christ, fessie-get over you motheroftheyear self appointment. The woman in the OP parked in a fire lane, so that, alone should have gotten her cited. You admitted to parking in a handicapped spot, just so you could run an errand. Fuck You. Because you’ve produced crotch spawn doesn’t mean you’re handicapped.
Park in the proper lot spaces and string your herd along behind you, like the other critters are taught to do.
That and taking advice from “Supernanny”…yeesh.
Hey man, don’t you be dissin on JoJo. She is a True Goddess. This past week she basically saved somebody from a jail sentence - either that Dad was gonna seriously hurt one of his boys via ineffective discipline, or those kids were gonna wind up in jail someday. It was a mess.
Not sure what I did to piss you off, Mr. Fireman; I wasn’t being sarcastic re: parents whose skills exceed my own (and they are legion) (parents better than myself, that is).
Nobody ever said it was OK to park illegally.
This piece from CNN says she was in a “loading zone, right behind someone tying a Christmas tree onto a car.”
And since three’s a charm
Apparently you missed the recent headlines on momnesia :
Not that it’s carte blanch for hanging out in the handicapped zone, but would it really kill you to cut someone some slack when they’re trying to keep their kids safe AND get to where they’re going on time?
I’ve even been known to litter on occasion – not by choice, and certainly not deliberately – because the wind caught a piece of paper in our backseat while I was trying to buckle the kids in, and, yes, I WILL be fucked if I’ll leave them unsecured in order to chase it down. Because they just might leave the car to follow me.
Happened to one of their balloons just the other day - sorry, say bye-bye to your balloon, kiddo.
Any statistics on how many kids are injured walking through parking lots every year?
I’d also like to see stats on how many children are injured in the home while an adult is also in the home.
Because I think we might just have to do it, we might just have to outlaw parenting.
I’m probably going to sound like a complete hilljack here, but was it a pretty small town? I know people who are so known by their nicknames that referring to them by their official Social Security names produces a “Who?” from people that live next door to them.
Un-hijacking, I know a woman who was dressed down by a policeman for returning a cart to a cart corral in the parking lot after making sure her children were safely strapped into the van, and making sure the van was locked. He was upset that she had “abandoned them.” Seriously? Strapping them safely in and then taking a total of maybe eight steps there and back is abandoning your children? Are there people out there just trying to make it hard to be a parent?
My kids are now of an age that I can send one of them into the post office to mail a package, or into 7-11 to buy a gallon of milk, or into the library to drop off books, rather than me getting all four of them out of their seats and schlepping them in for a 30-second transaction of some sort.
I have had people get upset at me for sending a kid perfectly capable of screaming, kicking, and biting - and with permission to do exactly that if bothered by somebody - for “letting” my 10 year old buy a gallon of milk inside the 7-11 under the watchful eyes of the employees who have known us for 10 years. Or for sending my 8 year old inside to drop off a pre-postaged package.
I suppose, I should just keep them home until they’re 18. They can learn social interaction, and social transactions in typical social situations, with people of all ages, then.
No. I don’t send them walking to 7-11 to buy the milk, although I do see neighbor-kids riding their bikes there alone. But if I have to - and sometimes it seems a better choice - yes, I will leave them in the vehicle for 30 seconds while I drop the books in the outside book-return. So far, my clinical experience is “This is not harmful.” I call this, using my best judgment in light of the situation.
I would not have had a problem with the woman in the OP’s story. Evidently, the local justices eventually agreed. There is danger. And then there is ‘oh, for heaven’s sake, get a grip’.
You’re kidding, right?
How about leaving your kids alone in the house? Period. Not when you go to the store not when you’re in the back yard!
Instead of Zero Tolerance it should be called Zero Thinking.
Mostly. 
Kinda far south suburb of Chicago. Getting closer to rural, but comfortably surrounded by anonymous burbs on all sides.
I think this decision kinda stinks. If someone was unable to restrain themselves from politely discussing this topic, they were free to start any threads wherever they wished. But by moving this to the Pit, you have increased the chances of the level of discussion lowering to personal insults.
It’s fine to leave kids in a parked car for a couple minutes while you drop something off in a building.
I am not saying it is fine to park in firelanes, and leave kids baking for hours, or whatever. I am saying it is fine to leave a child in a parked car for a couple minutes while you run in to drop something off or pick something up.
It is also fine to allow your children to be in the kitchen with the stove and butcher knives while you are in the living room on the computer. It is fine to send your child to school where an adult has access and authority over your child while you are at work. These things are fine. People who go all bananas about the ‘kids in the car’ thing really crack me up.
Well, technically…in Washington State it’s illegal to leave your child in the car. Even for a moment. That said…it’s unrealistic sometimes to unload 4 kids, some of whom might be asleep, just so you can drop library books off on this trip rather than making another separate trip.
You also can’t leave smaller kids at home for 3 minutes under the supervision of a 10 year old while you drop something in the mailbox. But you can, presumably, take a 15 minute shower while they watch TV, or even take a nap with instructions that you are to be woken if the house is on fire or anybody is bleeding. In my opinion, the former is actually safer than the latter, but laws don’t look at realism either.
Too bad the law can’t distinguish between ‘realistic’ and ‘genuinely dangerous’.
I’m certainly glad that I grew up in a time when, and a place where, it was not assumed that a 10- or 11-year old kid was a total fuckup incapable of knowing if the car was too hot for him or her; incapable of leaving Mom a note that he/she was running into the store for a drink of water and a trip to the bathroom, etc.
I loved stretching out in the back seat to read, nap, draw, or just observe whilst the cackling pullets I had to share the house with tried on dresses and hats for Easter.
They didn’t want me sitting on the uncomfortable straight-back chair outside the fitting rooms groaning, moaning, and making rude comments and I didn’t want me there, either.
It would really suck to be the only boy in a houseful of girls or the only girl in a houseful of boys in today’s Washington State.
While I was pregnant, I started to get forgetful. One of my coworkers (who had a toddler at home) said “Baby’s favorite food is Mommy’s brain.” I don’t know any woman who didn’t become more forgetful during pregnancy - and I don’t know anyone who ever fully recovered from the event. That first six months or so of breastfeeding and interrupted sleep don’t help. At one point - before you all knew me - I was actually a fairly bright woman. Then I had kids. Now look at me.
It’s kind of easy to see which posters had unfit parents and which ones had parents responsible enough to fill them with fear that the world is an unremittingly dangerous place ready to pounce on and strangle the life out of innocent babies at the slightest opportunity. Neither group in this sample seems to have killed any children yet, but one side is a hell of a lot more into justifying their own parenting and criticizing that of others, and I doubt if it’s mere coincidence.
The fact is, there are myriad ways to affect our children’s safety, and we can all choose our headlines to comfort ourselves and scold others. It would be wise to exhibit a little humility when so indulging ourselves. The fact is that no parent has never been careless or inattentive or indulged her/himself at the expense of his/her child or calculated a risk and come to a decision that did not maximize a child’s safety at the expense of everything else.
For example, nobody seems interested in tracking the number of instances of leaving a child in a car when nothing happens, but it racks up about 36 deaths per year, with one-fifth of those accounted for by parents who mindfully and intentionally left the kid in the car. So, say, seven. Per year.
And then there’s the raft of threats of death and harm and unhappiness we visit upon our children when, say, we divorce the other parent: leaving aside the mental illness and drug abuse and crime, let’s just take the three-quarters of the adolescent suicide rate for a death toll of say, 225. Per year.
Now we’re going to assume that divorces are all pretty much intentional, as least insofar as both parents know it’s happening. And this is going to be controversial, but let’s just say that the number of children exposed to the horror of being left in a car for five minutes is equal to the number of children exposed to the divorce of their parents (yes, I know the kids left in cars outnumber the kids left in courtroom halls by a factor of a bunch) – a million per year.
So basically, getting divorced exposes kids (particularly boys) to a risk of death approximately 32 times greater than leaving kids in a car on purpose (and probably much more, given how much more often children are left in a car than watch their Mom and Dad sign divorce papers). And of course, it may not happen until later. Just goes to show, you’re not a bona-fide, certified, citified, can’t-be-denied, hometown-pride, better parent until you and all your kids are dead, by which time no one cares.
King of Soup, I would like to say I have a clue what you’re talking about, but I honestly don’t. I read your post twice and I still don’t. Sorry.
When many of us were children, we could be left quite legally in the family car and (as far as we know) everything was fine. (In Denmark even today, people routinely leave babies in their carriage outside of businesses rather than wheel their prams inside. This is not considered abandonment or even dangerous. So to some degree this is a cultural rather than a universal ‘truth’.)
Many of us also very likely rode long distances in the car without a seatbelt, much less a belt-positioning booster. Many of us probably rode home from the hospital on mom’s lap, or in a laundry basket or even a dresser drawer.
I will go out on a limb and suggest that today’s laws are in response to tragic losses otherwise unremembered except as sad distant memories by the families affected - babies, children lost to accidents because carseats were at best prototypical and more likely not even thought of yet. Shoulder belts? They didn’t exist yet. Mind you - most of us did survive.
Think back further: in the time of the childhoods of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Annie Oakley, it was not unheard of for parents to leave underage children at home for days or longer - and to entrust them to tasks and tools we would consider suitable only for adults today. Was it wise? We say no. Was it necessary? Sometimes, yes. Did those children survive? Undoubtedly, most of them. Did something horrible happen to some of them? I’m sure, but their names are forgotten.
What can any of us do, but make our best educated judgment? The chances are, everything will be all right. And we can grieve for the people who make horrible mistakes, lapses in memory due to sleep deprivation or change of routine…and have to live with it.
I still don’t think the mother in the OP was unrealistic in her choice. I will continue to say that. It was reasonable. The car was in sight, the doors were locked, the weather was not going to freeze or cook the baby in a couple of minutes. Evidently, the local constabulary agreed. But this is ONE case. Other cases, I imagine I would judge differently.
Not sure what you did? By your own admission, you (non-handicapped) parked in a handicapped spot! You admit that you’re setting a bad example and breaking the law, but do it anyway. How do your kids reconcile your behavior? When it’s really important, it’s OK to fuck the guy who lost his leg in Vietnam or the old lady with a heart condition? Get a clue, would you?