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conuly
That is nothing new.
And at least some of those cases have to have been less deliberately murderous and more accidental mistakes - like families who misplace their children in airports because they assume the kid is with the other parent, or with the grandparent. (This doesn't happen much to me because I always assume any kid I'm with is with me, even if their parents happen to be there too. I never so much as go from here to the bathroom without doing a quick headcount - twice.)
This page has a list of tips to avoid this fate.
My favorites are the one about putting a stuffed animal in the front seat every time your kid is in the carseat (and moving said stuffed animal to the carseat the rest of the time) and the one about keeping your purse or wallet in the back. Make it impossible to miss your child. I know that school bus drivers, here, have to walk to the back of the bus after the last child gets off and put a sign on the back door saying that they've checked the bus for children. Just requiring them to check, they might forget, but you *know* they don't forget the sign.
I also like the tip in the comments about asking your daycare provider or similar to call you, and then down a list of contacts, if your kid doesn't show up. Some school districts may do that automatically for older kids, but for younger kids (the ones less likely to get out if they get forgotten), that's where it's more important.
The other tip in the article, that you should always walk around the car before getting in or out, I believe that's considered good advice for everybody, whether or not they have a child. So if you see a kid close enough to run behind you as you back out of your driveway, you can wait for them to pass, that sort of thing.
The article also mentions that change in routine can lead to these sorts of tragedies. Every time a kid locked in a car appears on the news, my mother remembers this story (with a happy ending: She was in Pennsylvania as a young adult, and a woman called the cops, hysteric, because her toddler was missing. Every day she dropped the older kid at school (leaving the toddler asleep in the car), then dropped the toddler off at daycare. And today, she went back to the car, and her toddler wasn't there.
They searched everywhere, all day, even went into the lake. It was looking worse and worse until she remembered - today, she'd dropped the toddler off first. Which all makes her look very silly, but my mother swears she knows how it happened. She must have felt bad every day leaving her kid in the car for those three or five minutes, we all know you shouldn't do that, and she must have worked out that if she ever got back and the kid wasn't there she wouldn't waste a second before calling for help. Then she switched the schedule, probably just to avoid those feelings of guilt, and, well... you know.
Now, the last point I want to make has to deal with what is possibly the worst story. A four year old went from his house to his dad's workshop 100 feet away, with his mother's knowledge. Sometime later he told his dad he was going back to the house, but ended up locking himself in the car. He must have been overcome very quickly with heat.
The parents didn't actually do anything wrong, except maybe in not locking the car and hiding the keys - how many times do we read about little children thinking they'll just drive to the store at night! - but that doesn't change the outcome here. So I'll like to share the obvious tip that I hit upon for no other reason than because Ana is not a trustworthy child. She's really great when you want somebody to be sneaky, and I'm sure sneakiness is a skill that will come in more handy than trustworthiness, but, regardless, we can't trust her that much. Well, she's five. So if I send her downstairs to my mother, or if Jenn sends her downstairs to fetch me, or if anybody, for any reason, asks her to go to another person - we always call within a minute or two to make sure she arrived and didn't, say, stop to watch TV or steal candy.
That whole tragedy could have been avoided if Dad had called Mom on his cell phone and said "By the way, the kid's heading back to you." Of course they'd never think to say "By the way, son, don't go into the car and lock the doors!", who does that? But they could have made sure each parent knew where he was *supposed* to be. Maybe he was just a lot more sensible, most of the time, than Ana tends to be.
Not that I'd tell the grieving parents that. What's the point? I'm saying this now so hopefully there can be fewer grieving parents next summer.
And at least some of those cases have to have been less deliberately murderous and more accidental mistakes - like families who misplace their children in airports because they assume the kid is with the other parent, or with the grandparent. (This doesn't happen much to me because I always assume any kid I'm with is with me, even if their parents happen to be there too. I never so much as go from here to the bathroom without doing a quick headcount - twice.)
This page has a list of tips to avoid this fate.
My favorites are the one about putting a stuffed animal in the front seat every time your kid is in the carseat (and moving said stuffed animal to the carseat the rest of the time) and the one about keeping your purse or wallet in the back. Make it impossible to miss your child. I know that school bus drivers, here, have to walk to the back of the bus after the last child gets off and put a sign on the back door saying that they've checked the bus for children. Just requiring them to check, they might forget, but you *know* they don't forget the sign.
I also like the tip in the comments about asking your daycare provider or similar to call you, and then down a list of contacts, if your kid doesn't show up. Some school districts may do that automatically for older kids, but for younger kids (the ones less likely to get out if they get forgotten), that's where it's more important.
The other tip in the article, that you should always walk around the car before getting in or out, I believe that's considered good advice for everybody, whether or not they have a child. So if you see a kid close enough to run behind you as you back out of your driveway, you can wait for them to pass, that sort of thing.
The article also mentions that change in routine can lead to these sorts of tragedies. Every time a kid locked in a car appears on the news, my mother remembers this story (with a happy ending: She was in Pennsylvania as a young adult, and a woman called the cops, hysteric, because her toddler was missing. Every day she dropped the older kid at school (leaving the toddler asleep in the car), then dropped the toddler off at daycare. And today, she went back to the car, and her toddler wasn't there.
They searched everywhere, all day, even went into the lake. It was looking worse and worse until she remembered - today, she'd dropped the toddler off first. Which all makes her look very silly, but my mother swears she knows how it happened. She must have felt bad every day leaving her kid in the car for those three or five minutes, we all know you shouldn't do that, and she must have worked out that if she ever got back and the kid wasn't there she wouldn't waste a second before calling for help. Then she switched the schedule, probably just to avoid those feelings of guilt, and, well... you know.
Now, the last point I want to make has to deal with what is possibly the worst story. A four year old went from his house to his dad's workshop 100 feet away, with his mother's knowledge. Sometime later he told his dad he was going back to the house, but ended up locking himself in the car. He must have been overcome very quickly with heat.
The parents didn't actually do anything wrong, except maybe in not locking the car and hiding the keys - how many times do we read about little children thinking they'll just drive to the store at night! - but that doesn't change the outcome here. So I'll like to share the obvious tip that I hit upon for no other reason than because Ana is not a trustworthy child. She's really great when you want somebody to be sneaky, and I'm sure sneakiness is a skill that will come in more handy than trustworthiness, but, regardless, we can't trust her that much. Well, she's five. So if I send her downstairs to my mother, or if Jenn sends her downstairs to fetch me, or if anybody, for any reason, asks her to go to another person - we always call within a minute or two to make sure she arrived and didn't, say, stop to watch TV or steal candy.
That whole tragedy could have been avoided if Dad had called Mom on his cell phone and said "By the way, the kid's heading back to you." Of course they'd never think to say "By the way, son, don't go into the car and lock the doors!", who does that? But they could have made sure each parent knew where he was *supposed* to be. Maybe he was just a lot more sensible, most of the time, than Ana tends to be.
Not that I'd tell the grieving parents that. What's the point? I'm saying this now so hopefully there can be fewer grieving parents next summer.
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no subject
Date: 2008-08-23 07:54 pm (UTC)Finally, I don't know how long later, someone noticed a nasty smell coming from a junked car in the backyard. They discovered that somehow the boys had gotten trapped inside the car and probably were overcome by heat (they were in a confined space in the car) and then suffocated.
It was horribly sad, but it made me wonder: why did no one think to look inside the car?
no subject
Date: 2008-08-24 02:37 am (UTC)Wouldn't've made a difference anyway, most likely.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-24 03:37 am (UTC)Although, that said: church is the one time when other people are also responsible for him. Especially at my evening church, where people have an obnoxious habit of leaving the door open - the door that goes right to the parking lot which is right on the freeway access road. He could so easily wander out that door.
Okay, now I'm getting paranoid.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-24 04:00 am (UTC)And I feel you on the doors. Urg. I'm constantly closing doors and playground gates after people. How hard is it to close a door you had to open?
Random personal question you totally don't ever have to answer - ever planning on fostering/adopting another?
no subject
Date: 2008-08-24 04:16 am (UTC)Let's put it this way: I hope to eventually foster and/or adopt another kid. I periodically browse the "available for adoption" sites, who are mostly older kids or sibling groups. But those kids usually have a note that they would be better off as the only kids in the home, or as the youngest.
My tentative plan is for the padawan to get to be 4 or 5, and then I look into it again. But who knows? Maybe I won't be able to wait that long.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-24 04:43 am (UTC)2. Gotcha. Let's hope that whatever you do, it works out.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-24 07:14 am (UTC)The first week after M was born that I took K to daycare, I left M in the car. After all, I had never gone into the daycare with M before to pick up K. I got in there, started to wake up K from her nap time, and then leapt up and yelled "Oh SHIT" in the middle of a room of children and raced out the door. Of course, it had only been about 2-3 minutes she was in there, but knowing that it was *that* easy to leave a kid in the car has always REALLY freaked me out ever since.
I will start using the purse in the backseat recommendation. I know the stuffed animal thing wouldn't work for us, because one of the kids would want it, and I'd hand it over, etc. But the purse in the back WILL work. I always look in the back seat before I get out of the car anyway, and my coworker once admitted he always peers in my car when he arrives at work as well (plus one point on the creepy list for him, but also plus on on the fear-relieving list). (And just to demonstrate how much this freaks me out, my entire body is trembling/contracting, almost to the point of convulsions, which are so strong, I almost can't type. If anyone was watching, they would be able to see my whole body jiggling...).
no subject
Date: 2008-08-24 03:37 pm (UTC)*hugs*
no subject
Date: 2008-08-24 03:59 pm (UTC)My other fear, just to show you how paranoid I really am, ;) is that I will die/pass out in the house and the kids will starve before they're found. Completely unlikely, but I still can't help but make sure K knows how to get herself food and snacks.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-24 04:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-24 04:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-24 05:09 pm (UTC)So, four. Ana, and all her friends, and all the people I know online, four went like this: Lot more mouthing off, lot more "You don't love me" and "I won't be your friend" and "I'll poop on your bed and eat it" (yes, thank you, Ana....), and a lot more lying.
But every other aspect of their behavior seemed to get better. I think of four as the year Ana was fun again.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-26 08:52 pm (UTC)I don't recall ever having been left in a car when I was too young to open the door, but I do remember not wanting to open the door unless I had to, but I would open the window some to get some fresh air and cool things off. I wasn't left in cars for long periods of time though either.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-23 07:54 pm (UTC)Finally, I don't know how long later, someone noticed a nasty smell coming from a junked car in the backyard. They discovered that somehow the boys had gotten trapped inside the car and probably were overcome by heat (they were in a confined space in the car) and then suffocated.
It was horribly sad, but it made me wonder: why did no one think to look inside the car?
no subject
Date: 2008-08-24 02:37 am (UTC)Wouldn't've made a difference anyway, most likely.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-24 03:37 am (UTC)Although, that said: church is the one time when other people are also responsible for him. Especially at my evening church, where people have an obnoxious habit of leaving the door open - the door that goes right to the parking lot which is right on the freeway access road. He could so easily wander out that door.
Okay, now I'm getting paranoid.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-24 04:00 am (UTC)And I feel you on the doors. Urg. I'm constantly closing doors and playground gates after people. How hard is it to close a door you had to open?
Random personal question you totally don't ever have to answer - ever planning on fostering/adopting another?
no subject
Date: 2008-08-24 04:16 am (UTC)Let's put it this way: I hope to eventually foster and/or adopt another kid. I periodically browse the "available for adoption" sites, who are mostly older kids or sibling groups. But those kids usually have a note that they would be better off as the only kids in the home, or as the youngest.
My tentative plan is for the padawan to get to be 4 or 5, and then I look into it again. But who knows? Maybe I won't be able to wait that long.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-24 04:43 am (UTC)2. Gotcha. Let's hope that whatever you do, it works out.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-24 07:14 am (UTC)The first week after M was born that I took K to daycare, I left M in the car. After all, I had never gone into the daycare with M before to pick up K. I got in there, started to wake up K from her nap time, and then leapt up and yelled "Oh SHIT" in the middle of a room of children and raced out the door. Of course, it had only been about 2-3 minutes she was in there, but knowing that it was *that* easy to leave a kid in the car has always REALLY freaked me out ever since.
I will start using the purse in the backseat recommendation. I know the stuffed animal thing wouldn't work for us, because one of the kids would want it, and I'd hand it over, etc. But the purse in the back WILL work. I always look in the back seat before I get out of the car anyway, and my coworker once admitted he always peers in my car when he arrives at work as well (plus one point on the creepy list for him, but also plus on on the fear-relieving list). (And just to demonstrate how much this freaks me out, my entire body is trembling/contracting, almost to the point of convulsions, which are so strong, I almost can't type. If anyone was watching, they would be able to see my whole body jiggling...).
no subject
Date: 2008-08-24 03:37 pm (UTC)*hugs*
no subject
Date: 2008-08-24 03:59 pm (UTC)My other fear, just to show you how paranoid I really am, ;) is that I will die/pass out in the house and the kids will starve before they're found. Completely unlikely, but I still can't help but make sure K knows how to get herself food and snacks.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-24 04:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-24 04:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-24 05:09 pm (UTC)So, four. Ana, and all her friends, and all the people I know online, four went like this: Lot more mouthing off, lot more "You don't love me" and "I won't be your friend" and "I'll poop on your bed and eat it" (yes, thank you, Ana....), and a lot more lying.
But every other aspect of their behavior seemed to get better. I think of four as the year Ana was fun again.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-26 08:52 pm (UTC)I don't recall ever having been left in a car when I was too young to open the door, but I do remember not wanting to open the door unless I had to, but I would open the window some to get some fresh air and cool things off. I wasn't left in cars for long periods of time though either.