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The day I left my son in the car

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Re: The day I left my son in the car

#131

Post by anigbrowl »

darklajid wrote: post #27
mcphilip wrote: post #13

While it's tough to criticize the decision to leave a child in the car for a few minutes -- happened to me all the time as a child -- I'm forever scarred by seeing a dead child pulled out of a car in the office complex next to mine [1]. The dad was bashing his head against a tree trying to knock himself unconscious because he was so overcome with grief. Officers were trying to restrain him when his wife showed up and…

As with lots of things: The details matter. Leaving a kid in a car shouldn't be an offense. Not returning ~soon~ might be and might be a reason to call the cops/force the car open. Parents can damage/kill their kids in uncountable ways. Most don't and really try to avoid that. Trying to watch over their shoulder isn't 'Good citizenship', it's crazy and a witch hunt. You start to be labeled as child abuser if your kid…

- before cops arrived, kid was gone and obviously safe with the parent

The second half of your premise contains two completely unwarranted assumptions. How exactly were the police supposed to know the now-departed child was a) safe and b) with his parent? Recall that the Mom who wrote the piece was driving a vehicle that wasn't registered to her and so therefore didn't match the description on the registered owners' driving licenses. We know with hindsight that she had borrowed her parents' minivan for the trip, but the police would not have been justified in making that inference.

Re: The day I left my son in the car

#132

Post by tptacek »

imgabe wrote: post #130
tptacek wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She wrote an article that is in large part a defense of leaving toddlers alone in parked cars. That was her choice. It is reasonable to criticize an article on its own terms.

I don't find that it advocates leaving toddlers alone in parked cars at all. She states in multiple places that it was a bad decision. What it does advocate is that this shouldn't require legal action. The response in terms of police manpower and court time is wildly out of proportion to the risk.

Skip forward to the part where she's conversing with her attorney. The attorney sums the situation up as a lapse in judgement. She responds with anger towards the bystander who called her child --- alone in a car --- in to the police. Or reread the section where she interviews Skenazy. The Skenazy section overtly argues that leaving kids alone in parked cars is a negligible risk. No, think you're wrong. I think this is a piece that says, in effect, that people should chill the hell out about leaving four year olds alone in parked cars.

Re: The day I left my son in the car

#133

Post by ktsmith »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #98
mcphilip wrote: post #13

While it's tough to criticize the decision to leave a child in the car for a few minutes -- happened to me all the time as a child -- I'm forever scarred by seeing a dead child pulled out of a car in the office complex next to mine [1]. The dad was bashing his head against a tree trying to knock himself unconscious because he was so overcome with grief. Officers were trying to restrain him when his wife showed up and…

How much would it add to the cost of a car to put in a little solar panel and a fan or two that would bring in cooler air into the cabin on hot days? It would help avoid situations like these (or at least increase chances of survival) and keep the interior from being a scorching simulation of the surface of the sun. I think some models had this in the 90s, but it never caught on. Supposedly, if memory serves from an…

Audi started making this an option in 2008 (2007?) on their A8 line and was followed by Fisker and Toyota on the Prius. i don't think any of them have it as an option any more. It's just not effective enough.

Re: The day I left my son in the car

#134

Post by notdonspaulding »

scrumper wrote: post #96
moron4hire wrote: post #37

"He glanced up at me, his eyes alight with what I’d come to recognize as a sort of pre-tantrum agitation. “No, no, no, no, no! I don’t want to go in,” he repeated, and turned back to his game." That's where you failed. Clearly, there was a pattern of negligent parenting.

Are you being serious with that comment? I can't see how it's a joke. I strongly suspect you'll end up being downvoted into transparency, but in case not, where is the 'pattern'? Where, in fact, is even another example of negligence (conceding that some people may consider leaving the child in the car negligent, which I don't.) EDIT: Ah, it happened while I was replying, probably for the best.

I understand where you're coming from here, but to parents who actually do have spines (and seek to grow such spines in their children), it is actually fairly easy to see that the reason the 4-year-old was left in the car was due the fact that he was running both the conversation and the decision-making that occurred throughout the incident.

Which is to say, I can see the GP making the general point that the mom didn't have a "temporary lapse in judgement" as much as a systemic failure to live up to her role as the adult in the parent->child relationship.

Just to be clear, I'm not arguing the mother is negligent for either this or leaving the kid in the car. I'm just saying when you can recognize that your child will throw a tantrum and your only recourse is to begin making concessions to them, you're already at a point where they are raising you more than you are raising them.

Re: The day I left my son in the car

#135

Post by Fuzzwah »

Pxtl wrote: post #103
nostromo wrote: post #35

I'm willing to bet that having a pool in your yard is much more dangerous for your child than leaving them in a car with windows cracked for 5 minutes. Media drives government. Clicks drive the media. What we're left with is a hodgepodge of laws that attempt to prevent yesterday's headline.

iirc, drowning is the #2 preventable cause of death in kids, after car accidents.

As a 1st time Dad of a 4 month old I figured I should find this list.

This pdf has it broken down into age groups:

http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/10LCID_Unintentional_D...

This site was helpful and included an interesting little side bar:

http://www.cdc.gov/safechild/NAP/overviews/

- Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of injury death overall, and especially for teens. - For infants, suffocation is the biggest risk of injury death. - Drowning is the leading cause of injury death for children age 1-4.

Re: The day I left my son in the car

#136

Post by anigbrowl »

imgabe wrote: post #26

This is just so patently absurd. The legal issue seems to revolve around "rendering the child in need of services". A child alone in a car for 5 minutes on a mild day is not in need of services. The case should be thrown out right there.

Well police investigations aren't free to the taxpayer.

Re: The day I left my son in the car

#137

Post by darklajid »

anigbrowl wrote: post #131
darklajid wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As with lots of things: The details matter. Leaving a kid in a car shouldn't be an offense. Not returning ~soon~ might be and might be a reason to call the cops/force the car open. Parents can damage/kill their kids in uncountable ways. Most don't and really try to avoid that. Trying to watch over their shoulder isn't 'Good citizenship', it's crazy and a witch hunt. You start to be labeled as child abuser if your kid…

- before cops arrived, kid was gone and obviously safe with the parent The second half of your premise contains two completely unwarranted assumptions. How exactly were the police supposed to know the now-departed child was a) safe and b) with his parent? Recall that the Mom who wrote the piece was driving a vehicle that wasn't registered to her and so therefore didn't match the description on the registered owners'…

- Track down the car owner

- Call about the kid

- (Optional) Visit owner (grandparents) in person and take an official statement

- Drop the case

And what is the danger we're protecting the child against here? People seem to like the 'baked in car' setup. You seem to fancy the 'kidnapped wholesale with car' idea? I mean - your neighbor is taking the kid to the car, and gets back in (probably forgot a thing). 30 sec later you look out of the window and the car is gone. What happend?

a) The car was stolen, kid inside

b) The owner of the car and responsible person for the kid inside moved it outside of the viable area from your position

Really?

Re: The day I left my son in the car

#138

Post by nickff »

anigbrowl wrote: post #131
darklajid wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As with lots of things: The details matter. Leaving a kid in a car shouldn't be an offense. Not returning ~soon~ might be and might be a reason to call the cops/force the car open. Parents can damage/kill their kids in uncountable ways. Most don't and really try to avoid that. Trying to watch over their shoulder isn't 'Good citizenship', it's crazy and a witch hunt. You start to be labeled as child abuser if your kid…

- before cops arrived, kid was gone and obviously safe with the parent The second half of your premise contains two completely unwarranted assumptions. How exactly were the police supposed to know the now-departed child was a) safe and b) with his parent? Recall that the Mom who wrote the piece was driving a vehicle that wasn't registered to her and so therefore didn't match the description on the registered owners'…

The police would have been completely justified in assuming that a parent had taken the child, and that the child was safe. Abductions (especially unreported ones,) by strangers are so uncommon that the officers would have to be suffering from acute paranoia to believe that a stranger had abducted the child.

Re: The day I left my son in the car

#139

Post by notdonspaulding »

tptacek wrote: post #115
skwirl wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't have your child out of your sight for a single instant without a chance of them getting hurt. When you are asleep they could easily leave the house and get run over in the street. I'm generally a fan of your comments but this time I don't see your point at all.

And I am not advocating for a parenting strategy that demands total attention to your children 60 minutes out of 24 hours a day. I'm simply saying that one time you can't let a child out of your sight is when they're in a parking lot. Let's make this simpler: would you leave your four year old alone in a parked car for 5 minutes while you ran into a store?

> would you leave your four year old alone in a parked car for 5 minutes while you ran into a store?

Yes. No, not really, but yes if I lived in a different time and day (a time and day I wish we did live in).

As another commenter pointed out, the biggest reason many of us don't do this these days is purely the fear of running into ridiculous situations as described in this article.

It really seems odd that you're avoiding the biggest data-driven argument that's raised in the article and has already been put directly to you. Namely, why do you assume that it's safer to take the child with you?

Parents make tradeoffs regarding safety, risk, convenience, happiness, cost, temperament, health, development, etc. ALL. THE. FREAKING. TIME. It's great that "society" cares about how parents do their jobs. It's not so great that society mandates in great detail how that job should be done.

Every parent, every child, every situation, every tradeoff is different. Until it's proven that they're no good at it, let's leave that work to the people who signed up for it.

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