the same way Black mothers are ignored in hospital and left to die. It happens without question; it happens without pause and it continues with the weakest of justifications. But above all, in my honestly held opinion, it happens through the dehumanisation of Black children which starts from the moment of conception. This dehumanisation is then supposedly rationalised by so-called “cultural bias” or “doing the right thing.”

In the minds of many Black parents there is a crippling fear of such terror that grows and is buried deep inside us. We compartmentalise the fear of raising our babies which confronts us the moment our children enter this world. The all too familiar fear that rears its head in the deadly wards of maternity care. The horror that shows up when a 15-year-old Black schoolgirl is strip-searched on their period. And now, the fear that when you send your child to nursery, a staff member could even suffocate, restrain and end your precious baby’s life all in the name of ‘trying to make them to sleep.’

But we bury this fear as it is simply too paralysing to confront and too disorientating to manage. We bury the trauma and pass on lessons to our older children in order to survive. But for 14-month-old Noah completely at the mercy of the nursery, they destroyed any ounce of trust placed in them. How any human being could treat a precious child in such a way, I’ll never understand. Even after all the years of separating thoughts and emotions in my job, one look at Noah’s innocent face was too much to bear.

Eventually, I reported on the case after giving myself the distance to process it which was followed by mothers sending messages detailing the maternal rage that his story had ignited in them. The all-consuming, burning rage that lies under the chilling fear we suppress. Those messages unexpectedly lifted the weight of my own worries as a mother, helping me to confront the details of Noah’s death and find the strength to write this piece through tearful eyes.

So now, the nursery has closed down but the fact remains, a life barely lived is gone and a family is shattered. But they’ll be no inquiry, even at the very least to reassure parents that these “practices” will not and cannot happen again. The Crown Prosecution Service called it a parent’s worst nightmare, the nursery worker and owner will be sentenced and that’s all the justice that will come of it. But for a Black mother and father, this unbelievable horror is a reality they must face and all they’re left with is a callous explanation when Black parents know the truth of these “dangerous practices” all too well.

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