The reason I asked is because I could not remember EVER forgetting that my son was in the car when he was a baby. Then I realized that I always carried him in the FRONT seat next to me! (This was in the days before it became the practice to carry children in the rear seat.)
I can only assume that it is infinitely harder to forget a child sitting next to you, thus my question.
Sure, but a cold drink is usually sitting right next to you in a car, within eyesight. That being said, you’ve probably, on more than one occasion, still left a cold drink in the car absent-mindedly. Since that’s basically a meaningless action, you may or may not have actual memories of doing so.
A baby or small toddler is often in the backseat, facing backward, without making a peep because they’re sleeping or otherwise occupied. A preoccupied parent can be just as absent-minded as a person with a cold drink next to them. But if you do leave a kid in the car just once, you’ll remember it for the rest of your life whether the consequences were tragic or not.
The human brain is a squirrelly organ. You swear you’d never, ever, ever, ever do something, until you do it. I did it once with my then-2-year-old son when I went to the hardware store. It was late fall, so it was in the 50s outside; no real risk of hyper- or hypothermia. I got out of my car and before I took three steps into the store, I remembered I took him with me and I ran back to the car. There he was just looking out the window. I felt like throwing up and I still get tense thinking about it. I didn’t even know what to say to him when I got back in the car.
Yes, the article cited above mentions that people forgetting their kids in hot cars has become a much larger problem since the back seat rules were put in place. I was curious to see if statistics would still support putting children in the back seat, and it looks like they do.
I’d bet a lot of money that you’re wrong.
This is something I’ve only told a very small handful of people in my life. It’s very hard to share here, but I will.
Eleven years ago, when my son was a baby, three or four months old, I had him in the backseat and had errands to run. I stopped at a local shop and went inside, forgetting him in the back of the car. It was about 80 degrees out, and sunny. No shade on the car at all.
I’m not actually sure how long I was inside the store, it could have been 10-15 minutes, it could have been a half hour (not more than that). I left the shop, still not remembering what I’d done.
I started walking to the car, and I heard him crying. Wailing. My heart dropped into my gut and I ran to the car and opened it up and got him out. He was burning up, hot to the touch. I was terrified but was so afraid of getting into trouble with the law (and with my then wife) that I didn’t tell anybody. I managed to calm him down and got him home quickly, where I immediately gave him a cool bath which got his temperature back down to normal.
I don’t know how hot it got in the car. I don’t know how high his temperature got (he was pretty warm to the touch though). I didn’t tell his mother.
I still carry around immense guilt over what happened that afternoon. I can’t talk about it with my current wife without choking up. I very nearly killed my son that day.
He’s 12 now, and easily one of the smartest kids in his class. He was always advanced, in both math and reading. So I’m certain he didn’t suffer any brain damage that day. However, he’s a small kid - short/thin - and has ADHD. Now, the ADD runs in the family so I don’t think I caused that somehow. Also, his mother’s side of the family is rather small and he’s probably just a little guy due to heredity. However, I still feel like I “broke” him that day. I don’t think I’ll ever get over the guilt I still feel, in fact just writing this has caused me to tear up something fierce.
I feel sad for anyone (including pets) left in a hot car. That’s like…torture.
Stay a few minutes in there and it starts getting uncomfortable.
I can’t even imagine the heart attack you must have had when you realized it. Thank you for sharing, and please remember, it could have been worse, but it wasn’t. It’s OK. He expected Daddy to save him…and Daddy did.
Thank you so much for this. Really.
+1
I remember that article from the last time we discussed it here. It was a hard thing to read, but very compelling. The story of the man hearing his car alarm and disabling it was probably the worst, but each story was horrible in its own way.
I wonder what’s happened to the woman who, after losing her own child, has traveled around comforting other parents in the same situation, telling them that it was an accident, something she repeated to herself like a mantra. I couldn’t decide if she would be able to maintain that emotional distance indefinitely or would someday just go off like powder keg.
And I want to know if she did end up carrying a baby for that other couple. Because that guy, who said that on top of everything else he robbed his wife of the chance to be a mother… 
It’s interesting that from the article a fair few couples seemed to manage to stay together. Seems remarkably strong to me. It’s all very well me sitting here behind a screen saying how it isn’t their fault, but I imagine it’s rather different when you have to tell your husband or wife it is not their fault your baby is dead.
I had a close call once.
My brother had flown in for a surprise visit. I needed to go pick up a prescription for my wife. My 2-year-old wanted to come, so while I was getting in the car and talking to my brother, my wife strapped the kid in the back seat. And it was an unfamiliar car; we had swapped vehicles with a friend so they could take our minivan on a road trip. So while I knew my kid was in the back seat, I had too many distractions and did not actually see him back there. My kid was silent (possibly asleep) on the drive to the store.
We got to the store and got in line for the pharmacy, and then I realized I had left the prescription in the car. So I went back out, got the prescription, and went back into the store. There was a long line, but once we got to the front the prescription was filled quickly. We were probably at the store for less than 20 minutes.
When we went outside, my brother suddenly started sprinting and screaming for me to unlock the door. I had so thoroughly forgotten that my kid was there that I just thought WTF is wrong with my brother, until he yanked the back door open. The kid was in a daze, eyes half open, soaked in sweat. He didn’t cry or speak. We went to the nearest fast food place to get some water, and he barely sucked on the straw. By the time we got home he was fine.
If this had been July instead of May, or if the prescription had taken longer to fill, it would have been a very different story.
For all those who commented on my previous post, yes I did read the article, no it didn’t change my opinion.
There’s a difference between making a calculated decision to leave a sleeping child in a car while you run a very short errand (again I’m talking 2 minutes, pay for petrol, mail a letter, grab milk or bread from a convenience store where there’s no queues) and actually forgetting that the kid is in the car and leaving them there.
Yes it obviously does happen, and the parents are also obviously distraught about it afterwards, I just don’t believe there are any excuses for it.
Truth be told, I don’t there there’s any excuse for an adult to leave their 8-year-old in the car while he boozes it up at the bar. That’s more negligent parenting than any of those parents in the WP story. YMMV.
They’re almost certainly correct in their belief. It happens only 30-odd times a year, and nearly 1/3rd of the kids who die go in the cars themselves to play, so the odds of one of the doper parents being wrong about forgetting their baby in the car are so infinitesimal they might as well be zero.
30 is the number of deaths each year, not the number of times children are forgotten. As evidenced by the answers above, there are plenty of instances where children are forgotten but rescued before death.
No excuse, of course. No one here is saying “You killed a child? Okay, you’re excused.” But there are reasons for accidents, and there are events that lead up to accidents. In particular, people get into routines. Then there’s a kid in the car, but they follow the usual routine in which there wasn’t a kid in the car. Remember that time when you were supposed to turn right, but your mind had switched to auto-pilot and you kept going straight because you drive through this intersection every morning and you always go straight? IANANeurologist, but I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that there’s a name for it. Highway hypnosis, maybe? It’s EXACTLY the same mistake, and everyone does it, and in rare cases something tragic happens.
So I had an accident once, and thus I’m an attempted murderer. Oh, I also crashed a car once which could have been fatal. It was inexcusable and stupid. Clearly my intentions were murderous. So I’m an attempted mass-murderer. 'Cuz it’s obviously useful to call people murderers when they have accidents. Also, please go [del]fu[/del]have a nice day.
The stuffed animal on the front seat idea proposed by Panache45 is good, but easy to “forget to activate” on a busy day. The distance-activated alarm idea proposed by someone else is also good, but probably expensive and not adequately reliable.
I believe the most economical and fool-proof solution is a simple child seat sound alarm (light alarm for deaf parents) system that is automatically activated (pressure activated or belt strap activated) whenever a child is in the child-seat. It should be a law-mandated requirement for child seat manufacturers.
When the child is strapped in, and the alarm system is activated, a noticeable sound should emit every 60 seconds. How about a synthesized voice saying, “hey, don’t forget I’m back here, daddio”, or even a simple “beep” would suffice. Malfunction of the device would be readily apparent, quickly. When you’re used to hearing the alarm every minute your child is strapped in, you’ll realize within the first couple of minutes if it stops working (and the first few minutes are most critical; later on, you’re more likely to have your mind on other things). I would go so far as to remove liability to the manufacturer in cases of malfunction, putting the responsibility on the shoulders of parents, if it would keep costs to a minimum.
While that’s a good basic thought, unfortunately, repetitive phrases and beeps also fall quite handily into the “filed as routine and ignored” circumstances that leads to the problem in the first place. I worked in food service for a few years, and I can tell you - I don’t hear any beeps that sound even remotely like the ones on the machines I worked with. I just automatically tune them out.
Nope, it needs to be something like the pressure sensors on a riding lawnmower. If the weight goes away on a lawnmower seat, the mower shuts off. No memory required. Now, we can’t have an exact analogue, but here’s two options:
If there’s a weight in the car seat, if your car is off and the keyfob moves more than 5 feet away from the car, it should go off like all hell breaking loose. I’m talking vibrate out of your hands with a bolt from the sky jump out of your skin high-frequency audio battering ram chaser. Better to have a parental heart attack and get your child (or luggage) out of the seat, than to walk casually away and hate yourself forever.
If there’s a weight in the car seat, the car should stay on, with the AC turning up to full blast, even if the key is taken from the ignition. An alarm could also sound, which would be handy, but the **point ** of this safety is that the car stays **on **with the AC running - that should keep the kid safe even if the adult isn’t near the car. Perhaps the doors could be locked even though the car is running?
The solution isn’t to remember, or to have routines - the whole article is about how no one means to forget, and the problems happen in those perfect storms when the routines fail. We have to take the HUMAN out of the loop entirely.
To be fair, in the story I referred to, my mum was in there as well, my grandparents and all my aunts and uncles. I was allowed to go in after official closing time once the licensing laws no longer applied.