That’s the thing, we’re not wired differently. It happens to everyone when we get pulled out of our routine.
This phenomenon knows no economic boundaries, intellectual boundaries, or self-righteousness boundaries.
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I’m not certain. Some folks focus better on one thing, some people multitask better, etc. Some people lose their car keys once a week, some are anal about it and have a hook labeled “car keys” in the entrance to their house. And then there are all sorts of people in between. So I do think people are wired a little different to some degree.
Either way, it isn’t the child’s fault. I think we can all agree there. And I wouldn’t want to punish a remorseful parent or just say “there’s no way you should’ve forgotten your kid”.
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I have a hook where my car keys are always hung, immediately upon entering the house, but it’s not labeled “car keys”. If somebody looks at a frequently-used device in his own house, and has no idea regarding its purpose, that is likely to be an early manifestation of dementia.
I can’t imagine forgetting my kids in a car.But realizing I do make mistakes, if I did this I would expect to be held responsible and accountable for my mistake because I have enough of my faculties to know better.
Many of us need to remember that not all parents are capable to raise their children in a safe and healthy environment. I have done foster care for many years, and have had over 60 children taken from dangerous environments. There were probably 1 maybe 2 parents that I would consider evil.The biggest share of abused kids have parents that are emotionally or mentally incapable of raising kids safely.These are most of the time good people. they do not realize until intervention that there is something wrong. Before we judge others we need to remember that not everyone has the capacity of you and I.
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A long but excellent article. Risk can be mitigated (reduced) but not eliminated. The military risk assessment forms I am familiar with have 3 levels. High, Medium, and Low. There is no Zero.
Seebear , have you not been paying attention ? It is not just Mothers , it is fathers , caretakers , bus drivers so you just can’t blame one segment .
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The idea that this is a matter of gender or intelligence is not just dead wrong, it’s offensive.
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There you go I fixed that for you.
As far as I’m concerned no one should ever forget their child. If they can’t remember their kid they don’t need kids to begin with.
Also as far as I’m concerned, the way things are makes it too easy for someone to “forget” their kid and do them in simply because they don’t want to be bothered with maternal or paternal life anymore. The local DA doesn’t want to prosecute the “grieving parent” due to perception so they get away with murder essentially.
This happened in OK a few years ago with a news crew on hand the mother was wailing and carrying on about the death of her forgotten baby. Not a tear to be seen and her wailing was horribly bad acting. Some people (including my late wife) have called me a hardaxx but if I lost a child for any reason I’d be an emotional wreck and placed on suicide watch.
Surely a loving parent could hang say a dangling “Remember Me” baby tag on the rear view mirror or something to keep them from falling into a stupor. Permanent reinforcement so to speak. Just my 2 cents which may be at variance with other opinions.
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In the following instance, leaving three kids in a car was clearly an intentional act on the part of Mommie Dearest. Luckily, the temperature was much lower at night, and the kids were apparently not hurt.
I challenge you to read this article (the whole thing) and claim these parents didn’t love their children.
They weren’t in a stupor, they made a very human and tragic absentminded mistake, the type of absentmindedness you’ve probably experienced, minus the tragic consequences.
Have you ever forgotten, because of a miscommunication with your spouse, to pick up a kid from baseball practice, or forgotten to stop at a store on your way home from work to pick something up? That’s the same cognitive process, and all humans do it, smart or stupid, rich or poor, man or woman, young or old, humble or self-righteous.
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That’s happened in the Metro Boston area at least 5 times in the past 2-3 years. And I know of a couple more times in NH.
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I read the story. The father is heartbroken no doubt. However, that doesn’t absolve him of the responsibility for the death of a child. Yes, I’ve forgotten things in the past BUT not once in my life have I or my wife ever forgotten to pick up one of our kids from any event.
This brings up a question about forgetting kids in a hot car. Do you prosecute ALL of them or NONE of them?
Second question.There have been several heat related child deaths in OK due to baby sitters, nannys, neighbors and so on who “forgot” the child.
One woman left a 6 month old and a 2 year old in a hot car. The infant died; the toddler was said to have suffered some brain damage. What was this woman’s urgency? She was in a salon getting her hair and a pedicure done.
If YOUR child died in a hot car due to say a next door neighbor do you want the neighbor prosecuted or is a simply, “My bad, I forgot, I’m sorry” going to be enough?
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When TF did I suggest he should be absolved of his guilt? My only point is that the guilt these people will suffer is likely punishment enough, particularly the ones who feel so bad that they welcome death.
Either you missed the ones who tried to commit suicide out of guilt or you were unmoved by their stories.
Sure, they felt guilty after. But what was the thinking process leading up to the tragedy?
Criminal negligence is a thing for a reason - it’s an attempt to remind people that you have to brain from time to time. And if you don’t, and you cause injury/death to another human, there are consequences.
No one objects to criminal negligence charges/convictions/penalties when the idiot rams into your car while texting, and all he did was bend some sheet metal. Consistency requires that some legal consequences follow negligent homicide, even if the victim is your own kid.
Is that the best approach? Dunno. Quite possibly not. It would probably be better if the parents were berated whenever someone saw them do something stupid regarding their kid (because if you forget your kid in a hot car, guaranteed you’re doing other dumb things). At least then maybe they’d turn on their brains if for no other reason than to avoid public shaming, and the kid might survive.
But until we as a society get over the idea that feeling shame is bad and whoever made you feel ashamed should be a pariah, reaction is the only remedy left to us.
I’ve got new neighbors across the street. They have young boys who have absolutely no common sense whatsoever. They’ll ride their bikes in the driveway as fast as they can and then dart out into the street right as a car is coming. The driveway’s lined with trees so you have almost no chance to see them. Those of us who live here have learned to go very slow, on the opposite side of the street, just to avoid killing a couple of little kids.
The parents are always right there, but they feel the kids should learn from their own mistakes and parental correction might do lasting damage. I’ve been tempted to tell them that the lasting damage will be the dent in my bumper if I hit one of the little idiots, but I’ve restrained myself.
They don’t like my wife very much because she glared at the mom after almost running over their kid. That’s their failing - my wife doesn’t want their kids to die. They’re more concerned with not being chastised than in keeping their kids safe. Their kids will, if they do, make it to adulthood out of luck, because they try their damnedest to get themselves killed every day while their parents look on with a slightly vacuous smile.
Long story short, a lot of parents are bad parents. Some are like my neighbors, with stupid child-rearing ideas that put the kids in danger. Some are like the subject of this post, forgetful to the point of occasionally not remembering that they have kids at all. And some children raised by both of those types of parents manage to make it to adulthood and, often as not, they too are idiots because they were never taught how not to be. If we want to break the cycle, we need consequences for bad and negligent parenting. Since pre-tragedy shaming is out because making people feel bad about themselves is frowned upon, we have to do it after the disaster.
In other words, yes, they feel bad their kid is dead. But the guy who hit them, or the cop who couldn’t get to the scene and break the window before the kid died from the heat, also feel bad, and they did nothing wrong. Feeling bad on the part of the person who caused the kid to die isn’t sufficient.
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I’m for children dying in hot cars less often. Punishment afterwards hasn’t stopped crime. Prevention stops some. A couple in southern NM was keeping their children in cages underneath their trailer - because the trailer was too crowded - one of the children’s grandmother lived with them. 3 adults went along with this.
In general, I agree with you that when possible, prevention is better than punishment. The problem here is, how does society prevent it? Unless there’s some brain implant that can divine when someone’s an irresponsible tool, it’s kinda hard to predict which parent is gonna leave the kid in the car.
And while I do believe in crime prevention, I also believe in crime punishment. There are an awful lot of thefts that don’t happen solely because the guy who would otherwise shoplift on a daily basis doesn’t want to go to jail.
My bottom line is, why is this crime the one that shouldn’t be punished? When a woman shot her boyfriend in a Youtube stunt gone bad, she felt really bad about having killed him. But she still got charged with a crime. No one came forward and said “oh, well, she’s suffered enough.” If you get drunk and run over a nun, you’ll probably feel really bad about that because you aren’t a sociopath, but that doesn’t absolve you from criminal consequences for your actions.
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There are tips for preventing it from happening, systems parents develop, but I can’t stand the snotty condescension going on in this discussion, so I’ll let you look them up yourself.
Because we punish crimes based on intent, and the guilt a loving parent will feel is worse than anything the government can mete out.
Back in the 50s and 60s, two things were true:
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Far (far) fewer households had two working parents, presenting the situation where a mom or dad leaves their kid in the car all day instead of dropping them at daycare. This kind of thing doesn’t happen if one parent is home all day with the kids, schlepping them around town on short errands and such.
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Media coverage about this (and pretty much everything else) is far more pervasive. So if this did happen, you would’ve almost never heard about it unless it was in your hometown.
I firmly believe that this not “parents today are worse than yesteryear”.