Let me be the first to admit it, I have buckled my son into his car seat when I realized that I forgot something in the house, ran inside (my son still in his seat) and came right back out. I understand why parents would do this after some of the struggles that I have experienced with getting my own son in the car.
Growing up, I can’t tell you the number of times my parents left me in the car because I had fallen asleep on our way to the store or something like that. I remember being in the back of our Volkswagen Vanagon, waking up and opening up a window to get some air in the car. It never was so hot that I felt like I couldn’t handle it, but this also might explain a lot of my mental issues.
That was the 80s and clearly a lot of things have changed since then. Now you leave a child in the car and the car gets swarmed with cops, for valid reasons.
The news is constantly filled with stories of parents leaving their child in the car to run into a store, maybe to grab some groceries and thinking that there is no way that it could get hot enough to do anything. Pretty sure those people don’t ever watch the news.
Maybe they missed this story:
“Everybody wants to vilify and say oh, these parents are dumb, or on drugs,” Janette Fennell, president of Kids And Cars, told NBC Bay Area by phone from Philadelphia when she heard the news. And in 10 percent of the cases, that turns out to be true, she said.
“But,” Fennell added, “90 percent of the time, it’s some of the best parents.”
Or what about this one:
“Authorities in Iowa are trying to decide whether to file charges against a hospital CEO whose 7-month-old daughter died after being accidentally left in a minivan while she rushed off to attend meetings.”
Of course the heat is a problem, but did you hear this story from a cold day:
“Authorities say a New York man who left his 1-year-old son in his car for eight hours in frigid weather only realized his mistake after a call from his wife.”
I get it; these stories are a little extreme, people leaving their kids in the car for long periods of time. I feel like it makes a few good points though:
We are human. In the first story they talk about how 90% of the time this happens the parents are completely normal. Not druggies.
These parents wanted to get on with their regular everyday life, but didn’t want to leave the child at home.
Weather doesn’t matter. Whether it’s hot or cold outside it doesn’t make a difference.
My wife and I love walking through some amazing neighborhoods near our home in the summer. Well, one day we were walking and walked past a suburban with a small child in a booster and another child in a car seat. We weren’t sure what to do and so just kept walking.
I know that nothing happened to the kids because it was right next to our home and I am sure that if something would have happened to the children we would have seen the scene when we came back or even heard of something on the news. I am not one to keep my mouth shut and decided that if I ever saw something like that again I was going to say something.
Recently, we were shopping at a local Nordstrom. When we parked our car we got out and my wife looked in the Tahoe next to us. There were two little kids and a baby in the car with no parent in sight. It was freezing outside. We thought, maybe the mom ran something in and is coming right back. Nothing.
We walked into the store and didn’t know who to talk to so we told a girl working the register in the children’s department. She told her manager and the manager quickly came out to find the vehicle. We pointed it out to her and she ran right out. The kids told the store manager that their mom was shopping and that is when the mom quickly showed up to her car full of freezing kids.
As the manager came back into the store she told us thank you for saying something because that happens all the time. Parents leave their kids in the car while they are in the store grabbing a few things “real quick” and go back to their car. She scolded the mother and said that if it happened again she would call the cops.
If you don’t want your kid in the store because they may destroy something maybe don’t take them or (here’s a novel idea) don’t go at all. I know, we want new things and we are in a “hurry” so we pack the kid or kids into the car to get done the things WE want. Then we get so side tracked and don’t think about what’s really important.
What am I saying? I feel like it’s pretty obvious. Don’t leave your little ones in the car. Yes, it may be hard to get them out and they may throw another tantrum when you try to get them back in the car, but I would rather deal with a million more of my son’s tantrums then not have him in my life. Just think, what’s most important? Next time think before leaving your child in the car because I’ll call you out on it.
