Child left in car in 35 degree heat

[Empress13]

Please tell me as I’m struggling to understand How the hell you could forget you have left a child in a car in such extreme heat. Unbelievable ! that poor child

Do you understand that tinted windows allow you to look out, but not in? Which means that unless you deliberately go and look over the seat, or open the back door, it is not always possible to see a car seat, particularly a rear facing one behind the driver's seat, let alone whether there is a child in it.

This.

I think those that have malice for people who have caused an accident (a genuine accident), are not the model citizens they perceive themselves to be. I hope to god I don't happen to know anyone with such a lack of empathy and that they are not employed in any role which involves dealing/talking/helping with people with any significance.

I hope, they never have an accident themselves since they clearly believe they're immune to mistakes. But since they are robots incapable of mistakes, I need not worry.

That was a harrowing read. Thanks for posting it.

Those rear facing car seats also, you might not even see them, and if a baby is asleep and you are exhausted, it could happen to anyone.

That article in the Washington post I read it years ago and I will never get over it.

Don’t read it.

Of those 39 deaths 15-25 of them are due to genuinely forgetting.

Im sorry you feel that none of the lives or the incomprehensible human suffering caused, are worthy of science understanding how and why that happens and looking at solutions. Fortunately there are others who disagree with you - such as the NASA engineers who came up with a prototype when one of their colleagues lost their child after forgetting about them.

I’m afraid you are the one who still thinks this is about neglectful parents deliberately leaving theif children in cars - not the subject matter of the discussion at all.

I will leave it there - I have no wish to argue with a pigeon shitting all over the chess board thinking its ‘winning’

I've asked MN to add trigger warning to the article link. It certainly cured me from the 'omg I would never' attitude, but indeed it stays with you for years.

Where have any of these reports said a parent has been on drug highs?

The vast majority seem to be normal everyday folk, out of routine going to work. I can't imagine many drug users are able to hold down jobs in the US any more than they can in the UK.

Most employers have random Drug and Alcohol test policies, random as in we suspect x is on something so we'll do a random test on x and 5 others to make it look random.

🤣👏🏻👏🏻

I was born in the mid sixties, and when I was small my Mum was the only one I knew with a car. Most people on our road didn’t have a car at all, and my mother was the only one who could drive. My Dad walked to work, so sometimes Mum would drive us to school if the weather was very bad. Most of my friends also had fathers who walked to work. There has been this huge shift in my lifetime re cars, and when both parents have cars this tragic mistake must be even easier to make. As many pps have said, leaving a baby outside a shop in a pram was normal when I was little, and so it was fairly common that someone would forget and start the walk home. I did this with my dog, early 90s, left him tied up outside the shop and on autopilot left by the side door and walked home. Thankfully he was fine. Same happened to a friend.
I can absolutely imagine how easily this can happen. I have noticed that when DH is very tired he does go into autopilot, and he’s driven home a few times at night and left the dog in the car for an hour . Thankfully not in daytime in the Summer or in hot weather as we tend to avoid having her in the car at all then.
I feel it would be so easy to do, automatically driving to work, if you do that daily- not thinking about the baby and then suddenly remembering. I think this could happen to anyone unless they also had built a habit such as checking the car every single time, or leaving something essential next to the baby, or checking all doors. This thread could help someone get into that habit and perhaps avoid another tragedy.

I do think it would be worth parents putting the car keys or bag in the back seat with the child.
Then you can't physically walk away without the kid..

Sorry, had to laugh at this, metaphorically, because the case is too sad to laugh. No idea how childcare works in Uk, but generally in Spain we pay nurseries by direct debit at the beginning of the month. If our child doesn´t turn up, they don´t refund anything, our loss. You seriously think that a normal parent would leave a kid in a car in 35C heat for something like 8 hours, no food, no drink no nappy change. I dread to think what kind of people you know.

Just to say I don´t need to look at my car to lock it, just point control in general direction as walking away and it locks. My back passenger windows and rear window are black (good feature to keep Spain´s sun out) and I am tall, I would have to bend over at the waist to see inside car.

After having read a story like this years ago, I was always so paranoid this could happen to me. So I have always found myself checking the kids are all in the car at multiple points throughout a journey (even though the youngest is now 13), always checking the back multiple times when getting out, even if I KNEW I didn’t have them with me - I figured that the habit might stop me from ever forgetting they are in there! I can completely see how it can happen and the science proves it isn’t intentional - as others have said, it’s recognising that it could happen that makes you more likely to check and take measures to stop it. Being so arrogant to think it would never happen to you is what could make it happen! The odds are on your side - it likely el t happen, so easy to act superior in that sense. But it just takes one occasion of all the wrong things at the same time (other parent taking them to nursery, kid falling asleep, rear facing car seat, you get a phone call just as you pull up, you’re running late, etc) and suddenly the perfect parent is facing a tragedy.

Also, I think this happens more to men than women (or at least it did when I read about it previously). This forum is mostly women and where women are the primary caregivers, it’s harder to see it from the other parents perspective because we know that our children are always front of mind. We know that men’s brains work differently and if they aren’t the one to be taking the kid to nursery normally of course it’s more likely to happen to them.

You can judge rather than try to understand if you like... but it increases the likelihood of it happening to you because it increases your complacency.

If this only happens to bad parents, and you're not a bad parent, then you'll be feeling fairly sure it will never happen to you (so no need for extra precautions). And that's fine... until god forbid it does happen.

I'm sure all those parents had read news stories about this happening to other parents and children. And the more compassionate amongst them will have thought "there but by the grace of God go I". And then one day, it wasn't there for them.

I am not a negligent parent. I love my children, I care for them diligently and I would walk over hot coals before seeing them come to any harm. But I cannot put my hand on my heart and say that it is impossible that this would ever happen to me. We lead busy, sometimes stressful lives, and one of the ways the human brain deals with this is to do large parts of the daily routines on automatic. It's a coping response, and it happens subconsciously to us all without us really noticing.

I know of two people who did this.

A man who worked with my BIL, had to bring his baby to nursery, it wasn't his usual day. He forgot she was there and drove to work. It wasn't until lunch time when he remembered, it was too late.

My ex boyfriend when he was circa 6 yrs old was left in his dad's car for hours but it was night time. The dad was supposed to be driving him to scouts before going on his night shift. Drove straight to work, and left ex in the car. Apparently ex assumed he would be back any time soon. It wasn't until mum went to collect him from scouts and he wasn't there that it was noticed!

Ironically, there are ways to prevent this sort of event (the alarms that are apparently mandatory in Italy) but the arrogant ‘I would never do this’ types mean they aren’t fitted as standard in most countries because the people who don’t understand the science won’t buy those cars because they think they don’t need the alarm and object to being called a bad parent (as they see it).

I have never understood how people can just ignore all the science about how human brains work and insist that they would never do this and don’t need any outside help but looking at this thread, it’s clearly quite common.

Edited to say: I do wonder how many babies have died as a result…..

I think there’s a bit in that WaPo article that suggests the reason people react so strongly with the ‘I could never’ is because the alternative (true) narrative of ‘I can be the best parent in the world and something like this could still happen’ is terrifying and people don’t want to accept that you can do things right, be a good, present, safety-conscious parent and this can still happen, because it’s not in your conscious control. It’s terrifying to think that we are unwittingly capable of doing something that could kill our child, so it’s easier to go with the ‘bad parent’ narrative and tell ourselves that won’t happen to us because we aren’t like that. If it’s something that happens to other people, not us, then we don’t have to face the truth of it.

I’ve seen an article on this (which I can’t now find) which describes this as ‘the right stuff’ argument.

During WWII when pilots were dying every day, some would say that their friends and colleagues who were shot down died because they didn’t have ‘the right stuff’. Reassuring themselves that they did have ‘the right stuff’ let them push past the fear of being next and keep flying.

In this case, the argument is ‘only bad parents have children that die, I am a good parent so it will never happen to me’.

Sadly burying one’s head in the sand like this makes it more likely something will happen because no precautions are taken.

I never have either - and I have two now-adult children - but I'd never say "serves them right" about the worst thing that could possibly happen to a person.

If I remember that article correctly, (which I would again advise not reading) one parent drove to work, the baby was asleep or silent in the back seat and she forgot all about the baby, ran into work and her car alarm kept going off several times during the day and she kept knocking it off with her keys. At no point did it even register that the baby was setting it off. She honestly had no recollection of not dropping the baby off. I remember going from thinking ‘but how could your FORGET about your child, they are the main focus of your mind, but then after reading it thinking ‘if that can happen her, it could happen to me, it could happen anyone’

I myself have driven to and from work and not remembered the journey.

Consider also that the maternity leave in America is shite, they get about 15 minutes off after giving birth so these are very very tired parents and very tiny babies also.

It happened to a baby the same age as mine a few years ago very near where I live in Ireland and unfortunately was on one of the extremely rare very hot days here, the dad went into work and the baby died.

That article frightened me so much that from
then on, if I was travelling alone from with the baby I would put her in the front seat.
Which is not safe either but I weighed it up and decided to turn off the airbag and put her in the front.

It could happen to anyone.

One of the reasons I come across as an anxious parent is because I fully recognise my ability to unintentionally do stupid things and it terrifies me that I might inadvertently injure someone in my care. Sometimes I wish I could go through life oblivious to it all.

But that's data about one very specific instance of routine change processing failures.

My husband regularly forgets to brush our son's teeth in the morning, so much that I've had to teach my 20m old to ask for his teeth to be done.

My husband isn't a bad dad - he's just not always responsible for teeth brushing, and when he is, it's on slightly stressful mornings.

I forget too for similar reasons (though far less often because I had longer on mat leave).

You'd need to put together ALL instances of routine change based parenting lapses to know how often parents are susceptible to these errors (and pull in non-parenting too while while you're at it).

That piece won a pulitzer prize - it's an incredible article but as you say, very tough and heartbreaking reading. I read it years ago and some of the details are absolutely etched on my brain. I find it hard to imagine a scenario that must be harder for a parent to live with than this, I just don't know how you would ever even begin to get past it.

Ahh Thank you, I’ve been avoiding the news recently
How tragic and so easily preventable