A 6-month-old boy died after being left for hours in a hot car in Louisiana, authorities said.
The baby was found dead in the backseat by his parent at about 5:46 p.m. Tuesday, according to the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office.
When the parent went to pick up the baby from day care after work, they realized they forgot to drop him off at day care that morning, the sheriff’s office said.
Every time this happens, I am reminded of this Pulitzer prize-winning article.
It can happen to anyone, but a large majority will never believe that. It’s a heart-rending situation.
To a much less serious degree it happened to me/my daughter. Brought her in one winter in her car seat and set her down next to my bed with her coat still on. Instantly fell asleep on the bed for at least an hour. When I came to she was drenched in sweat. Obviously panicked and got her out but she seemed unfazed, stretched a little, and went back to sleep. Still feel bad years later.
One of many great reasons to raise your kids car-free.
Ah yes! That way my kid can definitely die of hyperthermia in my arms walking 5 miles to the grocery in 100°F instead of almost certainly not dying in my car.
Lol this doesn’t happen.
Edit: just Google child heat stroke—the cases all involve kids trapped in vehicles. Heat stroke for young, healthy people in the outdoor environment is not difficult to avoid. It usually occurs when people are forced to do intense physical labor without rest. It’s not happening while you’re walking with your kid to school or daycare or whatever.
Cars are much more dangerous to children than walking is. There is a mountain of evidence to support this.
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Ah that article, that scared me shitless when I first read it while my wife was pregnant. A single “oops” that really doesn’t just fuck a person up, it ruins their entire life.
“Death by hyperthermia” is the official designation. When it happens to young children, the facts are often the same: An otherwise loving and attentive parent one day gets busy, or distracted, or upset, or confused by a change in his or her daily routine, and just… forgets a child is in the car. It happens that way somewhere in the United States 15 to 25 times a year, parceled out through the spring, summer and early fall. The season is almost upon us.
If you ever accidentally left food in the microwave for a few hours, this could be you with children.
Anyways here’s the archive org link since the primary link is paywalled.
If you ever accidentally left food in the microwave
I’ve lost count of how many times. Now we have a microwave with a reminder beep that keeps going off every minute or so until you open the door. Best feature ever.
I was going to be dropping my son off at daycare before work (something I usually didn’t do), and my normal routine was to stop at Wawa for breakfast. I stopped, got out, grabbed my breakfast, got back in, and only then remembered that he was in the back. He had been VERY uncharacteristically quiet prior, and I was tired, and I just… forgot he was in the back.
It caused absolutely no harm (I was only in the Wawa for 5-10 min), but it was a very sobering moment. I can definitely understand how it happens.
Piggybacking your comment to say that this kinda shit would happen a lot less if we had mandatory maternity/paternity leave.
Or if we hadn’t built our entire society around personal automobiles.
One of these things can be changed. The other cannot.
Having gone through what is essentially sleep deprivation torture when raising twins, I believe this and the guilt would be unimaginable.
You would not believe the downvotes I’ve gotten for saying this exact thing. I’m not a parent, but I do take the time to really consider what having to care for an infant would be like. I have been sleep deprived (edit: though, nowhere near the level of a new parent) so I perfectly understand how you could unintentionally cause the death of your kid. I think the hypothetical I gave was something like
You’re out running errands with the baby on your day off while the spouse is at work. You got maybe 4 hours of sleep between getting up to feed and change, and you’re lifting and carrying and running around all day. You stop home to drop off some shopping, you even leave the car running because you’ll be right out. Quick plop on the couch just to rest your legs and back, and then suddenly it’s five hours later and you start awake remembering you left the car running… and the baby in the car.
I know the terror I feel from that little hypothetical, I can’t believe it doesn’t hit close to home with actual parents too. And then, to be held socially - even if not legally - liable on top of your own guilt… an awful, horrible, soul-chilling situation to contemplate. I wish there were more compassion for new parents, I’d bet it’s more common than we think that parents’ bodies just shut down from the strain.
A friend was taking a walk with her daughter, she called her from the other side of the street. She didn’t see the car coming though. The daughter ran over the street and was killed by the car.
She couldn’t see the car, because the parked cars were bigger and blocked the view.
An unfortunate accident, but she never got over it. It’s been 30 years, but she’s as devastated as before.
The daughter only crossed the street, because the she called her. This broke her.
From the bottom of my soul, FUCK big cars. Our cars are so much bigger than they need to be, and they legitimately ruin lives with their size and blindspots.
It’s amazing how the smallest routine deviations can change things.
I once put my 1 year old in the car seat before loading the rest of the stuff into the car. My kid has always hated being constrained, so I didn’t bother buckling the seat belt, as I figured there’d be more joy in being able to reach and play with toys while I loaded the car.
All went well, we got underway, and upon arriving at our destination I realized I never actually did up the safety restraints.
Holy shit
I thought
If I’d gotten in an accident in the last 30m of driving, my kid probably would have died
What a shock and brutal realization to have.
Many people have complemented me on my parenting, complemented me on my nurturing and caring attitude towards my kid and other children too. I’d like to think I’m a good father…but the momentary lapse I had could have ended a life and ruined so many more.
Yes, it can happen to anyone. I feel nothing but sympathy for the parents who have lost a child this way.
While not every parent who loses a child this way is a good person, people like Lyn Balfour have demonstrated that many of the parents responsible for these cases are good people who simply had a momentary lapse in attention that resulted in the worse mistake of their entire life.
I think that it is not for the public to judge them, and it’s not appropriate to publically shame parents who have been through a tragedy like this.
Those parents will be forever haunted by the waxy face of their dead child, will see other children playing in parks, and remember what their child looked like the last time they saw their remains, will remember how beautiful and vibrant their baby was - and know that it’s their fault that the child is forever gone.
I think that’s punishment enough.
When my oldest was about 1, I buckled him in, but didn’t realize the carseat wasn’t buckled in.
About a mile down the road, I turned and we went tumbling across the car in his car seat. It was completely upside down by the end.
The only thing that kept me calm was that he was cackling with laughter. He thought it was the funniest thing. Never made thay mistake again!
i was a toddler in the 70’s. i was never put in a child seat. i distinctly remember crawling around in the floorboard and watching the streetlights go past from a lying position. i’m glad i have those memories instead of being put in restraints every time i was ferried around. we were even in a car wreck once and i got thrown around a little bit. got a few cuts on my hand and that was it.
but i don’t have kids so i don’t worry about any of that shit.
i’m not sure if there was a point to this other than to be amused at yall for freaking out over everything.
I once lit a cigarette, but it didnt stay lit. So i guess that means that everyone who lights a cigarette has to light it twice…
Except that it doesnt and my experience put me in a minority that day.
Thats why we dont use anecdotes as evidence of facts.
People are right to be concerned about safety when the evidence shows that not being concerned causes more deaths despite there being some lucky idiots out there.
that’s not at all an uptight thing to say.
Given that it wasn’t angry or controlling, it wasn’t actually a particularly uptight thing to say. No.
You presented your personal experience as evidence of fact and used that to act condescendingly towards people who care about the safety of their children.
Just think about that for a minute.
Just think about that for a minute.
nah. i don’t have kids so i don’t have to think about shit i don’t want to.
i don’t have to think
That is actually very clear, no need to remind us.
I probably wouldn’t be able to live if I caused this.
I’m gonna add this here in case it helps anyone else.
A friend of mine uses a long dog leash to prevent her from forgetting her kid in the car. She uses the handle end with a loop and ties that end to the carseat and then attaches the hook end to her belt loop or purse. Now she can’t leave the car without acknowledging the carseat.
She just leaves the dog leash attached to car seat all the time and attaches it to herself when she puts on her seatbelt.
I thought it was a great solution that doesn’t involve removing shoes or buying a new car with seat sensors. Hope this helps someone else, or at least gives them peace of mind if they choose this method.
Yeah this is so incredibly sad, if I had come back to my car and realised that my own preventable negligence had caused my child not just to die, but to die so needlessly, so carelessly and so awfully I’m not sure how I would cope. How could you possibly go on with that on your shoulders? It would utterly crush me…and rightly so.
That parent/those parents are awful awful people. This should not be anywhere near possible.Edit: upon reading other comments, I’ve reflected on my own comment on the parents and have slightly changed my view; personally I think the gravity of the mistake outweighs everything else they have done in life no matter how good and so my statement on the balance of things is probably true, imo. However it is not something that needed to be said and nor is it a comment on the type of person/people they were up until, and after this.
The 40hrs are for father supporting the mother not for both to do 40hrs. This is why shit like this happens , they are forcing us to live a life we were never built for. The less working for some one else my wife does the more energy she puts into our family specially my son.
A woman’s place is in the home, right guys? Did you mean our son?
I think the point is valid, but maybe not presented well. When the 40 hour work week was established, the understanding was that a single parent could work and earn enough for the family.
Now, two earners are not just common they’re almost required. People are stressed, wondering how they’re supposed to juggle work and family and chores and all of the other things that need to get done and the answer is that they shouldn’t have to juggle so much.
To be clear: women having the ability to work is undeniably a good thing. Women don’t have to be beholden to finding a good husband, they have options now, and workplaces have benefited from new perspectives. But it also got messed up by capitalism making it the default expectation… More people joined the workforce, but wages just sat still and ate up the gains.
I’m not saying women should choose family over career, I’m saying that it should still be an option today for one parent to make enough for the family to live off of so that the other parent can help balance the workload of life better.
OP was explicitly sexist throughout their comment starting with:
The 40hrs are for father supporting the mother not for both to do 40hrs.
I think their presentation was a deliberate choice in order to make a traditional, conservative family structure appealing to the left. I’ve seen this talking point come up a few times recently and I’m not going to just ignore tbe sexism. Working from home, shorter work weeks and more of the profits going to workers are ways to tackle people being overworked. Sending women home to work for their husbands is not the solution.
In general women will lose respect for a man that is not providing. Thats why I said it.
In general that seems to also be part of yor sexist attitudes.
Are you saying that you don’t believe most women will leave men that does not provide for them? Cause thats not sexist it’s Facts! Also why was your take on my post only about sexist instead of the point I made that we are both over worked?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSQyDEZKJYs -Here are women saying exactly my “SExISt” point.
Overworked? Having trouble providing? Wife looking to divorce you? Figures. You’re pretty nasty. Take your red pill misogyny back to reddit.
I don’t understand how people can be so stressed out with life that they get their children killed. For fucks sake be fucking adult and learn to tell people no. Stop living a life that is killing you. If you can’t afford to live somewhere fucking leave. Stop gas lighting yourself into believing you’re stuck.
Ah yes, “just stop stressing”
For most people it’s not really a choice. It’s much more of a societal problem
Tell me you don’t have kids without telling me you don’t have kids.
I have kids bud and I haven’t killed them yet. Must be doing something right.
Oof that hurts.
I really, honestly hope you never make that kind of mistake, because while it would open your damn eyes, nobody deserves that.
“Haven’t killed them yet!” Would be an awfully terrible thing to have rolling around in your head in the days, weeks, months and years after…
can everybody just stop having kids ffs? obviously we got plenty of people and yall are too stressed to check the back seat for the damn kid. maybe this is all just a big stupid pointless cycle?
If you have children (and your vehicle has this feature) make sure you have the back seat reminder turned on. We all have temporary lapses that usually have little consequence, and this could literally save a life
So there is a feature that is put in a vehicle so people remember that their kids are in the vehicle with them?
What the actual fuck?
Being a new parent while also having to work 40+ hours a week is draining and turns you into a zombie.
Child seats are supposed to face backwards and kids often fall asleep in the car so if you get distracted and thrown off your normal routine, it is extremely easy to not notice they are there especially if you are sleep deprived. So yes, there is a feature in newer cars that can alert you that there is extra weight or movement in the back seat.
Killing your child being considered a “temporary lapse” …💀
You don’t think consequences can come from a temporary memory lapse? Please explain?
It seems that my meaning was misunderstood. The term “temporary memory lapse” sounds like it’s downplaying the severity of the consequences ( to me anyway) and putting it on par with, “Sorry I didn’t call you on your birthday, I totally forgot.” “Oh shoot, I left the ice cream in the car and it melted.”
That’s the scary thing about when this happens though, the memory lapse is the same it’s just the consequences are much much higher. You might not normally drop your kid off at daycare so just drive to work on “autopilot”, it’s a rear-facing carseat and they are asleep so nothing snaps you out of your routine until hours later.
Read the accounts of the parents who this has happened to, it’s eye-opening. Don’t think you’ll just remember. Don’t leave it up to that.
When the parent went to pick up the baby from day care after work, they realized they forgot to drop him off at day care that morning
I do not buy it, but if it is true, that poor baby was going to die from neglect and soon even if it didn’t happen then.
When my daughter was a baby, I was constantly checking on her while we were driving (at stoplights, don’t get all het up) and I was very aware when she was in the car with me.
Some people should not be allowed to be parents.
It only needs to happen once. One bad day. One day when the brain isn’t operating at full capacity, but absolutely has to. One day out of a couple of thousand at a deeply critical time. And something gives.
Are you the sort of person who falls asleep in front of the TV? There are millions of people like that. There might even be a billion. Sure, some will think “I’ll just close my eyes a sec”, but there are others who don’t make a conscious choice about anything and find themselves waking up, unaware of when they fell asleep.
Forgetting something - even a baby - is a lapse like that. That’s all it is. Just one tiny little lapse. We are not 100% in control of what goes on in our own heads.
“It won’t happen to me” / “It couldn’t possibly have happened to me.” is the height of hubris.
As for making decisions like “Some people should not be allowed to be parents.”, who’s doing the allowing there? Because that’s a horribly slippery slope. And frankly if Darwinism hasn’t got it out of the gene pool at this point, it might well be all of us with the same fatal flaw… which I think is the point I was making earlier.
Seems like an insane reach to say if this baby didn’t die from that incident, they’d die from another neglect related issue.
Personally, I have a hard time judging parents in this position and I can’t say I’m a fan of them being charged. All the system cares about is the illusion of justice served in the form of traumatic retribution via prison.
Not everyone handles sleep deprivation the same. Not every baby sleeps the same amount or at regular intervals. Some babies just never seem to sleep or have weird needs that require exhausting accommodations. It’s terrible, but new babies are so vulnerable and there are so many chances for failure at the same time parents are at their most compromised. I have sympathy for the stupid, addled, forgetful mistakes anyone could make under constant, chronic exhaustion.
We were never meant to do it alone, the nuclear family is a myth.
Everyone come and see how good of a parent I am!
Is that really what you think this is about? I mean I said something that was wrong, but do you really think that’s why I said it?
You seem like a jerk who likes to talk down to others.
Because I thought this was the case of a neglectful parent?
No because I see you all over lemmy being a jerk and talking down to people lol
There’s actually a great article on this. Warning, it’s a TOUGH read.
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[…]
Last year it happened three times in one day, the worst day so far in the worst year so far in a phenomenon that gives no sign of abating.
The facts in each case differ a little, but always there is the terrible moment when the parent realizes what he or she has done, often through a phone call from a spouse or caregiver. This is followed by a frantic sprint to the car. What awaits there is the worst thing in the world.
It’s a shockingly common occurrence and actually not due to neglect a lot of the time. The article posits that a large reason is because car seats were mandated to be moved to the back seat.
It’s such a painful thing, and the scary truth is that it can happen to anyone.
I’m sure we’ve all experienced instances of this, in some smaller and insignificant way.
You take a packed lunch to work. Every day for five years you’ve taken a lunch to work, without fail. Its part of your routine, you don’t even have to think about it. Get your wallet, get your keys, lunch out the fridge and into your bag, out the door.
Then one day you open your bag at lunch-time, and it’s not there. Why isn’t it there, you think? You remember putting it there like always, but then the memories of different days are all the same as each other, and it just blurs into one.
And then you remember. Just as you picked up your wallet and keys, your phone rang. And it’s your Dad, who says he just had someone call to say he needs to transfer money to keep it safe, and you’re telling him no no no Dad it’s just a scam, don’t transfer anything! And you have to go or you’ll miss the bus, and did I get my lunch, yes yes I put it in my bag like always.
But you didn’t put it in your bag. Its still sitting in the fridge at home.
And obviously a lunch is not a baby. But the principle is the same. That frightening realisation that your own brain didn’t merely forget, but actually lied to you about what really happened that morning is the same.
And it could have been a baby instead.
Scary.
You’re article is paywalled, including the web archive link
Hmm works for me. Try this one!
It’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning article that I think everyone should read on the topic.
Ouch. I typically agree with all the comments you make around Lemmy.
But this one hurts.
I’m in the same boat as you. I was more understanding before I had a child. I thought, you can forget your phone, autopilot, all other excuses. But after having two, there’s no fucking way I’d ever forget them. They’re always on my mind and the first thing I think of whenever I’m doing anything. I check on my children while driving too
Edit: I understand how easy it is to get into autopilot, and having understood that I do everything I can to change my routine. We take different routes, we stop and do something on the way, etc. But I realize that I’m speaking from a place of privilege where I can do these things and not everyone can. I recognize that it can happen to me, and I pray it doesn’t. I truly am sorry for this families loss. No one should ever outlive their child.
Looks like a bunch of people (I’m guessing non-parents) disagree.
The whole idea of forgetting a baby is in the car is insane. Like I said, even if it is true, this person is not fit to take care of a baby and that baby had a good chance of dying some other way.
Not insane at all. Child seats should be rear facing for quite a while and if the kid is asleep, they are not making any sounds. A big deviation from your routine can seriously fuck up remembering basic things. I personally have a mirror strapped to the rear headrest to avoid anything like that since I can see her every time I check my rear view mirror. But I’ve had people warn me how dangerous those are because it is an extra thing to break off in an accident. I’d rather take that risk than accidentally leave my child in a hot car.
From the Pulitzer article (please read it):
Diamond is a professor of molecular physiology at the University of South Florida and a consultant to the veterans hospital in Tampa.[…]
“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.”
“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.”
You posted the article after I posed the above comment. I have read it.
Edit: to the downvoters: should I have not read it? Because I get you downvoting the previous comments but I’m not sure what your problem is with this one.
Hickling is a clinical psychologist from Albany, N.Y., who has studied the effects of fatal auto accidents on the drivers who survive them. He says these people are often judged with disproportionate harshness by the public, even when it was clearly an accident, and even when it was indisputably not their fault.
Humans, Hickling said, have a fundamental need to create and maintain a narrative for their lives in which the universe is not implacable and heartless, that terrible things do not happen at random, and that catastrophe can be avoided if you are vigilant and responsible.
In hyperthermia cases, he believes, the parents are demonized for much the same reasons. “We are vulnerable, but we don’t want to be reminded of that. We want to believe that the world is understandable and controllable and unthreatening, that if we follow the rules, we’ll be okay. So, when this kind of thing happens to other people, we need to put them in a different category from us. We don’t want to resemble them, and the fact that we might is too terrifying to deal with. So, they have to be monsters.”
Yes, again, I read it. You showed I was wrong. I’m not sure what you or anyone else wants from me.
Perhaps you could edit your first comment, otherwise people won’t know that you see things differently now.
Just came along. Presumably most people read your 1st comment (which is horrifyingly unempathethic, TBH) and didn’t really follow the rest of the discussion
OMG… read the article. j/k
A c/fuckcars post right there…
I mean it could happen anywhere.
I remember taking my 5yo kid to the park while also overthinking about work, and nearly walked home without him. I typically take both kids everywhere. But one was sick so not having both made me completely forgetful.
It’s a haunting experience I live with.
