Yeah, exactly, citygirlsmom. See, that is strange. I must admit, as I said I’m a headcase about safety, but I still call my kids when I’m at work, several times a day in the summer, and when they’re at school, I call when they’re due off the bus to make sure they got in the door okay, to walk the dog, and have a snack, and an estimate of when they can expect me home. And they’re 15 and 17.</p>
<p>Most of the time they call me if they’re running late when they’re out, if they’ve gone somewhere different with friends, or whatever. Because if they don’t call, I call them and they don’t like that (embarrassing in front of friends).</p>
<p>Like so many of you said – I guess I have an overactive imagination about what can go wrong, and so I was one of “those parents” when they were little. I got them all out of the carseats when running errands. It was a hassle, of course.</p>
<p>I would favor a suspended sentence or an alternative to incarceration</p>
<p>Yes I am not saying she should go to prison- but as I think I already mentioned- if it had been a 1986 Ford Torino instead of a Mercedes Benz, and if she had been a 19 yr old mother working at Burger Barn instead of a woman in her 40s working as an administrator in an elementary school- would we say " shes suffered enough"?</p>
<p>Her suffering was totally her doing
I realize mistakes happen- mistakes like forgetting to check the bathwater temp or locking your keys in your car- * not forgetting about your baby all day* that is what I just can’t get around.
Ok
she altered her schedule and didn’t go right to babysitters
But * did it not occur to her* ALL DAY, that she didn’t drop off her kid at the babysitters?</p>
<p>I think about my kids often every day-and I imagine if I was leaving a baby, I would be replaying the leaving of them into a care of another- wondering what they were doing… Even if she initially forgot- how could she not remember all day long that she didnt drop her off that day?</p>
<p>She must be relatively intelligent- asst principal jobs require college +.
This isn’t a case of post partum psychosis, which I would give more consideration.
This is someone who is so careless and preoccupied that she made an Ooops!</p>
<p>I am just tired of careless parenting.
Parents crossing busy streets while their kids ( often very young) straggle along behind them - parents don’t even glance behind- kids don’t even realize the dangers.</p>
<p>Im reminded of that dad who wanted his daughter to jump off a bridge ( into water), she didn’t want to- he did it first and broke his leg
talk about logical consequences.</p>
<p>We cant stop people from having kids- but we can have sanctions against people whose actions bring harm to their children.</p>
<p>We had the recent story of a mom who accidentally left her 5 month old in a car all day last month after forgetting to drop him off at day care. The baby died, and there were no charges filed (lucky thing for her, she wasn’t poor and black).
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<p>What I don’t understand is how someone with a new 5-month old can forget their kid? How do you go ALL day at work and not think of your baby even once? When did moms get so busy and distracted that they forget their kids? Are these moms just overwhelmed or what? (Probably.) It’s so sad, but something is just wrong with this whole situation.</p>
<p>*What I don’t understand is how someone with a new 5-month old can forget their kid? *</p>
<p>I do admit that having my kids 8 years apart was strange.
I had already given much of my baby stuff away & I kept saying to my husband- “where did this baby come from”?
Its amazing how much you forget ( kinda like how long labor is)
leaving the diaper bag in the front is a good idea.
I actually had the car seat in the front some of the time- ( facing backward- didn’t have air bag) because she would scream so loud if we stopped in traffic so loud that it was a safety risk because such a big distraction. OMG
Not much chance I would have left her in the car-</p>
<p>that is my point weenie…how can 3 adults ALL not care enough about the child to check in with somebody during the day</p>
<p>Did the mother never LOOK at the child, and while I know that many babies fall asleep in the car, do they do it just after waking in the morning?</p>
<p>a 2 year old is usually jabbering away, asking for stuff</p>
<p>and scary that people are so “busy” they forget their baby</p>
<p>and strange relationship with babysitter, show up whenver without calling, not show up…I don’t know, that to me shows a certain arrogance</p>
<p>It is not OK to leave a young child in the car alone, even for a minute. Deaths can and have occured due to heatstroke, carbon monoxide poisoning, fire, child abduction and for older children, putting the car in gear or being crushed by power windows. </p>
<p>One of the obvious outcomes of consistent, well publicized and enforced laws of this kind is that they can prevent the tragic accidents that take place when people are in the habit of leaving a child or baby for “only a minute” but get distracted. If one never, not even once, leaves the baby in the car, for ANY reason, that can’t happen.</p>
<p>This is so tragic…Being a forgetful, scattered-brain person myself, I really feel for the mother. It is hard to fathom, however, that she didn’t realize that she had not taken her baby to day-car at some point during the day. It seems like someone would have asked her how her child was doing (since it was the beginning of the school year), or that she would have thought about her daughter during her down-time (e.g., snack or lunch break).</p>
<p>The other morning, I also changed my schedule around (my H, who ususally helps with carpool in the morning since our kids are in three different schools, took one of my S’s to the doctor instead), and I completely forgot to take my oldest D (high school sophomore), to school that morning…I was sitting at home (after taking youngest D to school) going through my e-mail (or surfing CC ), when I got a call from her friend who said, “Mrs. curiousmother, aren’t you taking me to school today?” I almost flipped out! My D was in her bedroom (which is right next to mine) fast asleep! The girls got to school 10 minutes late. The point is, I was really freaked out by my forgetfulness!!</p>
<p>If anyone is familiar with the outcome of the Atlanta case a year or so ago concerning the young African-American mother (the child was developmentally disabled), a recent newcomer who had difficulty finding a job and daycare, please post. I believe that AJC columnist Cynthia Tucker wrote an editorial about it at the time.</p>
<p>I just searched and found the sentence for Nakia Burgess. Indicted for involuntary manslaughter, found guilty and sentenced to 5-years probation in 2004. The facts of the case were especially egregious. Parked the car on the top (no roof) floor of a garage in the hot Georgia sun. She made no mistake. She intentionally left the downs syndrome child in the locked car. She’s wretched as far as I’m concerned.</p>
<p>It’s a problem which isn’t going to go away. Concern over airbags and accident safety puts the car seat in the back. Sleeping kids make no noise. People are distracted and forgetful - particularly when they are repeating a routine activity like driving to work. I drive 40 minutes to and from work, every day. I honestly couldn’t tell you what I did during those 40 minutes - I’m totally on auto-pilot. So, yes, these stories recur on a regular basis, and will continue to do so. </p>
<p>Bashing the devastated parents may make some people feel good, but in my opinion it’s misplaced. No one is perfect; there’s a world of difference between intentional conduct and absent-minded mistakes. Let’s be candid: most people in fact don’t call their baby-sitter multiple times a day - I know my wife and I didn’t. Our sitter wouldn’t have called us if we didn’t show one day, either. If you don’t realize that you didn’t drop your kid off at the sitter there’s no reason to “remember” that you didn’t do it; thinking about your baby isn’t going to automatically trigger an “Omigod I left Suzy in the car!.” </p>
<p>For all of you who call for criminal prosecution of these parents - have you never lost sight with your small children even for a minute? Never stopped to talk with an old friend in the supermarket and didn’t notice that one of your kids had wandered off? Never left your kids playing in the backyard “for just a minute” while you went to the bathroom? I know my wife and I once lost our son at the mall - it was one of those “Where’s Johnny?” - “What do you mean, I thought he was with you?!” moments that I’ll never forget. (We found him jumping up and down on a bed in the mattress department, asking where we went…)</p>
<p>People aren’t perfect. This wasn’t a case of someone intentionally locking their kids in a car because they couldn’t figure out a better means of “child care” - as sometimes happens. This was an accident caused by (to me understandable) absent mindedness. It will happen again. It’s a structural problem, not an issue of bad parents.</p>
<p>Making a practice of keeping the diaper bag on the front seat when the kid is in the car is a good idea - maybe an educational campaign along those lines would be a good idea. It would do a heck of a lot more to save future lives than prosecuting these devastated parents.</p>
I read somewhere about a car manufacturer (maybe multiple) working on a system that does this. The car detects whether there’s a person or animal in the car, the temperature in the car, and will crack the windows (and I don’t know what else - maybe sound an alarm or turn on the A/C) when this is detected. If you think about it from a technical perspective this would be fairly easy to do with existing technology - most of which is already in the cars.</p>
<p>I think there is a major distinction between leaving a child in a car out of forgetfulness and deliberately leaving a child in a car. In the first case, I cannot see how anyone can reasonably call for prosecution of the parent. In the second case, I think the parent is at fault. My younger son will be 9 this month, and I still don’t leave him in the car while I run into the bank, for example. He comes with me. I would leave him in the car for a few minutes if my 14-year-old were there, too.</p>
<p>* I think there is a major distinction between leaving a child in a car out of forgetfulness and deliberately leaving a child in a car.*
True- sentencing can take that into account- accidental death rather than intentional.</p>
<p>mommusic–no, there is no difference between leaving a baby in a carseat and leaving “loose” kids unattended in a car, just different levels of negligence.</p>
<p>And my husband was negligent by leaving the baby in the car when he went in for coffee. A baby does not need two adults caring for him, just one responsible adult. Accidents can happen at any time, to anyone, but negligence is the legal issue at the root of this discussion.</p>
<p>If you want to talk about legality, Ohio is one of the states that does not have laws about leaving children alone in cars. I guess it depends on the application of common sense.</p>
<p>I have also read that the number of heat-related fatalities has increased 10-fold since the law prohibiting car seats in the front of airbag-enabled seats.</p>
<p>In any case, this woman is being tried and convicted in the court of public opinion. One blogger said the surveillance camera showed her returning to the car “during the day” and even moving it once. Patently false. She only returned to the car during the 5 minute period she was unloading donuts and moved the car from the loading zone of the cafeteria to the parking lot. </p>
<p>I know, it was stupid, stupid, stupid. How could she not have noticed her child in there? Her life is over.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s fair to pull the babysitter in on any blame in this case. I don’t think she has any moral obligation to track down a no-show client. </p>
<p>I have a hard time fathoming forgetting a baby. I had four of them in six years and boy it sure was a pain getting them all out of their seats to go into a store or pick up an older sibling at school. But I never left them home alone or in the car alone. Even harder to understand is not thinking about the child all day long. I still think about my kids all the time while I’m at work, and they’re teens now.</p>
<p>There’s no punishment for this that will cure anything. Jailing the mother won’t make other mothers pay more attention to their kids. Nothing will bring back this poor child.</p>
), when I got a call from her friend who said, “Mrs. curiousmother, aren’t you taking me to school today?” I almost flipped out! My D was in her bedroom (which is right next to mine) fast asleep! The girls got to school 10 minutes late. The point is, I was really freaked out by my forgetfulness!!</p>