[oceanica]

Just recently we've had 2 incidents where infants were left in a hot car all day! It seems to happen every year down here. Far be it from me to pass judgement on anybody, but seriously the kids are on my mind it seems 24 hours a day and I don't see how this could happen to me!
Maybe because mine were adopted? I certainly have a hectic job and so on but I don't see how I could forget something like that and if I did somehow, I'd think of it within 5 minutes!
Very very sad!

[powderpiggy]

I just don't get. I never leave my child (now a toddler but an infant in the very recent past) in the car for any reason for any length of time, regardless of the weather. But in hot weather? I wouldn't even leave a pet in the car. This stuff just makes me ill.

[emtb79]

On the same note how does a daycare facility explain leaving a child in the daycare van all day. I mean they had to get the rest of the kids out of the vehicle too right? That is the story that makes me mad.

[Betelnut]

Originally Posted by oceanica

Just recently we've had 2 incidents where infants were left in a hot car all day! It seems to happen every year down here. Far be it from me to pass judgement on anybody, but seriously the kids are on my mind it seems 24 hours a day and I don't see how this could happen to me!
Maybe because mine were adopted? I certainly have a hectic job and so on but I don't see how I could forget something like that and if I did somehow, I'd think of it within 5 minutes!
Very very sad!

Sadly, adoption doesn't prevent these kind of mistakes. There was an incident here (N. Virginia, I believe) where a father left his adopted (from Russia no less) son in the car. The son died. Very tragic.

[angelkisses0102]

Here's a great article regarding this...it involves the Chase Harrison tragedy.

I honestly do understand how this could happen to anyone...especially after reading this article! Read it all the way through...the 'Swiss Cheese' effect explains so much.

Fatal Distraction: Forgetting a Child in the Backseat of a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime? Gene Weingarten Reports. - washingtonpost.com

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 human brain, he says, is a magnificent but jury-rigged device in which newer and more sophisticated structures sit atop a junk heap of prototype brains still used by lower species. At the top of the device are the smartest and most nimble parts: the prefrontal cortex, which thinks and analyzes, and the hippocampus, which makes and holds on to our immediate memories. At the bottom is the basal ganglia, nearly identical to the brains of lizards, controlling voluntary but barely conscious actions.

Diamond says that in situations involving familiar, routine motor skills, the human animal presses the basal ganglia into service as a sort of auxiliary autopilot. When our prefrontal cortex and hippocampus are planning our day on the way to work, the ignorant but efficient basal ganglia is operating the car; that's why you'll sometimes find yourself having driven from point A to point B without a clear recollection of the route you took, the turns you made or the scenery you saw.

Ordinarily, says Diamond, this delegation of duty "works beautifully, like a symphony. But sometimes, it turns into the '1812 Overture.' The cannons take over and overwhelm."

By experimentally exposing rats to the presence of cats, and then recording electrochemical changes in the rodents' brains, Diamond has found that stress -- either sudden or chronic -- can weaken the brain's higher-functioning centers, making them more susceptible to bullying from the basal ganglia. He's seen the same sort of thing play out in cases he's followed involving infant deaths in cars.

"The quality of prior parental care seems to be irrelevant," he said. "The important factors that keep showing up involve a combination of stress, emotion, lack of sleep and change in routine, where the basal ganglia is trying to do what it's supposed to do, and the conscious mind is too weakened to resist. What happens is that the memory circuits in a vulnerable hippocampus literally get overwritten, like with a computer program. Unless the memory circuit is rebooted -- such as if the child cries, or, you know, if the wife mentions the child in the back -- it can entirely disappear."

Diamond stops.

"There is a case in Virginia where this is exactly what happened, the whole set of stress factors. I was consulted on it a couple of years ago. It was a woman named, ah . . ."

[aclee]

Oh gosh, these are so upsetting...so sad. I had nightmares about forgetting Ty at home all the time. DH would be driving and I turn around and he wasn't in the car. So when we really were driving I would check a million times to be sure he was back there, that the carseat wasn't empty...it was awful...

[Fran27]

I can see how it would happen with people who have ADD tendencies especially... I know I would be a bit worried if dh had to take the kids out alone... because he does tend to forget things, and sometimes when his mind is set on something, he doesn't pay much attention to the rest.

Now it's not something I personally understand and I could never ever forget my kids... but I can see how some people would.

[megaphonemo]

No flames for sharing this story. Please. This is not something I am proud of..... But it happens..... (I have shared some of this before, I think).

May 2008 - a Wednesday. DD#1 is 2.75 and a handful, especially when it comes to leaving the fun daycare. DD#2 is nearing 4 months... (I tell you the date so you can comprehend the weather outside....) we were placed with both girls from birth, but had not yet finalized on the little one... that is important later too....

Plan is to pick kids up from daycare and go right from daycare to my sister's house to see her family as they have just arrived back from a week in Ireland. DH was not coming. Worked all day, crazy day at work... Arrived at daycare and put little one in her car seat, carried her to the toddler room, where I find that the 2.75 year old is in wet pants and a very wet diaper... So, I am totally annoyed, and make a mental note to have a talk with the director - because I pay good money, and she has extra clothes, and yada yada yada..... So now I have to change my plans and take her home to change her before we head to my sisters... Take everyone out to the car...

Getting the 2.75 year old to leave when she is having fun, and getting her in her car seat were rough those days... She'd sometimes fight you... dilly dally and not want to get in the seat... So I always have to put her in first, can't risk that she'd take off while putting the baby seat in the car.... And, being a good mommy, I did not want to sit the baby somewhere where she'd be in anyone else's possible line of traffic, so I sit the baby seat up by my front bumper, on the sidewalk.... and promptly buckle the squirming toddler in her seat, jump in and drive off....

Leaving the baby in her seat on the sidewalk.....

I drove the 1 mile to our house (yes, it was that close), talking to them both, and pulled onto our street and looked back and realized what I had done. OHMYGOD! OHMYGOD! OHMYGOD! OHMYGOD! OHMYGOD! OHMYGOD! OHMYGOD! I dial the daycare as fast as I can, and they had already taken her inside, another mom 'found her'...... went back, shaking like a leaf, driving like a lunatic the whole mile... and all was well.... Or so I thought... 2 hours later we were laughing about the whole thing....

Flash forward to Friday night 9 pm... I get a knock a the door, and it is a dyfs investigator asking about the whole thing... We were freaking out - they had said they just got the call.... They interview us then, and then needed to see the kids to make sure 'they were okay now'... A whole investigation was done - with us panicking that DD#2 could be removed from us as a result... They contacted our doctor's office to ask about possible abuse or neglect..... I got a letter in the file at the dr office.... That night we were scrambling to reach the agency, because technically they still had custody of DD#2..... And one of the worst things is that they knew the kids were adopted, which means whoever reported it said that - like it mattered!! I could just have easily left a bio sitting there....

We were cleared in the end, and we finalized when DD#2 was 7.5 months old. We never did find out who called - daycare denied it, I think it was the other mom who found her, but never found out why she waited 2 days to call.... and that woman always avoided me after that. But those were the scariest 2 minutes of my life - driving back there, followed in scaryness only by the whole investigation.... We cried a lot - and were terrified that both kids would suffer for my MISTAKE.

It does happen to regular people..... I have been so distracted that I forgot one of my kids.... Thank GOD nothing bad came of it.... But it could have.....

Mega

[PersianMama]

I recently read an interesting (and sad) article on this subject. It was scary to find out that from a purely biological standpoint, your brain does not organize things to remember by the same importance your conscious self would. Those sorts of memory are stored together, so the scientists pointed out that if you can forget something like your cell phone, you can forget your child. That was a wake up call to me to be completely aware of the kids when I get out of the car, rather than think about what we're going to do next.

If we are talking about horribly sad baby stories, we just saw a baby on the news who was killed by rats in her crib. They said she bled to death and had hundreds of bites. It was overnight, and her parents never went to see why she was screaming. That should be a lesson to the cry-it-out people who close the door and don't open it again until the next morning...

[BlessedbySnuggs]

Originally Posted by megaphonemo

No flames for sharing this story. Please. This is not something I am proud of..... But it happens..... (I have shared some of this before, I think).

May 2008 - a Wednesday. DD#1 is 2.75 and a handful, especially when it comes to leaving the fun daycare. DD#2 is nearing 4 months... (I tell you the date so you can comprehend the weather outside....) we were placed with both girls from birth, but had not yet finalized on the little one... that is important later too....

Plan is to pick kids up from daycare and go right from daycare to my sister's house to see her family as they have just arrived back from a week in Ireland. DH was not coming. Worked all day, crazy day at work... Arrived at daycare and put little one in her car seat, carried her to the toddler room, where I find that the 2.75 year old is in wet pants and a very wet diaper... So, I am totally annoyed, and make a mental note to have a talk with the director - because I pay good money, and she has extra clothes, and yada yada yada..... So now I have to change my plans and take her home to change her before we head to my sisters... Take everyone out to the car...

Getting the 2.75 year old to leave when she is having fun, and getting her in her car seat were rough those days... She'd sometimes fight you... dilly dally and not want to get in the seat... So I always have to put her in first, can't risk that she'd take off while putting the baby seat in the car.... And, being a good mommy, I did not want to sit the baby somewhere where she'd be in anyone else's possible line of traffic, so I sit the baby seat up by my front bumper, on the sidewalk.... and promptly buckle the squirming toddler in her seat, jump in and drive off....

Leaving the baby in her seat on the sidewalk.....

I drove the 1 mile to our house (yes, it was that close), talking to them both, and pulled onto our street and looked back and realized what I had done. OHMYGOD! OHMYGOD! OHMYGOD! OHMYGOD! OHMYGOD! OHMYGOD! OHMYGOD! I dial the daycare as fast as I can, and they had already taken her inside, another mom 'found her'...... went back, shaking like a leaf, driving like a lunatic the whole mile... and all was well.... Or so I thought... 2 hours later we were laughing about the whole thing....

Flash forward to Friday night 9 pm... I get a knock a the door, and it is a dyfs investigator asking about the whole thing... We were freaking out - they had said they just got the call.... They interview us then, and then needed to see the kids to make sure 'they were okay now'... A whole investigation was done - with us panicking that DD#2 could be removed from us as a result... They contacted our doctor's office to ask about possible abuse or neglect..... I got a letter in the file at the dr office.... That night we were scrambling to reach the agency, because technically they still had custody of DD#2..... And one of the worst things is that they knew the kids were adopted, which means whoever reported it said that - like it mattered!! I could just have easily left a bio sitting there....

We were cleared in the end, and we finalized when DD#2 was 7.5 months old. We never did find out who called - daycare denied it, I think it was the other mom who found her, but never found out why she waited 2 days to call.... and that woman always avoided me after that. But those were the scariest 2 minutes of my life - driving back there, followed in scaryness only by the whole investigation.... We cried a lot - and were terrified that both kids would suffer for my MISTAKE.

It does happen to regular people..... I have been so distracted that I forgot one of my kids.... Thank GOD nothing bad came of it.... But it could have.....

Mega

Just wanted to say "thank you" for sharing your story. I can't imagine how terrifying that would be. I am so glad everything worked out, and that DD was okay.

[momraine]

This is my worst nightmare too. I had a friend who did something similar, and I knew her, she was an incredible loving mom. This was just totally not like her. Anyway, after hearing about it I became super scared of doing it too. To the point that if the kids are at grandmas or something I would panic when I looked in the mirror and saw the empty carseat. LOL

[megaphonemo]

Another 'funny' thing (funny now, not at all funny then) is that this was like 5 days before I was going out of town on a business trip - and I had always been the one picking up both girls.... Before that I don't think that DH had ever done the 2 kid routine at daycare..... And I had been warning him that it was rough, and you have to get #1 in first, but be careful NOT TO FORGET THE LITTLE ONE! It was like a self fulfilling prophecy....... and the worst business trip ever.......

[sadiegirl]

Originally Posted by PersianMama

If we are talking about horribly sad baby stories, we just saw a baby on the news who was killed by rats in her crib. They said she bled to death and had hundreds of bites. It was overnight, and her parents never went to see why she was screaming. That should be a lesson to the cry-it-out people who close the door and don't open it again until the next morning...

Yes, us horrible CIO people NEVER check on our children and just let them bleed to death.

That was really uncalled for...

[Stormster]

A friend has a 4 year old and an 8 year old. She lives in a townhouse and when she pulls into her driveway, both kids get themselves out of car and follow her into the house.

This day, after a half hour she has no idea where her 4 year old is. Thought she was playing with brother downstairs. Friend runs down and shoes which are ALWAYS at front door aren't there.

Turns out the girl had fallen asleep and was still asleep in car and was fine. But our muscle memory or whatever you want to call it, she took for granted she was behind her as always.

I can see how it could happen! And that's what's so terrifying and Mega ((((hugs))))) sometimes I think it's a good thing I only have one. I can get pretty scattered when under stress and to be honest I can see this happening! You must have had some serious flashbacks for a while Thank goodness everything worked out ok.

[BlessedbySnuggs]

Originally Posted by sadiegirl

Yes, us horrible CIO people NEVER check on our children and just let them bleed to death.

That was really uncalled for...

Sorry, but I don't think she was trying to be rude or malicious; I think she was just saying that its a warning sometimes....you know, if your kid is screaming in the middle of the night, there might be a reason for it. That's all.....at least thats how I read it.