Izzy, I am trying to see it from your point of view, but I can’t. Causing the death of your own child because you forgot they were there is not the same as a traffic accident or other accidental death. Mommy has a responsibility to those kids 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There is no vacation and no days off. Are the kids any less dead because mommy forgot them rather than if mommy beat them? Both are heinous in my eyes.
And I will say it again- no parent worthy of the job can forget their kids in the car. If your neglect and self-absorbtion caused the death of someone who you (for all intents and purposes) promised to protect and nurture, then there is no punishment great enough. I think of that child frightened and screaming in that car, or quietly sobbing or looking for mommy, and it make me want to puke.
No offence to your friend, but the cops’ “overreaction” sounds right on.
One of my co-workers confessed that it almost happened to him when his son was little. If he hadn’t set his briefcase next to the carseat, the kids wouldn’t have made it to daycare that day. Not a bad parent, just had a long commute, with a sleeping child in back that he usually didn’t make the daycare drop off stop for.
Also, I’m going to clue some folks in - you can’t take 3 babies (i.e. triplets) in with you while paying for gas. You simply run out of hands. You either leave them in the car, or you don’t get gas. I have two toddlers - “irish twins” and getting two in and out of daycare before they could move fairly responsibly and independently was tough. No matter what I did, some parent was sending me looks. Leave the baby in the vestible, find some parent standing over her with the “who left their baby here?” Let my one year old walk out while carrying the baby, have to set baby down in parking lot, get the “who sets their baby down in a parking lot look” along with the “who lets their one year old walk through a parking lot look” Leave one child in class while you get the other into the car, then dash in for the second, find someone standing at your car with the “you left your kid in the car” look. Boy am I glad those days are over. I can’t imagine triplets, or three under three.
Sometimes, as a parent, you make mistakes - have accidents. Sometimes these mistakes have terrible consequences. Makes me sick to think about it. Now the idiots who leave their kids in cars on purpose…there is a special circle of hell set aside for them.
and, to add to it all, of course, no parent could ever get ill themselves, for example. And, naturally, none of you have ever miscommunicated with your spouses (I thought you were going to stop and buy milk ) etc.
Or even no accident could ever befall you, either.
One thing being a parent has taught me is to be very cautious in the ‘that’d never happen to me’ thinking.
That scares me. Your whole post scares me to be honest.
I in turn will clue you int to this thing called “full serve.” Failing that, there is “pay at the pump.” Failing that there are strollers designed for triplets.
This may be telling you something.
Yes. I can’t understand that.
With me it would have been more than a look. What you describe is mind-boggling.
I don’t wish to insult you, but that is horrifying.
I’m glad that you got lucky and nothing terrible happened.
Which is why planning and taking all possible precautions is so important.
You do know that they make a stroller that will hold both a toddler and an infant simultaneously, don’t you? That small investment would have saved you considerable risk and potential disaster through all the circumstances you describe.
There are also those horrible leashes that you can use to mainain control of your toddler while your hands are occupied.
There is also a little basic training that you can give your toddler so he/she just doesn’t go wandering off in parking lots by themselves. You can teach them to hold your hand, or grab your pant leg, and my daughter certainly understands and instantly obeys “Stop,” “Come Here,” and “Stand Still,” and has since she could first walk.
Well I continue to disagree with both of you, vehemently in fact. But since none of us has offered anything other than our own assertions, we will have to disagree, pending actual evidence.
Note to EJsGirl: the end result is not the total determinant of the severity of a crime. (That notion seems to underline your most recent post.)
Nope. I understand where the people are coming from when they say ‘it can happen to anyone’, but in this case it sounds like a major cop-out. In fact, it’s symptomatic of a society that increasingly refuses to take responsibility for it’s own actions. If a child is harmed due to negligence, then someone is responsible. Period. I can’t foresee a case where forgetting your child can be defined as anything but negligence.
If you think there is any chance you could forget your child in a car, make a habit of jumping into the rear seat and exiting via a rear door so that you can’t miss him or her. Sure you look like a bleeding idiot, but if you can’t be relied upon, you’d best do something to protect your child.
I do find that I can at least show some understanding of how it can happen. People screw up all the time. Sometimes monumentally.
And that’s what I was asking here. Are new laws required to cover this? Or should it be filed under ‘child endangerment’?
File me under the ‘existing laws get the job done’ category. I can easily realize that mistakes happen but I also think they should be punished when they lead to disastrous consequences. Someone as thoughtless as to make this sort of mistake isn’t likely to be reminded by the prospect of a $100 fine. I’d land on them with both feet.
And as for those who would do it intentionally? I’d land on them with both feet while wearing lead clothes. I can’t think of a punishment severe enough for purposefully taking a risk with a child’s life.
And Scylla? You hit that parental paranoia right on the head. If I have Kate I’m constantly having disaster scenarios going through my head. How careful do I have to be, I ask myself, to avoid this? You get the idea.
I was a single mom. I had a very active toddler, who weighed in at birth over 10 pounds. Was crawling at 4 months, could walk by himself by the time he was 9 months old, could get out of his stroller then, too. we also lived up stairs, so strollers weren’t much of a help ya know? Yea, I bought one of those god awful leashes, 'cause he’d gotten away from me at the mall more than once. He figured out how to get out of it the second time I had it on him. I had to maneuver getting him and the groceries into the house at the same time. I worked nights, too - which meant of course, that I was coming home at 1 am, not a whole lot of folks available to help. Did I ever leave him in the car alone while I put groceries inside the door? you bet- he was safer inside the carseat than he would have been inside the house w/o me right there.
In addition, there were the times he was cranky yet couldn’t get to sleep - now, he’s finally gotten to sleep and I have to stop and buy milk at the convenience store. Do I take him out of the car seat thereby waking him up? or dash in/out.
Go back to the scene I posted above - you’ve got two kids- one’s an infant, one’s a toddler. You’re alone. toddler gets away from you - do you run after toddler, leaving baby or stay with baby while toddler runs away? Keep in mind that seconds absolutely do count. Yes, even the second or two it’d take to grab up child in carseat.
It’s really quite easy to judge some one else from a distance. I understand Dangerosa situation perfectly.
This implies that you believe that parents who are “as thoughtless as to make this sort of mistake”, are so because they don’t regard the prospect of their child dying as severely as they do, say a jail term (or whatever punishment you are advocating). I dispute this.
If I were to ever become so negligent that I could leave my child inside a car for a prolonged period of time in dangerous conditions, then I am not fit to be a parent.
“Do not be angry at me for telling the truth.” --Aristotle
No, only select ones. The guy currently taking up space at the White House, for instance…
That’s part of the problem with society today – there aren’t enough opportunities to weed out the weak and incapable any more. It used to be, if you did something stupid, you died. Nowadays, if you do something stupid, you sue someone else for several million dollars.
Yes. And I am just as upset by the deaths of those innocent children as I am when a baby dies because his parent shook him too hard. Or when that mother in Texas drowned her five kids in the bathtub a few months back. I know the children were innocent, and I take no joy in their suffering.
I am, however (since you asked, and apparently IzzyR misunderstood), saying that I have absolutely no sympathy for the parents who endanger their children by doing boneheaded stuff like this. And if these parents are so stupid that they can put their children in avoidable life-or-death situations, then – as tragic as the child’s death is – I think it is ultimately a good thing that the idiotic parents’ genes were removed from the populace.
Finally, I should also point out that I have a child of my own, a toddler boy of 20 months. And while I’ve done a few boneheaded things like accidentally bumping his head while carrying him through a doorway, I take full responsibility for my actions. Again, if I were to ever become so negligent that I could leave my child inside a car for a prolonged period of time in dangerous conditions, then I am not fit to be a parent.
**
Well, I am a parent. I speak from direct personal experience. That is evidence.
I can describe it again, in one other way. It is the difference between a responsible professional, and a bullshit amateur.
If you are a professional, and you are responsible, than you will never ever shoot anybody with a firearm by accident, no matter how much you handle them.
That is because there is a mindset and a procedure that you follow each and every time your hands encounter a rifle. There are rules that you follow without exception. The first thing you do every single time you pick up a gun, is check to see if it is loaded. You do this every time you put your hands on it. You always assume it is loaded. You never point it towards another person, loaded or not.
If you are a bullshit amateur you don’t have a set procedure that you follow each and every time. You are careless. You take chances. Once in a while those chances catch up to you.
Surgeons and pilots understand this. There are certain mistakes that are inexcusable because they denote carelessness, a lack of serioussness, and a lack of professionality. No surgeon or pilot worthy of the name ever makes them, because they follow the procedures that prevent them each and every time.
A mountain climber can go up a sheer cliff face with confidence because he and his partners follow these procedures each and every time they put their hands on rope.
Reasonably intelligent and professional people do it in their daily lives. Each and every time I get into my car the first thing I do is put my foot on the clutch and check to see if the car is in neutral. Every single time. This happens before I put the key in the ignition. Every single time.
Every time I go to bed I put my watch and my wallet on the dresser top in the same place. If I am away from home, I designate another area, and put it there.
I have created a professional procedure for myself to avoid having to look for my watch and wallet, simply because I find it inconvenient and it pisses me off to have to go looking for them. It doesn’t take a great deal of effort, and by creating and following this procedure, I will never lose my watch or wallet.
The very least that I could do, is put the same kind of care, and minimal effort into the protection of my daughter who is completely and totally reliant on my responsibility.
And, I am a responsible parent. I take it seriously. I am professional in my demeanor, and I do things the same way every time in matters of safety, and I put thought and care into minimizing all risks.
That’s what a professional does. That’s what a responsible person does.
If a responsible professional acts appropriately his behavior will protect him from these kinds of catastrophes 100% percent of the time.
Sometimes people get by on luck. On matters such as this I make it a point not to be acquainted with the lady. She isn’t reliable.
This is what the terms professional, responsible, and reliable actually mean.
If you are these things (and I will insist that you must be in order to be a good parent,) then certain kind of accidents simply do not occur.
For example:
There is no chance my daughter will walk away from me in a parking lot.
There is no chance that she will be burned pulling food, oil or water from the stove.
There is no chance that she will fall down the stairs.
There is no chance that she will ingest household cleaners or other poison in my house.
There is no chance that she will turn the hot water on and scald herself.
There is no chance that she will get her hands on a kitchen knife.
There is no chance that she will be able to leave the house by herself.
There is no chance that she will be able to eloctrocute herself in a wall outlet.
There is no chance that my daughter will be left untended in a car while under my or my wife’s care.
There are other risks such as choking on a small object, or climbing and hitting her head or pulling soemthing on top of herself that cannot be completely eliminated. Nevertheless they are minimized to all possible reasonable extents.
Once again this is the difference between professional and amateur, responsible and irresponsible.
If you are responsible certain things never happen.
If you are reliable that means that you do not forget.
wring, whether we like the idea of a child left in a car or not, it’s apparent that you attempt to be as diligent as possible. Please just keep in mind that as you dash in for milk, you can get delayed due to circumstances beyond your control, someone could be lurking in the parking lot, or several other rare but possible scenarios. I’m not placing any blame, just a friendly ‘please be careful’. Also, there is a world of difference between you dashing upstairs to deposit groceries, and another parent leaving a child in the car (intentional or no) while they go to work.
Damn, I must be a really bad person. I have a proffesional mindset, too. Every night I clean my contact case so that my contacts will remain safe to wear. Every morning, I put in my contacts, and then air-dry the case. Twice in my life, I have woken up in the morning and done a good night-time style wash of the case, sending my (expensive as heck) contacts swirling into the sewers. Those things happen. They suck.
We all make mistakes. Even when we know not to make mistakes, we make mistakes. That is why we pray the mistakes that have tragic results do not happen to us. How many of you have parents who have not, at least once (and once is all it takes) accidently left you in a dangerous situation?
On to the subject, what age kiddies are we talking about? I agree that infants should stay with mom or dad, but what about eight year olds? Is there a time limit? Can you leave Jr. asleep in the car seat while you stand a foot away from the car and chat with a friend? What about leaveing a younger kid with an older kid? What if an eleven year old has her own kid- will they both need to have an adult around when they are in a car? What is it is on your property? What about golfcarts?
What I am trying to say is that we cannot legislate for every single bit of stupidity. Instead we say “don’t endanger you kid” and enforce that.
In this case you are well and truly fucked. What you do is you don’t allow this kind of situation to happen.
You load your children into and out of the car in the right order so that the mobile one is confined before you confine the immobile one, and you do the opposite while unloading.
If you do it the same way every single time, and you make it nonnegotiable, and you enlist the child’s understanding and aid in this, it becomes a near impossibility, in much the same way that it is nearly impossible for a responsible pilot to run out of fuel while in midair.
But, I guess it can happen. It certainly helps to think what you would do before hand. What do I do?
The child running through the parking lot is facing a significant immediate danger. The child by itself in the carseat is facing only potential danger. You scream for help and chase the kid.
Could you explain what I “misunderstood” as opposed to what you really meant. Your post seems pretty straightforward to me.
Not really. It is an assessment of one person based on very limited experience, speculating about whether some far-fetched scenario would be theoretically possible.
Well, yeah. But even a professional person might on occasion act irresponsibly. Being human after all.
It would appear from your post that you are an unusually careful and cautious person. This would tend to minimize the likelihood of your child having the type of accidents you describe. But eliminate? No. (Well put even sven)
I’d suggest that if you do have a professional attitude towards your contact lenses, it is one that has built into it an acceptable rate of failure.
Or, you have a bad procedure.
More likely, you really aren’t professional towards your contacts. What you have is a set of good habits that generally protect you with none of the deliberateness or redundant failsafes of the professional who cannot tolerate failure.
That may be what the article said, but it’s only true as far as criminal charges go. The officer would always have the option of reporting to Child Protective Services, which may very well be more appropriate. After all, if there’s a fine, you pay the fine and it’s over.If CPS investigates, they may find that the parents who leave children in the car in 100 degree weather also leave open pill bottles around, don’t have window guards and in general, have no common sense about anything. Scylla
I don’t know how old your daughter is, and maybe she’s young enough that now you can guarantee those things won’t happen, but as they get older,it becomes imposssible to guarantee that some won’t happen :
There is no chance my daughter will walk away from me in a parking lot.
Depends as much on your daughter as it does on you. If I was carrying packages and/or had another child with me,my son could worm out of my grip at six. Okay, so you say I shouldn’t bring him. First, that’s not possible for everyone all of the time and more importantly, the first time he did it I had no idea that he could or would do it.
There is no chance that she will be burned pulling food, oil or water from the stove.
Unless you keep a lock on your kichen door until she’s a teenager, there’ll be a chance of this sometime.
There is no chance that she will fall down the stairs.
A five year old who cannot possibly fall down the stairs either never encounters stairs or is being watched too closely.
There is no chance that she will ingest household cleaners or other poison in my house.
This you can prevent until it’s not an issue There is no chance that she will turn the hot water on and scald herself.
At some point, you’ll have to let her turn the water on.
There is no chance that she will get her hands on a kitchen knife.
Same as the stove
There is no chance that she will be able to leave the house by herself.
Someday she’ll be able to, possibly long before you expected it.
There is no chance that she will be able to eloctrocute herself in a wall outlet.
Same as the cleaning supplies
There is no chance that my daughter will be left untended in a car while under my or my wife’s care.
This one, you and your wife definitely can prevent, but as you get to older children , and in certain situations, it becomes less of an issue.Would I leave a child of any age in a car while I grocery shopped? No. Might I leave a five year old while I walked fifteen feet to the cashier window ( you don’t go in the building) at the gas station? It’s entirely possible.
Older children are certainly a different issue. As they get older, you hopefully instill responsibility in them as they are able to handle it. Right now my daughter isn’t capable of walking in a parking lot safely. At six I think she will be.
Personally, I know that I am the kind of person who could forget. And so, I very rarely care for young children by myself. And I don’t want any children of my own. I’m a Godfather and an Uncle. That is enough responsibility for me, maybe too much already. When I do care for yound children I am hyper sensitive, but I couldn’t maintain that for longer than a day or two. I think it would be immoral for me to accept responsibility for small children for longer than that. I know that many people are perfectly capable of maintaining that awareness, I just don’t think I can. I think that some people cannot, but don’t admit it to themselves (maybe they are just unaware). Maybe I would find the ability within me if I had children of my own.
Let me tell a little story. I was at the grocery. I saw a couple of kids around age 5 playing in the back seat of a car. It was about 80 degrees and sunny. They looked sweaty, but ok. I was worried about them, but saw that a security guard was kinda watching the car and so I left it alone. I went in and bought about 12 items. When I came out they were both asleep and not sweating. I knocked on the windows to try to wake them but they didn’t wake up. I yelled and the security guard came running. He agreed to announce the problem in the store, but wouldn’t break the window with his nightstick. I ran to my car to get a tire iron and he stood his ground and wouldn’t let me break the window. He now wasn’t even announcing it in the store because he wasn’t going to leave the scene long enough to let me break a window. I threw the tire iron at the window but it bounced off. I then ran in the store and grabbed a manager who grabbed a gallon of water that was close to hand and ran outside and told me to ask a cashier to make the announcement. I did that and then called 911. The mother came running. When I went outside the manager had broken the window and had the kids out of the car. The mother was just screaming and crying, “My babies, my babies!” The kids survived, but one had severe brain damage. I’m not sure what happened to the mom. The police got a statement from me, but I heard no more about it. I was still pissed at the security guard and tried to tell the officer that I thought the guard should be arrested along with the mother. The officer seemed to sympathize with me, but didn’t take any action.
Anyway, let me chime in on the side of no new laws. Also, as usual let me reiterate that the education system in this country needs some work. Almost any major changes are going to cost a lot of money. It would be worth it.
