Im having a hard time with this story. How do you forget to drop off your child, go to work, GET BACK IN THE SAME CAR, go to the daycare, GET OUT OF THE CAR, AND NOT SEE YOUR CHILD?!?
Hard to imagine, but it can happen I guess?
I forgot to shut the car door after picking up my kid from DC many years ago. Random person chasing me yelling…good thing or car seats.
These stories are so tragic. How do you live with yourself after something like this.
I just dont see how you drove to work, left your kid in the car , got back in the car drove all the way to the daycare, and you still didnt see your child?
I can believe it. A sleep-deprived, frazzled parent with a lot on her mind can be spaced out and forget one critical step in the rushed daily routine. It is not all that unusual for a parent to forget a sleeping baby in a car seat. The child’s head may be down so not visible. Perhaps the parents take turns driving the child to day care, and the mom forgot that it was her day. Call me nuts, but I feel only empathy for this mom’s heartbreak. Can’t imagine going on after that.
I am heartsick for this mother, am almost certain this was a case of absentmindedness, and wonder how she can face her husband after this tragedy.
That type of thing was a big concern for me when I had my first child – I would worry, what if I got into a car accident with the baby and she was hurt or worse – how could I possibly go on, and how could I face my husband?
I myself have sometimes driven in the wrong direction from my destination because my “auto pilot” was going on another day of the week. (Heading to a work location on a weekend morning, for example.)
“There but for the grace of God go I,” is my reaction. I hope this family gets lots of support.
I feel so bad for these parents. We all do dumb things but usually the consequences aren’t so tragic.
The high was in the low 80s yesterday in central Mississippi. Does a two-year-old child clearly die left in a car for seven hours in that temperature? It’s not like she would have starved or anything.
@JEM I have 3 kids, I definitely understand that frazzled parents can be forgetful. I even get forgetting to drop your kid off at daycare. The part of this particular story that gets me, is she was in and out of the car several times. In most of these tragic cases, people notice the kid when they get back in the car after work. I just find it hard to believe she got back in the car after work, drove, got out to go in the daycare and didnt see her child.
The temperature inside the car could easily reach 100+ in a short time. Of course a 2-year-old could die in 7 hours!
I can easily see how it could happen – and in fact I feel lucky that my kids got through the silently-sleeping-in-the-carseat stage before we got cars with airbags. I always had the baby in the carseat next to me in the front seat, which made it difficult for me to overlook the child’s presence.
A silent child in a rear-facing carseat in the back seat of a car is very easy to overlook. I think there’s a need for some sort of automated alarm system to prevent it from happening.
I forgot my 9yo in the car. She was quietly reading, autopilot kicked in, scared the life out of me when she looked up and complained that I was taking her to work, not to camp. In my mind, I had already dropped her off. I am so thankful that it never happened to me when she was too little to let herself out of a car.
Absolutely. It probably hit over 110-120F in the car. Plus the baby was dressed and strapped into a car seat and the air wasn’t moving so the normal mechanism of sweating to cool off was severely compromised. Also babies have a higher surface to weight ratio so it’s more difficult for them to regulate their body temperature vs adults. Then throw in 7 hours without water.
The baby was probably unconscious and suffering from hypothermia by the end of the first hour or two if the car was sitting in the sun.
That’s horrible to think about.
I think daycare centers should call the parents if the child doesn’t show up. Schools do this. It might make a difference.
My kids always talked, all the time (to me, to each other, to no one at all). The one morning when they were quiet I almost got on the freeway before realizing I hadn’t dropped them off. While it’s unlikely that with two of them, approx 1 & 4 years old, I would have gotten to work and left them without realizing they were there - it is scary to realize how having only one of them in the car could have gone quite differently.
Truly horrible that these things happen.
Kids all arrive at school at the same time. They arrive at day care at different times. So I think this would be more difficult to implement at a day care than at a school. And it might mean hiring extra staff, thereby increasing costs to parents.
Also, calls from the daycare would only help in situations when the parent forgets to drop off the child at daycare. There have been cases of children left in cars at other destinations.
I’m not saying that this idea isn’t a possibility, just that I have more faith in technological fixes to the carseat or the car.
Tragic, but I agree it is sadly understandable. Motor memory is very strong, and if one drives the same route for years, motor memory often takes over.
The best tip I received when I was expecting was from a coworker just a few years ahead of me. Her advice was to put my purse on the back seat next to baby seat. Even if your mind runs on auto and you drive to work (or on errands) when you reach for your purse and its on the back seat (!) tragedy could be averted. I’ve since read similar advice if you don’t carry purse, briefcase, or backpack to put your left shoe back there. Over time your new route will develop into routine, but an over worked, over tired brain needs some support.
have you ever looked around your home for your keys and you had them in your hand the entire time?
if a parent goes to a night club and purposely leaves a kid in the car that is one thing…but things like this can happen. the consequence is beyond tragic. but I can see this happening to anyone.
It may sound harsh, but in this particular case, Im not buying it. She needs to be charged, even if just for negligence.
I was so afraid of this happening in the hot climate we used to live in that I began to add to my automatic driving routine. Before closing the car door, I would look in the back seat. I am still doing this today and the “baby” is 13 years old. It’s amazing to me how often this (now automatic) behavior rewards me with a forgotten item, such as drycleaning or my lunchbag. Every time it does I feel nervous thinking about how I could easily have become “that parent” with the forgotten baby.