I’ve never forgotten them, but certainly can see how it can happen. A few weeks ago, I walked around the house calling for my daughter before realizing that she was at the lake with her aunts. :smack:
I was reading and thinking that I have never done forgotten the youngins…but then it struck me. Oops. Yeah, I have.
When my daughter was about two, my husband’s father came for a visit and my husband, myself, my older son and the baby were outside chatting after they pulled up. We all piled into the house chattering away and then it occurred to me…where is the baby?
Yup, we left her outside in the front. There she was just standing at the door with a WTF look on her face.
I console myself with the fact that I at least eventually noticed. The other three adults were having coffee and cake in total bliss and ignorance.
I think the most evil curse possible would have to be “May you accidentally kill your children.”
I’ve never actually left the car, but I’ve certainly driven several miles past daycare before realizing my son is with me that day.
I will also point out that prior to it actually happening the first time, I would have sworn on a stack of bibles that it would be impossible. That moment of oh shit you have when you realize you actually forgot is a turning point.
We left my sister at a restaurant once. But she was a bit older.
Not yet. But he’s only three months old.
My parents forgot me all the time; for instance, they forgot to pick me up from the hospital when I ad a tonsillectomy when I was five.
When I was seven, and they wanted to go to a lecture and couldn’t get a sitter, they took me with them. Bored, I wandered off. The owner of the place the lecture was held saw a dirty, hippiesh kid walking around his store, thought I was a Gypsy or something, and despites my protests that my parents were in the back, he put me out into the street and locked the door behind me. I just sat on that sidewalk in the inner city, from 9 PM tot 10 PM, untill the lecture was over and my parents started looking for me again.
My SIL is a great mother. But when her cat was hit by a car last week, she and her husband had driven frantically to the vet, injured cat in the back, before one of them said: “where’s Donna?!!”. They made a U-turn. The cat survived. 
No kids, but these friends of my parents’ once got a loud call on their street-level door. They owned the whole ground-plus-three-levels house; the dining room and kitchen they used were the ones on the first floor. Well, first it was a polite knock; later, as they didn’t respond and whomever was outside could clearly hear there was people inside, it got louder. They still didn’t respond, thinking (as it was the Christmas season) that it would be some beggar or some kids trying to get money for singing songs. Finally the people outside yelled “open up, it’s the police!”
:eek:
The father goes to the balcony and yells down “what seems to be the problem, sir?”
“I got your missing kid here!”
“What lost kid? They’re all here!”
“Count again!” and at the same time a kid saying “but Daddy, I’m not at home!”
Yep, when they counted sheep at the table, they hadn’t noticed the 9yo wasn’t there. He couldn’t reach the door knocker and they hadn’t responded to his palm-slaps on the door for the aforementioned reasons :smack:
Good thing the kid knew where to find the town’s only cop, they didn’t have any relatives in town. The total kids count in that house was 9 boys and 2 girls.
Wonder who he takes after
?
In Spain having a kid in the front seat has been illegal for a lot longer than airbags have been around.
I haven’t forgotten her (yet) - though she has wandered unnoticed to play with neighbours a couple of times - it’s a different thing, yeah?
I’m one of those mothers that will panic for a full five minutes before realising that the empty room is because she’s staying with friends tonight.
My mother forgot me - various places and more than a few times from ages four through fifteen. The latter was when she was supposed to pick me up from my late shift after her night school finished - same deal after every class, so no ‘change of routine’ excuse - but four times I stood alone in the dark at midnight until my brother was woken up and sent out to get me.
I reminded my mum of this when she started babysitting for me - with the result that she’s never forgotten my kid, but she’s left the shopping behind a few times!
I’d had one kid (aged about 3) and a week previously had given birth to babe 2. After the birth I was confined to home rest (had the mumps of all damned things), but after a week I was feeling chipper enough (and the cupboards were bare enough) to see me venture out on a shopping expedition for the first time.
Bundled the three yr old into her booster seat, and drove off to the shopping centre when I realised there was ‘something’ sort of missing.
Drove home madly, only to find the wee one still tucked up in his cradle snoozing away, oblivious to the panic and turmoil and self-loathing I was experiencing…how on EARTH could I have forgotten this poor child.
Meh, he survived. I had to give up the guilt years ago if **I **was to survive!
Im a forgotten child! When I was about 9 I went shopping with my parents to a shop called ‘presto’, I help load the shopping into the car and proceed to then put the trolley back as I walked back to the car my parents drove off! I ran after them as fast I as could and chased them up to the busy roundabout. The main road was far to busy to cross so I just stood and cried. When my parents reached my grandparents house they realised after a few minutes that I wasnt there and they had forgotten me back at the supermarket. Still to this day my dad tells ‘hey presto’ jokes. I get by day by day and one day I may not have to go back to the shrink… lol!
But I think in the case of these parents, they fully believed that their child was in the loving care of someone they trusted–the other parent, or a caregiver. It’s not that they were “complacent” about their child’s wellbeing, or they forgot they had a child. It felt like every other day, when the child had been dropped off at daycare, or was left in the care of the other parent. The tragedy is that they forgot a step, or that this was the morning that their spouse wasn’t taking the child. That’s different than forgetting your child, in my book.
I somewhat agree that parenting means you are in a constant state of worry, but that’s why I worked hard to make sure my first and only son was with caregivers I trusted (my spouse, responsible babysitters, family members, or a daycare provider I carefully chose). I couldn’t have lived my life if I didn’t feel reassured he was in good hands, and I’m sure the mother in Cincinnati felt the same way. And until the opened that van door to that horror, she fully believed her daughter was in those good hands.
This made me laugh obscenely loud, and for way longer than I could’ve predicted.
Something about ALMOST catching the car…
It depends upon which case you’re talking about. I’m relating to the cases of the parents who left their kids in the child seats in their car when they went to the beauty salon, or to work, or whatever – which seem to be the bulk of these. . No way I’d forget our daughter in that case.
I don’t mean to pick on you here. I actually can’t be getting all snarky with you, just because you have never forgotten your child…that is silly of me.
But I have to ask this; if you are truly forgetting something…anything…then how is it different if it is at work or beauty salon, or whatever? Does it matter where you are when you forget? I mean, the nature of forgetting is that you simply don’t remember? If I forget I have my baby in the car and I go to the salon, how is that different than forgetting my baby in the car and going to say…church?
It isn’t. Perhaps I don’t understand the question. I don’t think I could have forgetten that I had the infant MilliCal anywhere, be it Church, the Beauty Salon, the Supermarkety, or the Strip Joint (although they probably wouldn’t have let her in in the first place.) I could forget my keys or my wallet in one of those places, perhaps (although I keep a pretty good eye on them), but having a kid was unlike having anything else while I was out of the house, and I could never forget that I had to keep track of her.
I’ve never forgotten my son at a place but I have driven halfway to work with him in the backseat before realizing that I never dropped him off at the sitter’s.
I’m sure he would have spoken up though if I got to work and left him in the office parking lot for eight hours 
Not yet, thank goodness, but she’s only 16 months old, so there’s plenty of time yet. Fortunately, she’s pretty hard to forget; if she’s in the back seat, she’s usually talking to you or singing or speaking baby language to herself. These days I’m always the one who puts her to bed, wakes her up in the morning, leaves her with the various grandparents for daycare, and picks her up in the evening, so I tend to be pretty aware of where she is.
I, on the other hand, have been forgotten by every member of my family. My father, mother, and brother have each forgotten to pick me up somewhere at least once. Mom forgot me at school; she drove all the way home (a 30 minute trip from the city where she worked and I went to school) before realizing it, then had to drive all the way back to get me. Even funnier was the fact that I’d told a friend of mine, “sure, my mom’s coming right after school, we can give you a ride to your house.” So, poor dude, he got stuck there an hour longer than he needed to be, just like me. I think I was 12.
Dad forgot me in the little town about 10 minutes from our house. I was dropped there by a friend, supposed to be picked up by Dad at the drugstore. Well, he wasn’t there when I got dropped off, so I waited, and hung around, and wondered where he was for almost two hours, until finally I borrowed a phone from the guy at the pharmacy (no cash to use the payphone). “Dad?” “Yeah? Wait, where are you?” “The drugstore. Why am I still here?” “…oh, that was today…” Think I was 10 or 11.
And my brother took off with his buddies a few times and left me sittin’. Again, the folks had to drive a half hour to get me.
So this one time when I was about 7 or 8, I was in the backseat, sitting kinda low so no one could see me. I’m just staring out the window, watching the cars go by. Hey, there’s a cool bird. Hey, nice lawn. Oh look, that new restaurant is opening next week. Hey, wait. Why are we passing that place? We’ve never done that before. Where are we?
So I stick my head up and go “Hey, where are we going?” The driver gets spooked cause he thought he was alone and slams on the breaks with an “OMG! What did I do?!” look on his face. Funniest part- I was on the school bus! Funny that he’d forget to drop me off, considering it’s his freaking job!
Of the forgotten kids, I think I win. Well, except for the OP baby.