How can anyone 'forget' that they've left their toddler in the car for 5 hours?

[sonearsofar]

I've just heard the terrible story in the news today. Apparently an Italian university 'forgot' that he had left his 22 month old toddler in the back of the car. She died after being in there for 5 hours.

xpost Greythorne! Yes, that's correct, she was on a different cell number.

Yes, I read the whole thing finally and saw that fact. But there have been so many other cases.

Many years DH and I were forced to live apart for a year because his job relocated and we couldn't sell our house. We only saw each other on the weekends; it was horrendous. We finally moved to our new home about a week before Christmas. We had two kids under two, no family or friends nearby for support and were utterly exhausted. DH went off to B&Q for some stuff to sort out our new house and took with him DD1, who was then 6 weeks old, to give me a break.
He obviously wasn't used to having sole charge of her. You can see where this is going can't you?
After he'd been in the store for about an hour a call came over the tannoy about a baby left in a car. He said he was actually thinking to himself "God, what an idiot that person is," when the penny dropped.
We were very lucky; it was wintertime but DD was well wrapped up. DH was utterly mortified and ashamed. And DH is never reckless or irresponsible or flakey.
I would never presume to judge. There but for the grace of God.....

We're in Canada and this makes me wonder if children sometimes die in cars of cold rather than heat.

Also, I wish people would stop using 'privacy' glass in their vehicles. If a kid was left in one of those cars, how would you even SEE them?

I think I would find it very hard to forgive him, Pag. He went out to the car on more than one occassion to turn the alarm off.

He has to live with this the rest of his life. I hope he receives all the support he possible can. Tragic.

I am not calling you a liar body. I am sure that you know how you would expect to feel.

But I have had a couple of occasions where I expected to think or feel one way and reacted completely differently. I think ones reaction to extreme events is hard to predict.

People always say " if anyone touched or hurt my child I would kill them" . It almost never actually happens.

Believing you can predict how you would act in such an extraordinary situation seems bizarre to me.

I cannot begin to imagine the grief my dh would suffer if we lost a child, knowing how utterly he adores them. I am not sure it would make sense to me to add my blame to his gruff and regret.
I hope to God I wouldn't blame him or that would suggest that I never really believed the depth of his devotion to our children and our current life would be something of a sham.

To blame him I would have to feel it happened because he didn't care. I would be mortified if I could sit here now and imagine such a thing to be possible

Do you mean tinted windows - Ripeberry For 'privacy' windows? I hate them too. i have them in the back of my car and I hate them. Decreases visibility for the driver also.

I feel so sorry for this family. I suppose I could do that on a manically busy day if I'd changed from normal routine.

But, I always double check the car for any valuables or stuff lying around after having car broken into years ago.

The poor man must feel awful.

I live near Houston, Texas and so these stories are on the news during the summer- we had quite a few (~5?) last summer. Horrifying.
That link was horrifying, also. I can't blame or feel I'll towards the parents, though. I can't imagine how they feel themselves, and alone. Some of them especially the lady with the different cell, everything just lined up that day.

Words are not enough, are they? I remember seeing a woman on Oprah who did the same thing. She was a teacher and was in a rush in the morning and something changed in her routine. She parked outside her school and it was only when the kids left in the afternoon that anyone noticed. Lots of holes lining up like in other examples. She was a shell of a woman.

It often strikes me, when I hear about things like this, that so many accidental deaths are like this combination of events. Someone used the word "banal" earlier and I agree. Not that the death is banal, but that the circumstances are so everyday. It only takes a break in routine, a wrong footing on a step or something similar. Most of us have probably come close to death, or causing someone's death, on a number of occasions and we don't even realise.

I think one can only place blame in this situation if you live a totally aware and risk-free life yourself.

That washington post article is sobering.

There are no judicial processes that could make those parents feel worse than they already do.

Small insignificant things like this happen every day - a friend of mine had a 3 week old and a tantruming 2year old, she wrestled the 2 year old into his carseat and drove away only to return a minute later remembering that she had left the baby and the buggy on the pavement outside toddler group (where there were lots of other parents and buggies) She was mortified, nothing BAD happened but it just shows how close all of us, are to the holes all aligning.

and just to copy paste from the article I think this is important.

"What kind of person forgets a baby?

The wealthy do, it turns out. And the poor, and the middle class. Parents of all ages and ethnicities do it. Mothers are just as likely to do it as fathers. It happens to the chronically absent-minded and to the fanatically organized, to the college-educated and to the marginally literate. In the last 10 years, it has happened to a dentist. A postal clerk. A social worker. A police officer. An accountant. A soldier. A paralegal. An electrician. A Protestant clergyman. A rabbinical student. A nurse. A construction worker. An assistant principal. It happened to a mental health counselor, a college professor and a pizza chef. It happened to a pediatrician. It happened to a rocket scientist. "

I forgot my baby. I left her in a shop, and when I came out without her and when DH asked "where's the baby?" I said "what baby?".

Awful.

i don't have anything to say. :( :( :(

There for the grace of God/MotherNature/Fred - is all anyone can say.

Anyone who thinks it couldn't happen to them is deluded.

Would the swiss cheese holes lining up be the same ones that can make you drive past the nursery, get home, lock up the car, walk toward the house then realise the baby is still at nursery?

Not as harmful a consequence, but if someone can forget to pick up I can see how someone can forget to drop off.

I wonder how common this really is? I've not heard of a case in the UK. Or maybe the weather isn't so hot.

I'm going to be stressed about DH taking DD to nursery now as he is quite forgetful.

thelittle
i feel certain we don't hear of UK cases precisely because of the mild UK climate not because it doesn't happen.

I live in France and it does happen and make headlines here. There was a Dad (pharmacist) about two years ago.

In Italy where of course the story is headline news, including having the mother (who is 8 mths pregnant) reading out a statement saying what a wonderful father her husband is and how she'll never blame him.

The child's organs have been donated and (rather bizarrely and unnecessarily IMO) the parents of the recipients are also all over the television giving opinions.

I agree with those who say until we've been in that situation we don't know how we'd react, your gut reaction as a parent who has never done it, is that you would never do it, and I agree that what seems odd to me is that he forgot for so long. But as people have said, maybe in his own mind he had left the child at preschool. I do find it odd that she was in a busy looking carpark, where surely during the day, people would have been coming and going. Unfortunately, it's a bit the nature of the beast in Italy that people Do Not Get Involved, but I'm also fairly sure that where a screaming child was concerned someone would have done something if they'd seen or heard her?

I don't know how the mother can find it in herself, accident or not, to forgive him. (she says she has nothing to forgive) but again, until it happens to you I don't suppose you know how you'd act. I would never be able to look at him again, but that just makes the mother in this case a better person than me.

PS For Italian standards, it's not been that hot yet, (in fact I believe it's hotter in parts of the UK at the moment than here) but when I queried this heat factor with dp, he said you have to think more in terms of an airless car than the actual heat involved.

Just finished reading that link. In tears. Can totally see how it happens. Those poor people must live in unimaginable torture for the rest of their lives. Yes of course it's their fault. And they know it.

It is awful, really horrid, the poor, poor child.

But as someone who has done really stupid things....like drive off with my purse on the roof of the car, do the school run leaving the back door wide open etc. I can see that this isnt really that different, sometimes your brain goes into autopilot and tells you that you did something which you didnt. Unfortunately for the poor families this has terrible consequences.

I once went to the shops leaving dh and ds at home. Did the shopping, walked home, only to bump into dh. Who had also left the house to go shopping, somehow believing I was there. He was convinced I was at home, even though I wasn't! Fortunately ds, then aged about 5, was fine but if he'd been a toddler or a baby it could have been really nasty ? we worked out he'd been on his own for a good 20 minutes. A toddler could have easily fallen downstairs found something dangerous to play with. Or I could have decided to go on somewhere else, not straight back home.

Awful :(

I can definitely see how it might happen, so awful for everyone involved.

Someone was asking if it happened much in the UK, I don't remember seeing anything about children, but it does happen a lot with animals, there is a campaign every summer to remind people not to leave their dogs in hot cars, isn't there?

I can totally see how this happens, and it's a scenario that plagues me for some reason, though it's never happened to me. I'm still haunted by TV shows where this has happened, and even more awful when it happens in real life. The story about the alarm going off is just terrible.

I drove to work with DD2 recently, because DH usually drops her off. It wasn't that I'd forgotten she was in the car, because she was awake and I was chatting to her. As I got to work it dawned on me that she wasn't supposed to still be in the car and I turned around and took her to nursery. But if she'd been asleep......