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

Totally agree with the autopilot thing.

I once my baby for a tongue tie snip at a hospital 20 miles away from home with 2 year old in tow. Was stressful, baby upset for a while (for obvious reasons).

Got all the way home (up the M1) and realised I’d left the pram by the boot of the car.

Drove back and it was still there, put it in the boot then tormented myself for days afterwards with the what ifs if I’d left the baby in the pram.

Said baby turned 15 last week, still never forgotten it.

Read the linked articles in this thread

And are more likely to be sleep deprived themselves impacting How well their brains are functioning. Plus younger babies are more prone to fall asleep on a short journey or be generally quiet compared to a babbling older baby / toddler.

Add to that high proportion of people using cars for nursery run and commute, and large areas prone to high temperatures and you have a tragic mix.

Also is probably becoming more common as sharing of parental responsibilities and frequency of women working full time both increase - given that it’s often the switching between different routines which seems to be a trigger.

As lots have pointed out the change in routine can really throw people, I’ve always thought how can that happen until I did it myself with my dog, no disaster as it was cool and wasn’t too long but I forgot he was in the car due to a change in routine

The poor parents having to live with this and their poor baby. Awful tragedy

Addendum to say:,I never took them on long car trips then produced a pram.

We were either driving a distance for eg on holiday with DH, or walking from home with the pram - my brain didn’t process the fact that the pram was involved in such a long journey.

You know they say prude comes before a fall? It’s those who believe they are infallible God-like creatures who often end up falling the farthest.

Can’t believe the BS being spouted by some people on this thread.

Leaving children strapped in in hot cars is negligence. No excuse.

FGS, most people know you don’t leave dogs in cars on hot days.

I don’t think this would ever happen to me either BUT people are human and sometimes they do make mistakes like this, as proven by just how many stories there are like this.

I know of someone whose child died because they took their eye off the ball when they were tired. They got distracted, a moment in time that did not sum up in any way, the amazing and attentive parent that they were. They were, and still are, grief stricken years later and they will never be properly ok ever again. I’ve heard many similar stories of very good, loving, attentive parents making a mistake and suffering the worst possible consequences.

Many of us will have had ‘near misses’ with our kids, some of which we probably aren’t aware of because we are the lucky ones who didn’t face any, or any big, consequences for them.

It’s best not to judge what could be a terrible tragedy and what the parent will have to live their whole life with. I believe on a bad day, when we’re distracted, tired or something, it could happen to many of us. Presuming this was an accident, I have nothing but sympathy for the person who left their child in the car. I don’t know how parents get through things like this.

You do realise people aren't doing this on purpose? Well in 99% of cases (there was that Dad that did it repeatedly)

They aren't chosing to leave their kids in a car on a hot day, they don't realise the kids are there! They thin they're at home/nursery/at nanas etc...

@MrsSkylerWhitehave you read the article?
the whole point is that as far as most of the parents were concerned they hadn’t forgotten them that they were in nursery/daycare already so they’ve gone about their day in the belief that everything is normal.

there was a recent case where a man kept leaving his kids in the car so he could game with engine running but one day engine cut off and the child that was napping died and he should go to prison for a long time for that however that is a totally different situation in what is mostly being spoken about here.

Everyone who drives has arrived at their destination at least once and thought 'I don't rember that drive / part of that drive'

It's exactly the same thing. You do the same thing, over and over again, your brain stops needing to actively focus on what you're doing. Yes, you're watching the road, you're looking for hazards etc, I'm not suggesting you're driving along oblivious, but it's all on automatic unless something happens to snap you out of it. You can't control it, it's how we're wired. Just like you don't think about breathing every breath, or lifting your feet in turn when you're walking, or how to curl your fingers around a pen. You just do it the same way you have 1000 times before.

If you're in that state when you have an out of routine child in the car, and you arrive at your destination, it's so easy to forget they're there. And it's the people who think 'I would never!' who do it, because those who accept anyone could do it are the ones that put their handbag or phone on the back seat to remind them.

Have you ever been in a car with your child sleeping in the back and then they wake and make a noise - you jump, and say 'I forgot you were there for a second!' now imagine that second is the second you should take the turn for Nursery on the way to work. Or the second when you park the car.

I can see how it could happen. I've been known to open the boot to let the dogs out when they aren't there at all if I drive the route I usually do with the dogs to get to the woods. It's just autopilot. The same thing can happen in reverse if you usually don't bring children/dogs with you to a place that you go regularly. We do so much of our day on autopilot with our minds elsewhere that it's easy enough for things to slip.

My mum went to Sainsbury's and left me behind in a car seat in the middle of the car park, for about 20 minutes before she could get back! Anything could have happened. But the vast, vast majority of the time, nothing will happen. That's true of lots of stupid mistakes lots of us make. The parents will be punishing themselves for the rest of their lives and I have nothing but enormous sympathy.

Could I respectfully suggest that you read the Washington Post article linked and referenced by several people on your thread? You would gain some valuable insights into this utterly tragic and well-documented modern-day phenomenon.

Exactly!! They don’t normally take the child to nursery say - go onto autopilot in the car. Arrive at work and don’t realise the child is there. In a rush, mind on the day ahead.

It’s obviously hugely rare but CLEAR they haven’t done it on purpose. Just the most horrifying utterly awful thing from which they and their partner would never recover from. The poor baby & poor poor family. Like others I read the Washington post article and it stuck with me. There but for the grave of God.

Sorry, what?

Hoping the replies above are sarcasm?!

So what do you think is going through people’s minds then? That they are think “yeah I’ll leave my baby in the car for a few hours, it’s a bit toasty but no doubt they will be fine”.

And that is more plausible to you than the idea that people might just have forgotten they had a child in the car?

I know the protective instinct that we have for our children means that it IS much more hard-wired not to forget about them in the way we might forget our phone or house-keys. But that instinct unfortunately isnt 100% infallible.

Unbelievable, what happened!

I’ve read a lot of these cases in the past and most are horrible, tragic accidents. A parent taking a child they don’t usually take who falls asleep in the back. A tired parent on autopilot. 90% of these cases are loved and cared for children and it is one of the most desperate, sad situations I can imagine as a parent.

Those that think otherwise - do you think that there are psychopathic parents out there either a) deliberately boiling their babies to death in baking hot cars or b) just negligently can’t be arsed to look in the back to check if the child is there one way or the other or c) think it’s fine to keep a child in the backseat of a car for 7 hours while they are at work?

Which is it?

What? You can’t be fucking serious?’

Sorry. No! Two children, husband worked away all week for years, effectively a single parent Monday to Friday, Hosted 2 or 3 overseas sixth form students every year for several years.

No-one forgets they have a child strapped into their car, especially on an hot day,

Anyone making excuses for such behaviour ought to be bloody ashamed of themselves. I wouldn’t have left our dog in a hot car for 10 minutes.

Jesus, this site is bloody mental sometimes.

BS.

Negligence in the extreme.

@MrsSkylerWhite have you read the Washington post article linked earlier ?

B

How the actual fuck is anyone excusing this negligence?

Jesus Christ.