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.

10-15 minutes and coming back at the next exit saying multiple fucks and blaming each other is a parenting fail.

90 minutes and hearing it on the radio sounds like parents so tired and utterly stressed they need serious help.

I must say I do t get it from the news story, but then we all know how news gets distorted and blurred so am holding fire on the criticism just now

Ah Coconutty, that makes sense.

Just wondering if it makes a difference to people being able to 'get it' or not that I don't think it was a motorway service station as some people are saying. It seems to have just been a picnic and play area by the side of the motorway. I can see how maybe it might be easier for you not to notice a three-year-old of yours that should have been in the car if there were other families/children around playing (don't know whether there were any other people around at the time though).

www.leparisien.fr/faits-divers/drome-une-fillette-de-3-ans-oubliee-sur-une-aire-de-repos-de-l-a7-09-08-2015-5000209.php

My children are actually better on a long journey as we have the DVD players - the big 2 are transfixed therefore we do not here a word and the smallest (also 3) often goes to sleep. So we can go pretty far without actually hearing them.

It is still a very strange situation though.

Oh no
'hear'

If it was one of the huge station areas it might make more sense.
We drove from England to Spain with 3 children under 10 once and got caught in a huge traffic jam. We were stuck for hours, the service station area was like a circle of hell. We were tired and fractious, stressed beyond belief.
The children were so hot and tired we had hours in the car with hardly any conversation - just music. All quietly dying inside.

I had the same idea as flossie. My DC at 3 were a pita and ran off lots so we would double check they were locked and loaded. If they had a 3 year old and 2 younger ones it's conceivable that each thought the other had strapped them in. At that age neither of mine would have batted an eyelid as long as long as they had someone to play with!

I have 3dc and I can now easily imagine how that could happen (with one or two not so much).

I am forever having a heart stopping moment thinking I have forgotten one of them, particularly if they are somewhere else unexpectedly. I once left dc2 in the school playground after drop off. Only for ten mins and I like to think i would have noticed a missing child before 2 hours had passed, but in the car when everyone seems to be quietly occupied and i might be reading or chatting to dh, I can't honestly say it couldn't happen.

I can't believe the number of people here who are saying they can easily see how this could happen. there is a vast difference between leaving a child for a few minutes, getting confused thinking the other parent had her then realising, and driving off without her, not paying any attention to your children for two hours and being alerted to the fact you don't have her by something on the radio. So clearly paying more attention to the radio than the children in their own car then.

A car is a confined space. And do people really not interact with their children at all for hours and hours at a time when travelling? really? Not even look back in the mirror to see that they're sleeping?

If there hadn't been an appeal on the radio I wonder how long it would have been until they realised she was gone? They didn't realise if this was the UK I don't imagine there would have been an appeal with child being casually reunited when they happened to come back. I imagine the child would have been placed in emergency foster care initially with appeals being broadcast on the news maybe later in the day, and they'd be lucky not to have the other kids taken into care as well while their suitability as parents was assessed.

This isn't an oversight where you misplace a child for a few minutes and rush back. This was neglect.

I don't think anyone has said it could easily happen.
I don't know about others but I am just trying to figure out if there was a sequence of factors that could make it just a really unfortunate mistake rather than the parents just not giving a shit. I think it's probably better to hope that the child is being reunited with disstressed and mortified parents rather than uninterested and indifferent ones.

It's the length of time that seems so odd. I mean, anybody can forget somebody for a short time. DAVID CAMERON forgot his daughter after all

I'm just wondering how much longer that poor child would have been left if the parents were listening to CDs or Bluetooth.

I could have understood an hour or something, but not to notice until the radio broadcast...

So I can imagine driving off without one child, but am sure we would have quickly realised 15 minutes top? (The number of times DH had a day off and we had a brief heart attack as we missed a child, only to realise they were at school/nursery etc.). Then it might have taken quite sometime to find somewhere where we could turn around and return, it can be quite a long way between junctions in France.

BTW I think the French equivalent of a Social Services investigation is going on. I know when I lost my youngest, when she had been found the police did question my other two children, just to check there was nothing that needed investigation (even though I'd been the one to call them in, and it was obviously not my fault).

Coconutty makes a good point about a convoy - and if that was the case, I can see how it could happen.

Otherwise, no. There's just no excuse.

I can actually see this happening more easily in a car than anywhere else, especially if it was a people carrier type car.

Each parent may have thought the other had put the child in the very back. She may have been a bit tired and grumpy before hand, so may have thought she had fallen asleep straight away and as no one could see her, they just carried on and two hours went by.

You know what French Children are like, they are all so well behaved it would be very easy for two hours to go by without a peep.

It was actually nearer 3 hours according to the report.

They left the services at "around 12 o'clock" and made contact with the police at 3

all this talk of a convoy is just excusing shit and neglectful parenting. There were three children and two adults. hardly enough to warrant a convoy. And it said in the article she had seen her dad's car drive off, so there's no suggestion that there was more than one car.

Even if the dc had all fallen asleep as soon as everyone was in the car, it's inconceivable that neither of the adults even looked back once during the space of nearly three hours, and that the only realisation that she was missing came when there was an appeal on the radio.

three hours nobody wondered whether the kids wanted a drink in the back of a car at the height of summer? Whether a three year old might need the loo at some point? nothing? I wonder whether an investigation might point out that the older children said something and were ignored or brushed off.

Nope, I don't believe for a second that they didn't know they didn't have the child in the car.

I think if there was a convoy of cars, that might have been mentioned in one of the articles?

The link in the OP just says she had a brother and sister - it doesn't say they were older. Do people know that they were both older from another source?

I have looked after a friend's child when both parents drove off separately, each thinking the other other had him. And I've accidentally left a child with friends, again, I thought she was walking home with her Dad and he thought she was walking home with me. So if there was a convoy, I could see it happening. One car, not so much.

I'm not taking the news reports as accurate, as they all seem to be repeating from the same source.

A local French report has a different version. It says that the parents realised she was missing after the father asked the other children if they were all right. Each of the parents had thought that the other had strapped the little girl in. It sounds as though she should have been behind the other children, who hadn't noticed her absence either.

Les parents ont roulé près de 150 km avant de se rendre compte qu'il y avait un problème. Après le péage de Lançon de Provence, le père a demandé si tout se passait bien, à l'arrière. Il s'est rendu compte qu'il manquait quelqu'un. Les frères et soeurs de la petite fille n'ont en fait pas vu la différence. Celle-ci est installée dans le coffre depuis le départ. Et surtout est très discrète.

En fait, les parents ont oublié de l'installer à sa place au moment de partir. Le père a cru que la mère avait attaché la petite fille, et inversement. Ils ont donc quitté l'aire d'autoroute sans elle. Heureusement, des vacanciers l'ont recueillie. Elle leur a donné son prénom, celui de son père et la couleur de la voiture. Avec ces informations, ils ont alerté les gendarmes. Entre-temps, le père a fait demi-tour et appelé les militaires. Ils lui ont indiqué qu'ils avaient récupéré sa fille, saine et sauve. L'enfant a retrouvé ses parents vers 17h30.

Apparently my grandparents once drove off and left my mum at a services (back in the sixties, so she wasn't a tiny child). They realised eventually and headed back!

The thing I don't understand is why my aunt (her sister) didn't spot her absence....

Note it says "brothers and sisters" plural, so there may have been more than two other children. And there's no mention of the radio. I think they must have been in a people carrier, and the three-y-o should have been on the back row.

This is the worst of those type of stories. It has always stuck in my mind.
I can see how if you have a new baby and it's your first, it would be something that you might have moments you forget. Poor poor man.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2660491/Baby-dies-hot-car-outside-fathers-work-forgets-drop-daycare-discovers-five-hours-later.html