To think a quick headcount on getting back into the car is not too difficult to remember?

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

BBC news story here. A family left their 3yo at a motorway service station and didn't notice that she wasn't in the car for 2 hours. How? Poor little kid. Hope she's all right now.

The BBC says they left her around midday and her father rang the police at 3pm after hearing a police appeal on the radio.

So it would have been at least 5pm when they were re-united.

my dc often fell asleep in the car at that age. I'm not going to judge the parents - I can only imagine how awful they felt when they realised they'd left her.

In fact, the BBC article only says that she had a brother and sister - not that they were in the car.

My parents once forgot to put me in the car but I was a baby with a toddler sibling. They realised fairly quickly and I was soon collected from my cot. Can not understand a 3 year old !

It does seem odd that they didn't notice. Hard to say more really.

The BBC also doesn't say the siblings are older so they may be younger twins. I have my youngest in an erf and I have on many occasions checked to see if she was still there as I simply had no way of knowing. I guess it may come down to each thought the other had put her in.

I did on one occasion not strap dc2 into his seat, and he never told me (he has ASD so needed assistance at an older age) . I realised after 30mins of travelling down the motorway/main 70mph dual carriageway. So things can go under your radar.

I was left outside the corner shop too.

before even house phones were common never mind and mobiles, a friend took his toddler to the phone box to ring the hospital about his newborn and wife. he put his toddler DD on the shelf in there while he was on the phone. when he got home he realised he'd left her on the shelf

I don't think his wife found out for years.

My mum left one of my siblings behind at a shop once and drove for several miles without realising. One of the children was the first to notice that we were missing a toddler. Although we realised more quickly than the French family it still took an inexplicably long time for one of us to notice.

but the thing is they didn't notice that she was missing. They only rang the police when they heard on the radio that she had been found.

I wonder whether they perhaps left her behind deliberately then had a flash of conscience when she was mentioned on the radio.

Leaving a child behind for a matter of minutes and then realising is one thing, leaving a child behind and not even noticing that she was missing is quite another. If they hadn't had the radio on when would they have noticed? would they even have gone back?

Even in the cases mentioned where babies have died in cars it's different, because while it's hard to see how someone could forget their baby in a car they do go into an office where the baby wouldn't be, so they're oblivious to the fact it's still in the car. This was a family in a car for two hours where nobody noticed or thought to check that the kids were all ok. For two hours.

It really is quite mind boggling! My own DD is three and a half and even though she is my only child, I am constantly checking on her in my mirror, and unless she's fallen asleep, she usually got something to say too!!

I wonder whether she is a difficult child and was playing up at the service station so they drove off in exasperation then just kept driving. I don't believe for a second that this was an oversight. not for two hours. Not a chance.

I wonder whether she is a difficult child and was playing up at the service station so they drove off in exasperation then just kept driving.

I really, really don't want to believe that.

Agree with MrsD I am at my most vigilant at service stations/air ports/train stations etc as someone could take her (well not as likely as she is now 9yo but certainly a 3yo) and disappear really quickly.

I know most of us are guilty of a parenting fail or three but this is something else imo. Agree this may have been deliberate or there is something else weird going on.

well, it's a lot more plausible than: parents go on holiday, accidentally leave child at service station and then fail to notice until an appeal on the radio makes them think "oh, I wonder if that was us they're looking for? Did we pick up all the kids?" and then realising that they had left their dd behind and hadn't checked once that all the kids were ok in the space of two hours. Not once.

I've made my mistakes but like so many others have said, there's a timing element that kicks in. Something isn't right here.

DH struggles to get his head around how much of a laid back parent I am but I visited a friend last weekend and it made me realise just how often I check on DS in the car. Every fifteen minutes I freaked out a bit then had to remind myself he was at home with DH.

What I find odd is that the child left behind was three, so would have been in some kind of child or booster seat. You couldn't miss the empty seat without a child in it whilst you were you were strapping the other children in, could you?

I can only guess that perhaps the parents were rushed, flustered, tired. They were at the service station as a group, the three year old wandered off or just didn't follow the rest of the family. The parents told the children to get in the back and left them to strap themselves in and close the doors. Then the parents didn't look behind them for the next three hours as the other children were quiet (iPods? In car DVDs?) or asleep.

My DCs aren't always the best of friends but I think they would mention it if we'd left one of them behind!

My DCs go quiet in the car and I often "joke" with them about how we must have left the children behind. Even though I am almost certain know we haven't, I still check if it's quiet.

Just discussing this with OH and we've decided the parents had been up since the wee small hours to catch the ferry over, had a really stressful time packing the car, kids had played up in the service station and the parents had a mega-tired row with each other. So, stroppily put the kids in the car, each fuming and not really concentrating then proceeded to drive off in a huff, thinking all kids had gone for a snooze in the car.

My mum once left me in a supermarket trolley... She took my twin home.... Then came back for me :-)

Tbf I have also put one of my twins in the car and got in to drivers seat to see a little man waving at me from the trolley :-)

2 hours though??? Do they not check mirrors or was it a minibus?

I think the family are French Flossie

The silence in my car would give it away. Car journeys are a nightmare with 3 kids and a 5 seater car. Constant "mum, she poked me" "mum his knees on my part of the seat". We are on holiday at the moment and I am seriously considering letting my husband drive home with two children and taking one on the train.

Yes they are French. Just looked at other news reports but they are all similar.

Child left, family realise after radio broadcast. Seems that the info given on radio is what alerted them to the fact it could be their child.