Leaving Children in a Car

06.10.2010

While waiting for my sister at the doctor’s office the other day, I sat staring at the magazine choices and debated whether to read about the new “100 NEW ways to orgasm” on the latest Cosmo magazine (I swear they recycle their headlines) or pick up a Parenting magazine (June 2010). Since I’m not blogging about orgasms (though that would probably get me noticed), I decided that it was probably best to pick up the Parenting magazine so as to have a blog topic.

I read an article about a phenomenon that’s occurring at a rapid rate of parents accidentally leaving their children in their cars and, as a result, killing them.

I, like most I’m sure, immediately jumped to conclusions making all kinds of judgments about the parent (usually a mom) and how unfit she was. But the more I read about the circumstances under which such devastating situations occur, a real fear began to grow within me. A fear stemming from the fact that I recognized the stress that a mother was under and the fact that I could so easily see myself falling into the same trap.

The journalist in the article wrote about how most of these children’s deaths occurred because the parent in charge at the time had a random change in routine at the last minute and, as a result, had no visual cues in the car to help her recognize that her child was in the car. Even scarier, is that the article discussed the very real difference between our brains’ short-term memory and long-term memory. In each situation that the journalist looked at, the mother was under enormous stress and the sudden change in routine created an imbalance in the memory department even creating a false memory of the normal routine took place.

For example, one mother, normally took both of her children to day care together never taking them separately – even if one child was sick in which case both children stayed home. But one morning, she and her husband decided that he would be the one to stay home from work and that she would take the healthy child to day care. Stressed about her work and the amount of time she had to take off of work because of the other child’s illness coupled with the fact that her child in the car fell asleep and so she had no audio cues that he was in the car, she completely forgot to take her child to day care. She went through a day’s work and, at the end of the day, drove to the day care center to pick up her child upon where she was told that he was never brought in. At this point she realized he was in the car the entire day and ran to her car only to find his limp body.

Apparently it only takes 15 minutes for a child’s temperature to reach deadly degrees and kill him/her. Children have died when it’s only in the 50s outside. The fact is, the car heats up faster and hotter than outside. And cracking a window open does little to help. Bottom line: it’s just not safe to leave a child in the car.

And this could totally happen to me. My mind is constantly all over the place and if I’m going down a street on my way to Place B but it’s a route I usually take to Place A, I have found myself headed toward Place A while meaning to go to Place B. It’s habit and my body works on auto-pilot. And reading such a story as in Parenting magazine scares me because it’s a very real situation that could happen to me.

One of the solutions that I found helpful is to keep a stuffed doll/animal, etc. in the child’s seat and place it in the front seat with you whenever the child is in the car. This would serve as a visual reminder that your kid is in the car with you. Another suggestion is to always put your things (purse, briefcase, etc.) in the backseat so that regardless of where you’re going you always have to open the back door to get your stuff. A third suggestion I really liked was to put the child’s seat behind the passenger seat so you can see it in your rear-view mirror. You can also buy bell-like equipment that go off when you leave your kid in the car, but they’re kinda expensive. I like the previous suggestions better.