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.

This is absolutely shocking. Honestly, how could they not notice for 2 hours that their child was missing?!

Fair enough, we have all had moments when we have forgot for a few minutes (last week I came home from shopping, thought my 3 year old was in the house, next thing a neighbour knocked saying dd was upset outside. She was only out there for a few minutes but by then she was hysterical.)

I just can't imagine this family driving off and not realizing at all.

The reason people get outraged about events like this is because it just taps into that fear that we could all do something like this because, we could.

You've got to decide if it's an accident, i.e. caused by a series of unpredicatable events leading to a negative outcome, or whether it's as a result of negligence.

Negligence being sustained behaviour, over weeks or months or years.

With the teeny tiny little bit of information presented in the media it sounds more like accident than negligence.

We can't know.

Getting outraged about accidental situations is like saying "I'd never crash my car and kill anyone". Right.

Exactly. It was the outcome of a particular series of events. If just one thing had been different, it wouldn't have happened.

I can't imagine how they could not have noticed the child was missing for that long. I can just about see them forgetting to strap her in, and driving off without her - but I'm a big one for checking mine are all right in the back, do they need anything, and I'll ask the 7yo if the 2yo is asleep if I can't see myself. There is no way I would not have noticed the 2yo being absent for more than 10-15 minutes, if that long.

I'm just staggered by this story. They are SO LUCKY.

The obvious answer, as someone has already suggested, is that everyone except for the driver was asleep or dozing. Quite natural when travelling after lunch. And on a long car journey, most people are thankful when the kids fall asleep instead of fidgeting and fighting.

The thing that stands out for me is that the girl let her family drive away without screaming blue murder, and it sounds like she just sat waiting / wandered about on her own for a couple of hours without getting upset. I'm working from a small sample group, but that doesn't sound right to me for a 3yr-old.

She was awake and out of the car. She said she watched 'daddy's car pull away' according to the published report I first saw, as Intheprocess says. It just seems so odd.

My son would have watched me drive away at that age! He also couldn't have explained himself enough to get info on radio.

It seems like there an mpv, child in back seat, maybe RF car seat? It says she's very quiet.
We don't have much information but the info we do have does seem to add up to how it happened.

I sat in the car for some time (DM was in the shops ) watching my sister hanging upside down in her car seat with the straps round her neck, when I was 4, and didn't move or make any attempt to help her or alert anyone, apparently.

It's a standing joke in the family that I probably didn't care but I think I'd been told under no circumstances to get out of the car, so I didn't. Just following instructions.

You can't expect children of that age to behave in a particular way based on how an older child or adult might. Really you can't expect anything at all.

Let's talk, genuine question because you've got 4, do you think it would be negligent not to do what you do or do you think you do more than 'reasonable' just because you feel more comfortable doing it?

"Getting outraged about accidental situations is like saying "I'd never crash my car and kill anyone". Right."

Yes.

I am absolutely PMSL at posters who declare that the parents did it deliberately and malevolently.

People malevolent enough to abandon their toddler at a service station, are generally calculating enough to make sure they don't do things they can be prosecuted for. So though they might be malevolent enough to want to do that, they don't actually do it because they don't want to risk prosecution.

It really is mad to instantly decide that these people did this on purpose.

Also the "3 hours with no questions about drinks in summer" etc. - well, some people are well organised, supply their kids with plenty of drinks when they get in the car and have working air conditioning, so no problem. Not everyone fears that their children will be surrounded by ravening wolves in the back seat if they don't look back and check them occasionally.

These parents might be neglectful, horrible bastards, of course. But it is ever so slightly unhinged to instantly decide they are, without further information.

Sadly this thread is tame compared to some of the comments in the French press. They are slaughtering them.

I feel very sorry that is probably a sequence of accidental events that couldn't have been predicted and yet people are so vitriolic in their judgement.

There seem to be conflicting reports about exactly how much time elapsed between the family driving off and realizing they had left the child. I've seen 90 minutes, 2 hours, 3 hours...

Certainly for 90 minutes I can imagine how it could happen. If it was an MPV with the child in a rear-facing seat on the back row of seats, the child had just been fed and watered at the services, was wearing a nappy, and was expected to sleep in the car.

The Washington Post is really worth a read, even though it's incredibly harrowing (I was weeping so much I had to stop reading a couple of times). It completely blows away the comforting notion of "it couldn't happen to me because I'm a good parent who loves my children".

That should be Washington Post article^.

My dad left my sister in the fruit and veg shop when she was a baby and didn't realise until he got home. Luckily they knew who she was. I can't quite believe it

There are reasonable answers to all the questions that are being asked.

• Why didn't the other children notice?

Maybe they were asleep, or very young, or sitting on a different row, or absorbed in what they were doing (if being bribed with the ipad DS wouldn't notice if we had all been abducted by aliens), or they have SN that meant they didn't notice/couldn't communicate.

-Why didn't they ask her if she wanted a drink/wee or check her for nose bleeds and vomit?

She is three and eloquent enough to say 'I saw Daddy's car driving away' so she can presumably say 'I'm hot', 'I need a wee', 'I need a drink', 'My nose is bleeding' and 'I've been sick' so probably doesn't need to be constantly asked. I assume they took her silence to mean a. she was ok or b. she was asleep.

-Why didn't they look back and check?

Maybe they couldn't see her if she was in the back row and/or in a rear facing seat. Maybe all but the driver were asleep.

-Why didn't they strap her in when they set off?

Well they both thought the other did it obviously. Or one of them did do it and she got out again and they didn't realise (We have 4 and this happens a lot. You get two in and then go and look for the missing two, come back with them and one of the others has got out to get something, go back for them and one of the others gets out!).

-Why didn't they stop for the next two hours?

Because they were trying to get somewhere! No-one stops every two hours on a long journey.

I can see how it could happen. I don't think there is any reason to suggest they did it deliberately.

We were on the French motorways on the day the child was left and it was hell. Hideously busy, cars rammed to their roofs with holiday stuff, the service stations were chaos. So yes I can imagine a scenario where a child could be left. They must have been distraught

"No-one stops every two hours on a long journey."

And especially not so in mainland Europe where the idea of a long journey is much longer than the typical idea of a long journey in the UK. You might stop once every 3-4 hours, but if kids are sleeping and you can stretch it out you might get away with 5. People do this all the time.

And I don't think for a moment that if this happened in the UK that social services would have arranged foster care and removed all of the children without any questions asked. They may well have opened up an investigation, but removing children requires a court order and proof of risk and there just aren't enough foster carers for children to be zoomed straight to them when they've been missing/unclaimed for an hour or so.

It was 30 minutes or so until somebody noticed that the child was unattended so she would have been in the company of police for around an hour or two max. That would have been the same in the UK. I don't think the French authorities are being so lax.

I couldn't help laughing when I read this, sometimes have felt like doing this with DS1 when he's getting on my nerves but would never carry it out. Especially in the summer holidays when it gets overwhelming, they argue in the car etc...

I am sure it was an 'accident' right enough.....

"My dad left my sister in the fruit and veg shop when she was a baby and didn't realise until he got home."

My granny left my mum sitting in the pram outside the grocers years ago, went home, and realised something was missing...! It does happen, I suppose.

I feel incredibly sorry for them and really hope the poster who is utterly convinced it's neglect and an intentional abandonment is not working in anyway shape or form in law enforcement or social care.

I drove this road yesterday, heading north, which was empty enough. Going south was blocked solid though. Although I'm not excusing them, I can perhaps see how this happened. Each parent thinks the other has strapped her in, children have gone to sleep......... driver is stressed at the level of traffic.......

One thing slightly worth noting though is that the motorway has it's own radio station that broadcasts traffic news etc and this was the station that the appeal for the parents was broadcast on.