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As always, I'm stuck having no idea what on earth to *say* in a letter to my various legislators. Anybody writing one, give me your draft to modify?

So, a lot of children have died this year in hot cars

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.