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Post by erictheblue on Jul 1, 2009 9:25:34 GMT -5
In the past few days, I've run across several stories from around the US about parents leaving their kids in closed-up cars for hours. The most common excuse is "I forgot the kid was there."
I am not a parent, and I never plan to be one. For this reason, I have no real basis for understanding. So I will throw this out to all the parents on this forum.
Is it really that easy to forget you have a kid? Is it really that easy to forget you have a kid in your car?
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Post by dantesvirgil on Jul 1, 2009 9:32:38 GMT -5
No it's not that easy to forget, and a parent who gives a shit doesn't forget about the kid.
It's one thing to forget who is picking the kid up at soccer practice -- that happens once in a while. But if the kid is with you, you don't forget about having one. And by "kid", they must mean "baby/toddler that can fall asleep in the car and I don't have to fool with so much", because once they're talking at you, it's rather hard to pretend they're not there!
That "forgot" shit is just an excuse for bad parenting. Few people are going to admit "I just didn't give a shit and I had hoped I wouldn't get caught."
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Post by Maryland Bear on Jul 1, 2009 9:34:29 GMT -5
Not quite the same, and definitely in the more amusing category, but...
near the grocer where my mother shopped, there was a bicycle shop my brother liked to visit. When Mom went grocery shopping, my brother would sometimes go with her, and hang out as the bike shop.
One day, Mom got home from the grocery store, and I asked "Where's Andy?"
"He's here at home."
"No, he went with you."
"No he didn't."
A minute or two later, my brother called from the bike shop, "Mommmmmmm?" Yes, she had forgotten she left him there. So forgetting you left your child somewhere is conceivable in my mind.
I think the more interesting question is "should the parents be prosecuted if something happens to the child?" If it was just an honest mistake, than the parent is surely going through worse emotional turmoil than anything a judge could sentence them to.
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Post by erictheblue on Jul 1, 2009 9:56:42 GMT -5
And by "kid", they must mean "baby/toddler that can fall asleep in the car and I don't have to fool with so much", because once they're talking at you, it's rather hard to pretend they're not there! Yes, I meant baby/toddler. The story that prompted my post was about the death of an almost 2-year old.
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Post by m52nickerson on Jul 1, 2009 10:20:35 GMT -5
I could see how it would not be hard to forget when you have them during a time that you would normally not. When I first started to take my son to day care in the mornings a couple of times I passed the turn to day care and was headed right to work.
It is still no excuse.
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Post by dantesvirgil on Jul 1, 2009 11:02:47 GMT -5
Well, I understand forgetting to go some place occasionally -- that's why I mentioned practices. There has been a time or two that I thought my husband was getting Dante and he thought I was getting him. But that's different -- we both knew he needed getting! Honestly, though, when it comes to leaving a kid in a car -- esp. a baby/toddler, I just don't see why. Toddlers get scared by themselves. Cars get hot. They can offer no resistance if somebody wants to snatch them. I would NEVER leave a baby in a car by itself and go into a store, even if the weather was great. Not because I think I'm a better mom, but just because I think that's one of the most irresponsible things a parent could do. I couldn't live with myself if I came out of the store and something had happened to Baby Dante, like sun stroke or kidnapping. Because frankly, it would've been my fault. I just can't imagine why parents would do that. I get that taking a sleeping baby out of its carseat and into the store is a hassle. But Jesus Christ the damage is so much more potentially worse than the hassle!
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Post by Old Viking on Jul 1, 2009 14:20:35 GMT -5
One of Dave Barry's anecdotes -- paraphrased -- has him at home while his wife is shopping. She calls and asks, "How's William?" The reply: "William is with me?"
In real life, anyone who forgets he or she has a child in the car would have to have the IQ of turnip.
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Post by The Lazy One on Jul 1, 2009 16:58:46 GMT -5
I got left at Wal-Mart once when I was about 5. But the thing was that my parents had brought two cars for some reason, and my mom thought I went with my dad, while my dad thought I went with my mom. When they got home, they realized, "Holy shit! We left Lazy at Wal-Mart!" So my mom hurried back, and found me watching television in the electronics department.
But yeah, if you forget your kid is in the car with you, then you're just stupid.
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Post by ironbite on Jul 1, 2009 17:00:47 GMT -5
I never forget children.
Ironbite-the taste is ruined if you overcook them plus they get gamey.
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Post by Marc on Jul 1, 2009 20:27:24 GMT -5
Is it really that easy to forget you have a kid? Is it really that easy to forget you have a kid in your car? I've left a kid in the car once, but it was for all of 30 seconds as I got to the house door and realized I hadn't grabbed her (she was sleeping). Leaving the kid for several hours? No. Marc
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Post by Haseen on Jul 1, 2009 23:18:41 GMT -5
I'm pretty damn forgetful, but I don't think I'd forget a kid. That's just neglect. I'm not experienced with small children in cars, but I don't forget things like perishable groceries. And a kid is a whole hell of a lot harder to forget than a bag of vegetables.
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Post by wmdkitty on Jul 2, 2009 1:05:43 GMT -5
I'd forget my head, if it wasn't attached -- I can see where forgetting about a quietly sleeping baby is entirely possible.
I'm not a parent, and, uh, have no plans of ever becoming one.
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Post by lonelocust on Jul 2, 2009 1:13:15 GMT -5
The opinions put forth that this is just "bad parenting" and excuses, and obviously neglect by people who do not care is not in line with the evidence. A few children every year die from being forgotten and left in cars. The numbers are fairly consistent. All information that can be found about the parents is totally all over the board. There is no general evidence of past neglect, lack of car, etc. They ALWAYS say they would have never thought it would have been possible that they could have forgotten the child. The steady rate increased to a new steady rate - of 10 times higher - correlating perfectly with the pushing to put carseats in back seats and carseats for very young children to be turned backwards, and with statistics showing that this became the dominant way that children were transported in cars. So, to bring those points together, there is no correlation with past abuse, no correlation with past neglect, no correlation with past crimes, no correclation with economic or social factors. There is correlation with children tending to be put in a position that is out of sight of the driver. (I am not advocating that children not be placed backwards and in the back seat. I suspect there's far more danger of death and serious injury associated with not doing that than the extremely rare case of children being forgotten in the back seat.) The death toll from those who reported intentionally leaving the child in the back seat (like "I was going to run in for groceries who knew they might die duhurrr!") has not changed. This article is unfortunately written in a purposefully tear-jerking manner, and absolutely does not have a scientific tone, but it has very telling objective information mixed in with its far-from-objective presentation. ----- What kind of person forgets a baby? The wealthy do, it turns out. And the poor, and the middle class. Parents of all ages and ethnicities do it. Mothers are just as likely to do it as fathers. It happens to the chronically absent-minded and to the fanatically organized, to the college-educated and to the marginally literate. In the last 10 years, it has happened to a dentist. A postal clerk. A social worker. A police officer. An accountant. A soldier. A paralegal. An electrician. A Protestant clergyman. A rabbinical student. A nurse. A construction worker. An assistant principal. It happened to a mental health counselor, a college professor and a pizza chef. It happened to a pediatrician. It happened to a rocket scientist. ... David Diamond is picking at his breakfast at a Washington hotel, trying to explain. "Memory is a machine," he says, "and it is not flawless. Our conscious mind prioritizes things by importance, but on a cellular level, our memory does not. If you're capable of forgetting your cellphone, you are potentially capable of forgetting your child." Diamond is a professor of molecular physiology at the University of South Florida and a consultant to the veterans hospital in Tampa. He's here for a national science conference to give a speech about his research, which involves the intersection of emotion, stress and memory. What he's found is that under some circumstances, the most sophisticated part of our thought-processing center can be held hostage to a competing memory system, a primitive portion of the brain that is -- by a design as old as the dinosaur's -- inattentive, pigheaded, nonanalytical, stupid. Diamond is the memory expert with a lousy memory, the one who recently realized, while driving to the mall, that his infant granddaughter was asleep in the back of the car. He remembered only because his wife, sitting beside him, mentioned the baby. He understands what could have happened had he been alone with the child. Almost worse, he understands exactly why. ---- The view that it's because of neglect, lack of care, bad memory, being a "bad parent", or other similar ideas is based on emotional response, not data. The information very clearly shows otherwise. www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/27/AR2009022701549.html?sid=ST2009030602446is the article from which I was quoting. I have had several people tell me it made them cry, so beware. I think the last page has the best information. www.google.com/search?q=children+left+in+cars+death&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-aJust Google search results. You'll see tons of individual news stories about such things, and can also find the statistics cited by me or in the above article, but it's spread out. I will go on a more specific hunting-and-linking journey if anyone is interested but can't find it on the Googles.
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Post by Ian1732 on Jul 2, 2009 2:20:35 GMT -5
I feel more pity than anger, since parents don't just say "Ah well, we can just as easily make another". They'll actually feel horrible for their mistake.
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Post by dantesvirgil on Jul 4, 2009 9:41:55 GMT -5
lonelocust, I saw the article you're referencing (your second link doesn't work), but as a parent myself I have a really hard time accepting the "out of sight out of mind" implication that turning the baby seat a certain way leads to hot car deaths implies.
Who put the baby in the seat? Me. Who put it's diaper bag likely in the floor below the seat? Me. Suddenly I get in the car and because I can't visually spot my baby in the rear view mirror I forget about it? That makes no sense.
Also, usually these are infants we're talking about. There isn't going to be a past history of abuse in most cases, because A) there hasn't been time yet and B) the data for those things are usually recorded via calls to a Child Welfare group and C) neglect is not the same thing as abuse, although it is a form of it. Also, just to point out, bad parenting isn't a socio-economic singularity. I wouldn't expect there to be a correlation there. Infants are the ones who usually die -- there simply hasn't been time yet to develop that kind of recorded history.
Look at the stories to see what they have in common. That's where you'll find the "correlations."
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