Left my toddler in the car yesterday. Will I be in trouble?

[LivelyLion]

Yesterday, my 21 month old had just fallen asleep in the car as I was on my way home. I needed to call into the supermarket to get her some food, so parked in the closest possible parking space and ran in as quickly as I could and was gone for a couple of minutes tops.

When I returned, what seemed to be an employee was taking pictures of the car and rightfully gave me a telling off for leaving her in the car unattended. Now I can’t stop feeling guilty and can’t stop thinking about the consequences. Is this a social service matter or even a police matter if he passes those photos on? My child had woke by the time I got back which makes me feel worse and I feel like it makes the situation seem worse. What are the possible repercussions?

Seriously, after 200+ posts, is anyone really adding anything new and insightful to this? Or are people just wanting to add their voices to slag off another mother for doing something they’ve all contemplated doing at some point?

All of you self righteous twats posting ‘I hope you get arrested and social services take your kids’, you’ve never made a mistake or an error of judgment with your children?

What a wonderful post! I hope this will help to make the poor mum feel better.
Her actions may even have been for the best, in that she’s unlikely to leave her child alone in the car again.
Parenting isn’t taught at school. It is learned by experience and taking advice from others.
This mum is not the only mum to have done this, nor will she be the last. That doesn’t make it right, but it will be a lesson to her. She is just a normal mum who makes mistakes like the rest of us.
Good luck to her. She and her child will be fine, I’m sure.

Please dont beat yourself up. What is done is done. Just learn from it. We all make mistakes. Being a parent is hard. You wont do it again so put it down to experience and move on. I doubt SS will contact you as they are really stretched in terms of resources, and in the prioritising of protecting children this is going to be low down on their list of priorities. You may get a call and you can explain and that it was an error of judgement and will never happened again. Our parents generation would let toddlers roam estates, leave kids in pushchairs outside shops and outside homes. I used to be in charge of my 2 year old brother when I was age 4, wandering the estate, or leave really young kids playing in front of house unsupervised. So dont get thinking you are a terrible parent. You made a mistake and it wont happen again. End of. Hugs x

i was directing my post at the op not you

OP - Whether you will have any repercussions for your actions is irrelevant.
But should there be repercussions? OMG, DEFINITELY YES.
A baby/toddler should NEVER be left unattended, EVER, let alone in a car.
You deserve for the book to be thrown at you!

I see all the perfect parents are on this post ... OP knew what she'd done wrong, she asked for advice not ridicule.
For you OP 💐

SS will probably make contact to give advice but nothing else will happen unless you're already on their radar for neglect.

My biggest worry apart from someone snatching my child or something happening to the car would be, what if something happens to me in the shop? You know like an accident or something that would prevent me from getting back to the car?
I would say that you'll definitely get a call from someone, it's pretty frowned upon this sort of thing. Remorse, don't look for excuses, you'll never do it again, don't know what you were thinking etc. and commit to yourself that you'll never do this again. Ever.

This happened near me @LivelyLion :

A grandmother left her two grandchildren in the carpark outside the pharmacy… she was nipping in so it was fine…. She ran in, passed out for some unknown reason…. She then woke up in an ambulance on her way to hospital and immediately told the paramedics there were children in her car…. Police were sent to find the car, when they found the car the children were sadly both deceased!

please don’t ever do it… a ‘quick pop’ could go seriously wrong…. There’s also tales of care catching on fire (which must be rare - but not worth the risk). Not to mention weirdos out there who would snatch an unsupervised child.
The member of staff taking photos might have seen your remorse and may not report you, I imagine if he does you will get a visit from the police warning you, they may send you on a parenting course… a friend of mine had to do a parenting course when she left her child home alone because he refused school and she had to work

Link please.

I can find two cases where a child died after 8 hours in the car in New York after her grandmother forgot she was in the car and another in Australia where two children were left in the car for an unspecified amount of time by their mother who was using drugs & the car reached over 60°.

All the wonderful 'what ifs' as if any reported event in the media is an example of common risks!

My own what if: what if you are bathing your toddler when you suddenly faint out of nowhere and you're alone at home?

Do you all perfect mums always make sure someone else is at home when you bath your kids....just in case something suddenly happened to you?

Neither of which are relevant in the case of the OP.

Looking at historic actual incidents is informative in risk assessments.

Sadness / tragedy that might unfold in the situation your what if entails doesn’t involve legal guilt or fault: on that basis the scenario you’re describing is totally irrelevant to the OP’s situation.