Today I went to a mandatory court appearance with my good friend “Annie.” A month ago Annie left her two children, ages 2 and 4, in her (not-running) locked car for twelve minutes while she ran into Best Buy. The car was warm, as she had been running errands all morning. It was about noon in the first week of December; there was snow on the ground and the sun was shining.
The kids were tired and Annie’s oldest, who truly is quite articulate, said that he would rather wait in the car than go in with his mom. The kids were in their coats, in their car seats.
A couple walked by and called the police, who came and had been at the car for three minutes when my friend got back to it. The female police officer who wrote up my friend did not know for sure whether the statute Annie had violated was state or federal, though she guessed federal. She was positive that children have to be 8 to be unattended in a car, and 12 if there are any children under 8 present also.
My friend was so upset and ashamed about the whole episode that she didn’t tell anyone but her husband for three weeks. When she finally told me about it, I did some research. I couldn’t find a state or federal law about leaving children unattended in cars. There are groups pushing for legislation to make cars safer for kids unattended in cars, and there are statutes about neglect, harm, and abuse to a child, but no such allegations were made in this case. (The police made no moves to open the car; they could see that the kids were happy and safe.)
Annie and I scoured the internet. She called the DMV and learned it’s not a traffic violation; she called the district court and realized the clerks had no clue beyond suggesting a call to the city police department, and, oh, wasn’t that odd — according to the code on the citation, Annie was charged with “trespass and graffiti.”
Today at the court appearance, the prosecutor’s case paper had the correct code on it. Turns out, there’s a city ordinance about leaving children under the age of 6 unattended in a car in a public place. Annie was too flustered and intimidated by the judge to defend herself; she pled guilty to an infraction and paid the (happily-low) $100 fine.
Now, there are several issues here:
1) Children die in cars every year from hyperthermia.
2) The couple who called the police did the right thing.
3) The American justice system is probably the most defendant-friendly in the history of the whole history, and yet it is still a maze of Kafka-esque proportions.
4) Mothers who care about their children never stop worrying whether they’re doing it right.
1) Children die in cars every year from hyperthermia. This happens in the summer time, when parents forget (or don’t care) that their children are in the car. Recent cases have involved parents forgetting to drop kids off at daycare. I haven’t heard of any cases in the winter time among children running errands with their parents. In the Ohio case of Brenda Nesselroad-Slaby (whose 2 year-old died after 8 hours in the car), no charges were brought because there was no “reckless conduct” present.
I’ve never heard of a kid being kidnapped out of a locked car in a parking lot, but this could happen. I don’t know how it could possibly happen to a five-year old and not a six-year old, but there you go.
2) The couple who called the police did the right thing. My friend might wish that they’d considered waiting a few more minutes to see if a parent would return. But what if Annie had fallen and gotten hurt? What if you walked past a car with two kids in it? Would you walk by? I hope not. (I hope you wouldn’t act smug when the mother got written up for it, either.)
3) The American justice system blah blah blah. Ignorance of the law is a poor defence, but when almost no one knows what the law is, and when there’s no intent to neglect or actual neglect or any harm, what purpose is there in humiliating a mother who is honestly doing her best, which is pretty darn good?
4) Mothers who care about their children always think they’re doing something wrong. And if they’re not doing it wrong, for sure some other mother is.
We parents are so hard on each other. A couple months ago I told another friend how tempted I was to leave Spot napping at home while I ran to the school to pick up Sally. I was SO tempted: Spot had just barely fallen asleep, and I hated to drag her out into the cold. The school is only three minutes away; we live in a very, very safe neighborhood. My friend told me she’d recently left her baby asleep at home in the exact same circumstances, only she took the baby monitor over to the neighbor’s house.
I woke Spot up that day. What if there’s a fire, I thought. My friend who had left her baby at home also recounted a time when she left her kids in the car at the printers’. She could see them through the store window and she was only gone for three minutes. But, she said, she would NEVER leave her kids for twelve minutes in a large parking lot.
Neither would I, for that matter. I think. Except maybe I have, at the grocery store? Or the movie rental place? Sally is almost 8, so she’s probably been at least six any time I’ve done that. And probably I was only in the store for nine minutes, so that’s okay.
I do leave Susan and Spot while I get a drink at the gas station (or used to!) — in fact they were in the car when I locked my keys in it last month.
My point: there are large gray areas, despite laws about booster seats for eight-year olds.
And negotiating the gray areas is tough enough without law enforcers adding unnecessarily to the guilt and uncertainty parents feel every day. Surely police officers can tell a difference between a mother running a quick errand and a mother leaving her kids in a car while she bar-hops.
When I told Dick about Annie’s mistake, he said, “Wow, reminds me of that time your friend Andrea passed a car on the right and the police pulled her over and made her feel so bad for endangering her kid who was in the back seat.”
That happened almost eleven years ago, when Dick and I were dating. I still remember Andrea showing up at my house right after it happened. She was shattered at the idea that she might be (thought) an unfit mother. Dick and I haven’t talked about that in ELEVEN YEARS, and when we did talk about it Sally was the merest twinkle in Dick’s eye, but we both remembered it, and I bet Andrea does too.
I’ve joked before that I’m going to wait to have another kid until the American Academy of Pediatrics decides it’s okay after all for babies to sleep on their stomachs. Because if I have to count the weeks until another newborn can turn over by herself and get some quality sleep, I just won’t make it.
I know I make mistakes as a parent. (And I know I’m not the only one). But I hate the feeling that everyone else is watching, waiting for me to screw up.
Jane
p.s. I’m in the running for a spotlight on Mormon Mommy blogs, if you want to go vote (in the sidebar). Because I AM a good mother, dammit, and even if this post isn’t even “funny in a makes you think sort of way” (as one of my sweet readers said), but just plain “makes you think” (I hope), I’m, uh, sure I’ll have something almost-funny up again soon. (Thanks also to the MomNerd.)
Comment of the day (so far) from Keli:
A most excellent post, thank you. I have done this several times. I admit it. I will run into the “Sev” to grab a hot chocolate, and I admit, I don’t want to unbuckle my 2 year old, and wrastle the 5 year old, and then have to buy them crap they won’t eat or drink in addition to my hot cocoa. It’s purely selfish. But if a mom can’t have her selfish time, what can she do?
I usually try to get a 12 year old to sit with my kids in the car while I bar hop, though. That makes me a much better mother.
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Although it always seems easier, and it will “just take a second”, you were spot on when you said your What If’s. What if Mom fell? What if there was a house fire? What if Mom got in a car accident while she ran up to the school to pick up Sibling for just 3 minutes? What if some horrible person saw two children in a car & wanted to hurt them?
There have been situations where I felt like it would be SO much easier than lugging kids into a store for a quick return…or into the library for one quick minute to check out a book on hold…or hang on just one minute while I run in to drop off this prescription at the pharmacy…but you just can’t do it. You MUST take your children with you.
Because even if the weather is perfectly safe, they’re bucked in the car, & you’ve done nothing to endanger them….there are all the other factors that could happen.
Imagine, if you had left your child at home napping, and you get in a head-on collision on the way to school. And you’re unconscious. And in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. Nobody on Earth would know you have a little child at home alone!
It seems so alarmist, but this seems like one situation where you can take control and do what’s hard & inconvenient, you know?
What a great blog post…it really made me think too!
I don’t have any kids, so most of the time I feel like I shouldn’t comment on stuff about kids. I do, however, vividly remember being a kid and being left in the car for what felt like hours in the summer. We could roll down the windows ourselves (no power windows), but even then, it was HOT.
Ironically, I LOVED being left in the car as a kid. It was MUCH better than having to traipse around a stupid store with my dad.
I vote for creating cars that can be locked while running with climate control.
You can’t ever leave your little kids in the car alone. We had an incident where a father left his child in the car for just a moment to run into the office, but the car brakes gave out and the car rolled into a canal. A passerby saved the child from drowning. (I might be mistaken on some of the details; this happened a while ago.)
It might be inconvenient to take them out of the car and drag them with you everywhere you have to go, but it is more convenient than a funeral.
And, yes, as a mom, I’ve done plenty of stupid things that might have endangered my kids. So, I’m not judging. Just hoping to prevent any further tragedies.
It’s so funny that you wrote about this. My daughter was probably just under a year old and we were in Babies R Us. A lady was buying a crib/toddler bed mattress and seemed to be in a rush, so I let her ahead of us. She seemed frantic as she kept looking out the front windows to check on her kids. And I really felt for her. Because there have been many times with just one child, much less two, where I wished it was still okay to leave the kids out in the car for two minutes, while I put stuff in the mailbox or ran books into the library. But I always am afraid…not that something will happen to them, but that I will be the one who is arrested and has the kids taken away.
I am 29 and I remember napping in the car in the driveway in the summer. My mom would roll down the car windows and open the house windows so she could hear when I woke up. And we lived on a fairly busy street. And there were many many times that we waited in the car while she ran into the post office, to get a gallon of milk, etc.
I guess I don’t wish so much that people had different attitudes, just that we hadn’t seen what can happen to kids left alone in cars. Kidnapping, car jacking, hyperthermia, hypothermia, child abandonment, neglect, etc. Can’t we go back to the days where our moms didn’t know better, because everything was okay?
I’m not sure about the “moms didn’t know better” part — Of course this applies to thinks like smoking and taking thalidomide during pregnancy; but it’s almost a “moms knew differently” thing. That’s what I was alluding to on the babies sleeping on their backs/stomachs thing. When I was a baby my mom religiously put us to sleep on our stomachs because that was supposed to be safer.
And just fyi on the napping in driveways, etc, the city ordinance here is very specific about where you cannot leave a child in a car unattended, and one’s private driveway is not included. Also, in Utah, the age at which kids can be left home alone is 11 (or with an 11 year-old babysitter), which honestly sounds a little young to me.
I remember leaving my daughter in the vehicle many times to run into a convenience store to pay for gas (in the days before before pay-at-the-pump), to return a library book, to mail a letter, etc. Sadly, it just shouldn’t be done anymore. Our city suffered a tragedy in 2000 when a mother’s car was stolen with her 6-year-old son inside while she stepped into a sandwich shop to get a drink. She tried to get the boy out of the car as a man recently released from prison drove away. The boy got tangled in the seat belt, outside of the car, and was dragged to his death.
The incident did lead to stricter legislation regarding the release of inmates (the man who stole the car had an additional warrant that could have kept him in prison at the time), but doesn’t change the fact that some parents still leave their children unattended in vehicles. In our state (Missouri), a child must be 11 years old before he/she can be left in a car alone; 14 if there are children under 11 in the car with him or her.
Oh Jane… and all moms reading this…, it just never ends, does it? Whether your kids are infants and you pause an extra moment over their crib to make sure they’re still breathing; when they’re 6-8-any-age in the car at Best Buy; when they’re on an athletic field with a ball or other player careening directly into them; when you have to talk about drugs, alcohol, and s-e-x; when you hand them keys to a vehicle for the first time……. we’re never sure we’re doing it right, but you just have to go with it. That’s why it is sooo important to support and respect each other as moms. Jane, it sounds like you disagreed with your friend’s choice to leave the kids in the car, but you stood by her in working through the legal matters. Good for you! As my dad always used to say “hate the sin, love the sinner.”
Parenting is the best hardest job in the world!
Boy, this sure brings back hard memories for me (and I’m many years past leaving-kids-in-the-car judgment calls). I have apologized to my children in years since for one particular lapse that they don’t seem to remember (thank heavens!), but in the end I did let the “What ifs” take over. You know the adage: good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.
On the other side, I had one son who was a real wanderer at a very early age (1 – 1 1/2 years old). One day I left him in the charge of his 11-year-old sister while I did something else in the house. He disappeared, and I called the troops together to scour the neighborhood to find him. We met back at a street corner, where I was chewing out the big sister when a policeman drove up with the little guy. A couple of days later, I got a letter in the mail from social services essentially telling me that I was a careless and neglectful mother and that it was not my 11-year-old’s job to watch her brother. It’s hard to get over that kind of criticism from social watchdogs.
Thank you for this post. I once worked on (in the ER) a baby that had been left in a hot car. Her temp was 108 when we got her. I think we all had mixed feelings toward the anxious parents standing by (they went to a church meeting and left the baby sleeping in the car). They needed comfort, not lecture, but we all felt kind of angry I think.
A friend of mine once said that guilt was the primary emotion of motherhood. I too frequently agree.
Also, I didn’t pass a car on the right, I passed in a double yellow line when the cement truck in front of me came to a complete stop in my lane. There was a line of cars behind me (including a cop) and I had a clear line of vision to pass. I wonder how many minutes/hours the law requires you to remain behind a completely stopped vehicle before passing in a double yellow. That cop really made me feel like crap. I cried for hours.
I feel bad for Annie. They should have given her a warning and a lecture not a ticket, unless it was July or something.
Exactly! As parents, we are practically in need of medication for the paranoia inflicted upon us by society at large, including ourselves. A couple years ago a friend of mine went to a doctor about depression and was given meds for it; Brad expressed fear, rightfully I think, that if ever anyone wanted to make her look like an unfit parent the medical record of her depression would be held against her. And that discouraged me from getting help I really needed for my own depression and anxiety issues.
Wow, Jane – good post and it sounds like you were a good friend during a tough time even if you didn’t agree with her actions.
It stinks having to drag kids in and out of the cold, or to wake them, or to have an errand that could take a mere minute or two end up taking ten or more minutes because you’ve got your kids with you.
But.
You just have to take them with you or plan on running errands when you can leave them at home with hubs or over at grandma’s or with a friend.
Beyond all the “The Eyes of Judgement Are Upon Me” crap that we moms deal with every time we’re out in public with our small children (and girl, my third has brought those eyes out on me more times than I can count with his horrendous tantrums), there is the simple fact that something awful and life-shattering could happen.
A little one could put something in their mouth and choke.
An older preschooler could decide to leave the car and come find mommy after all and get lost, or hurt, or worse.
And a girl (like your Sally, like my Pinky) or a boy like my Tater – who’s school-aged might have had those stranger-danger talks numerous times. But let’s face it: predators are crafty and clever SOBs. All it takes is one moment where they trick your smart and kind child into “helping” them and *poof*.
I feel pretty strongly about this (if you couldn’t tell); I live in the same area as Nesslby-Slaby and yet another case of an infant dying in a hot car while her busy PhD mom was at work all day. Neither was charged because the law’s here in Ohio haven’t been re-written to include cases where no intent to do harm was found.
But, again.
We moms should help each other out. That couple did the right thing.
So did you, Jane.
Take care.
This IS a touchy subject. I leave my daughter in the car to check the mailbox at my apartment complex and that’s it. I can see her the whole time and I’m gone less than two minutes. I will NEVER run into a store, I don’t care how quick I think I’m going to be. I’ve read too many stories where mom ran into buy a gallon milk at the convenience store and someone stole the car with the baby in it.
I am in no way saying I’m a better parent than those that run a quick errand. Perhaps I’m even over-protective. When it comes to the well-being of my child though my protection is all she’s got.
Wow, it seems like maybe enough has been said on this issue but of course I can’t help but add my two cents. I grew up in So. Cal learning to be extra careful. But I am afraid to admit that since we moved to this teeny tiny town I have been much more lax. When I run errands here in town every single place I stop (library, PO, store) has parking spaces right in front with big windows to see out of. And I have left my kids in the car, especially since I had the twins and it was nearly impossible to even bring them both in. (Not a good excuse, I know!) Although I must say I leave them home with Daddy about 95% of the time so I don’t have to load them in and out! Anyway, I realized after reading this post that even though I do know better I have justified it by telling myself that EVERYONE else here does it. And at least I actually seatbelt my kids in, and don’t drive with a baby in my lap, and don’t leave my children sleeping at home when I run out real quick. (As tempted as I’ve been). But what it comes down to and what I’ve decided to take from this post is not to feel bad about myself but to realize that we need to support and lift each other up. I’m not trying to justify my choices and obviously there are many cases where it has ended in sadness, I am just saying that we all make the best decisions we can on a day to day basis and that all we can do is try to be better and to love each other no matter what. Do you remember that child who recently died up North (I think Layton) because of being left in a car? I was very judgmental of that mother until I talked to my SIL who knew her. Once I realized what the situation was and what kind of person she was I just felt sad for her and love and compassion that she will have to live with that for the rest of her life. Okay, this is turning into a novel but what I want to say is that I think you did right Jane. All we can do is love and support each other regardless of our decisions. But I think also that we will all be a little more careful after this and that’s good too.
A most excellent post, thank you. I have done this several times. I admit it. I will run into the “Sev” to grab a hot chocolate, and I admit, I don’t want to unbuckle my 2 year old, and wrastle the 5 year old, and then have to buy them crap they won’t eat or drink in addition to my hot cocoa. It’s purely selfish. But if a mom can’t have her selfish time, what can she do?
I usually try to get a 12 year old to sit with my kids in the car while I bar hop, though. That makes me a much better mother.
You know what’s going to be the next attack on mother decision making? Taking a shower. For real. Because how many of us leave our kids unattended to take a shower? EVERYONE I KNOW. Everyone. You leave the door open and you take a shower. But SO many things “could” happen.
That’s the logic that’s used against your friend who left her kids as she went to Best Buy. Something COULD have happened. Uh, ya. That’s life. Something can ALWAYS happen. They were in a LOCKED vehicle that was NOT running. Where’s the temptation for a carjacker? They were not going to freeze to death. And if mom HAD suffered a brain aneursim (sp?) while she was gone and no one knew she had kids in the vehicle, there are people in the parking lot coming and going. The kids can yell for help and someone is sure to hear them. Are we worried that some pedophile would have would have seen the kids alone and would have broken in to steal them? First of all, it’s more unlikely that a plane will fly into the white house. But secondly, we should be more worried about leaving our kids alone in our BACK YARDS.
It’s a statistical fact that more kids are hurt, stolen, abused, etc. close to home than in parking lots.
We are all concerned about this issue because we’ve heard one of five or ten or twenty cases where something horrible happened. You know how many horrible things happen close to home? Look at all the parents who still let their kids go on sleep overs!!!! Being molested at a sleep over is VERY common. My husband prosecutes cases all the time. Me, my sister, my aunts and TONS of my friends have ALL been molested at sleep overs.
So, why isn’t there a big campaign against sleep overs? Why aren’t moms made to feel guilty about that yet? Because the media just hasn’t harped on it yet. It’s not DEATH, after all. What do we care that being molested can be like a living death, hurting generations of people in a ripple effect?
If you’re going to use the logic that “something could have happened”, you have to eliminate many far more risky activities. Do you know how likely it is that your kid can suffer a broken neck or death or other physical harm on a trampoline? There are doctors in the United States, and especially Utah who are trying to ban trampolines. Google it. Because more kids are hurt on trampolines than baby walkers. Only 12 kids, I think it was, actually died from falling down stairs in a baby walker. (Okay, I really should check that article again before quoting stats because I could be wrong. But I’m sure the point of the article was that there were few people.) Anyway, you can die from a trampoline, too. How much greater do you think the chances are that you could die from being locked in a rolling vehicle or die at the hands of a carjacker?
I bet that if someone looked this up, the answer would be embarrassing.
So much of what we do every day is risky.
Personally, I never leave my kids in a running vehicle unless it is also locked. My kids can’t get out of their carseats because it’s too hard. I don’t leave them for more than five minutes. I don’t leave them at night. I leave them in a town I KNOW has a very low crime rate and doesn’t neighbor any other town with a much higher crime rate. All my children can talk and yell for help. I wouldn’t have left them if I thought there was a reasonable chance that I’d take twelve minutes but who says eight minutes is significantly different from twelve? The difference between just a few minutes is not a decision based on logic or science or statistics. It’s emotion-based. And it’s subjective. Just as it’s subjective that a 6-year-old can be left but a 5-year-old cannot.
I’m also more concerned with leaving my kids alone in my driveway than a parking lot with people coming and going. What if something happened to me in my house? No one is going to hear my kids yell from the driveway because no one is around during the day. And cars that are left idling in the winter in driveways are prime targets for theft because there are fewer witnesses. Criminals are more likely to commit a crime when they think no one will notice.
I could actually make quite a list of activities and situations where kids are more likely to be hurt or die than by being left in vehicles. The reason so many moms have an opinion on this issue is because the media has told them to have an opinion on it. So many people don’t have opinions on something until someone tells them what to think of it and if it’s the media, well, that’s as good as the word of God.
Use your discretion. Use your mother gut instinct. Say your prayers. Stay close to the Holy Ghost and listen to it. Listen to your children’s comfort level too because they are just as prone, if not more so, to inspiration and feelings that something bad is going to happen. If you don’t feel right about it, don’t do it.
And, for goodness sake, stop showering with your kids unattended because what if you slipped in the shower and they didn’t know and just thought you were having a long shower and your butt blocked the drain and you filled up the tub and ended up drowning by the time your kids checked on you or what if, while you were gone, one of your kids had a seizure or started a fire and tried to put it out themselves, or, or, or, what if… what if…
Ya.
Meant to say that it’s MORE likely that a plane would fly into the white house.
wow…i have been having this discussion with friends recently. We live in the middle of nowhere….truly nowhere…its 2 miles to nearest lil country store and then everything else is 25 or more miles from here my kids are 5, 4, and 2 weeks….i have left any version of the kids in the car both running and not at our country store, and i have also left the 5 and 4 at home and run to the country store….i remember my mom leaving me @ 5 to run to the grocery store for milk and it was actually in town…
i will let the kids sit in the car with it running and the alarm on when i run in say the post office or to just grab milk @ the store…
especially with the dvd player in it….
now its one thing here where we are and another altogether in town or like when we spent several weeks in TX last spring…too many people, more options for nuts to do something unexpected…
i dont think that parents should be charged if they are in sight of the car, or its under a certain length of time…
i think part of the reason that so many kids are so unable to take responsibility etc as they become 10, 12 and even teens is because these small moments of responsibility are being taken from them and the choices are taken out of our hands as parents….
i know there are nuts out there and thankfully they are mostly away from here but it pisses me off that people look at it as bad parenting and not that the freaking criminals need to be put in their place…
steff
Great post. I just Stumbled it.
I saw a Dr. Phil episode a few weeks back that addressed this. Not that I watch Dr. Phil ’cause, of course, I don’t. Especially not while my kids are playing unsupervised in another room. No, really. Never. And I don’t Tivo it either. I swear.
Wait, where was I? Oh yeah. A mother was arrested (as in handcuffs and squad car arrested) for parking along the curb and leaving her young daughter in the car while she walked 13 feet to the Salvation Army donation box with her two oldest children to drop off money they had collected. Her youngest was buckled in her seat and sleeping. It was raining and sleeting outside and she had wanted to spare her daughter the frustration of being woken up and thrust into the sleet and rain. Her car was running but was literally just 13 feet away from her and in her sight the entire time. A community service officer saw the whole thing and called the police. The city actually pressed criminal charges against her for it.
After I saw that episode I thought of all the times I had jumped out of the car for two minutes to grab something out of the house or throw something in the trash and wondered whether I could be in her shoes for something similar? While I would probably never run into a store with kids in the car I can’t say there aren’t things I have done as a mother that others would find just as shocking. Not because I don’t love my children and not because I’m looking to neglect them, but because I make the best decisions I can in the moment. And they aren’t always the right ones.
One young mother of a newborn on the show said she wouldn’t even get out of her car to check her own mailbox (at the end of her driveway) without first unbuckling her baby and taking her with her while others accused the mother who had been arrested of needing parenting classes and psychological help for thinking that leaving her daughter napping safely in her warm car while she walked 13 feet away seat was okay.
It was disturbing to see how harshly she was judged by strangers for a innocent attempt to minimize her child’s discomfort. I think it is great that you opened this up for an honest (non-judgmental) discussion. Good friends can disagree with each other’s actions and still support each other as mothers. Thanks for showing a great example of how that’s done!
Also, I said here that I never leave my kids in a running vehicle alone. The only time I can ever think of when I did that was recently and I posted about it on my blog. And there I said that 1. I was surprised to see the vehicle running when I came back to the van. and 2. I was not thinking AT ALL. In a variety of ways. It wasn’t a purposefully made bad decision.
Also, I once called the police on a mom who left her kids alone at night. She went into Canadian tire at night when it was jam packed. She had said she’d just be a few minutes but she was gone more than ten minutes and it was clear she had been gone longer than that because by the time I found her kids, the van door was wide open, the very young children, ages 2-4, were hopping around PANTSLESS because one had to go pee. They were able to get themselves out of their carseats (and I doubt she was unaware of this skill until just that night, although it’s possible, though statistically unlikely) and open the van door. The vehicle was running. Because it was close to midnight, it would have been hard to spot anyone taking a kid and running away. If it had been at a normal time and not midnight maddness Christmas shopping time, I could see how it would be reasonable that the mom would think she’d just be a minute or two.
The police officer let the woman go home. She wasn’t charged with anything. And I believe that was the right decision to make.
Andrea — Thanks for clarifying. I guess my memory isn’t THAT great.
Thanks everyone for all the great comments. I really appreciate that you’re not attacking my friend or other moms. I hesitated to post about this because I didn’t want to expose her to even more criticism, so I am glad my faith in you has been so amply justified!
On the risk assessment thing that Natasha brings up, that’s one of the most fascinating parts of the Freakonomics book and blog. Most people are horrible at assessing risk, and the things we are afraid of are often the more exotic things or things that we don’t personally agree with. (NOT the most commonly dangerous things, statistically speaking).
One example is the comparison btw guns in the home and swimming pools in backyards. Many parents would NEVER have a gun in the house, and yet, the number of deaths by drowning is like 100 times the deaths related to gun accidents.
Land of Lovings,
That is a crazy story. You could NEVER be prosecuted in Canada for that because to have committed a crime, the prosecution has to be able to show that you willfully intended harm. If harm was not done and the activity was just so reckless that it COULD have caused harm, you still cannot be charged for what COULD have happened, unless that activity is already a crime. (Ex. You can be charged with drinking and driving but you can’t be charged with reckless driving causing death if no one died.)
By the logic of that police officer and that law, moms should be RIGHT NEXT TO their kids at the playground and if you have three or four kids with you at the playground and they don’t all want to be on the same piece of equipment, well, you’re screwed. Because what if one of your kids fell, going up the slide? If you were RIGHT THERE, surely you would have caught them, right? And if you couldn’t catch them, well, that’s an accident but if you were not even there, well that’s negligent. And you know who really likes playgrounds? Pedophiles. I have TWO friends who were abducted from playgrounds as kids by strangers and raped. I can think of three cases in my province in the past year where this has happened. And in one of the cases, the kids were 9 and 11 and they were right behind some houses. An older lady was right outside and got a photo of the guy with her camera phone.
I don’t understand the motivation for such extreme laws. I know that it’s not based on statistics at all. So, what is it? A desire to control everything public? Need for revenue via fines?
Natasha, thank you for writing this! While leaving a 4 and 2 year old while I go into a store is way outside my comfort level, I have seen so much hysteria over the issue of leaving kids in cars–the old “It JUST TAKES A SECOND for SOMETHING AWFUL to happen” argument. The thing is, that’s true–NO MATTER where you are. Your kid can choke right in front of you at the dinner table, or while you’re in the bathroom. Your child could be abducted out of the locked house while you sleep in the next room. You’re far more likely to get in a car accident, putting your child in harm’s way, than any of these extremely rare things to happen!
The illogical nature of the arguments is mind-blowing sometimes. What if the gas station gets held up while you’re inside paying? Then I’d rather my kids were NOT inside! What if you’re taking groceries into the house and your kid gets abducted out of the driveway? Well, it’s either I take the kids in first and then leave them unattended in the house or I take the groceries in first and leave the kids unattended in the car. And I don’t think there’s any clear answer in which one of those is safer (depends on the neighborhood, the house, age of child, etc). The point is there’s no way to eliminate risk, and we’d all do well to be allowed to use our own common sense and evaluate relative risk. Personally, on some occasions when I’ve had to run into the gas station (because I want to use cash or whatever) I’ve felt much safer leaving the kids ten feet away from me in a locked, turned-off car where I can see them the whole time, throwing a $20 on the counter and running back out, than schlepping the four of them through a busy parking lot. RELATIVE risk is not that hard a concept to understand, we just have to allow ourselves the benefit of our own intelligence to do it first. And there’s no way to ELIMINATE risk from our kids’ lives…there just isn’t. I do think that 4 and 2 is too young to be left in a Best Buy parking lot alone, but I’m sure the mom in question has learned that lesson well. She made a mistake, but that doesn’t mean she’s neglectful, or a bad mother, or even that her kids were in any particular danger.
Exactly, Jane. Parents are now asking other parents who host play dates if they have a gun in the house. But they don’t ask if they have a swimming pool. And why do they do this? Because the media told them to. Because the news features stories of kids who were shot by a friend playing with a gun. People let the media determine risks for them.
Oops, I said Natasha, but I meant Jane. But Natasha, you had some great points too
I really just should have posted my own blog post in response to this. That’s how this blogging thing works right? I didn’t think I had time and then I got so caught up in commenting, I spent a bunch of time anyway and suddenly realized that I was going to be late picking my 5-year old from school so I just left my 3-year old here alone to save time.
Kidding.
Meagan: I agree with everything you said, except when you said that Jane’s friend made a mistake. There’s no proof that she did. No objective truth. Just opinion. I loved your grocery scenario because it’s so true to life.
I think the mistake is in not knowing that what she did could get her in trouble. If I saw 2- and 4-year-olds alone in a car, I would likely be uncomfortable with it, even though I don’t necessarily think that the kids are in much danger. Why? Social conditioning maybe? I just think that it would be hard to live in today’s world without understanding that to most people (and certainly anyone involved in law enforcement) that would probably be crossing the line, even if she wasn’t sure of the exact law it broke. Hope that made sense.
But you’re very right that it’s all just opinion…and what bothers me is that some opinions are held up to be understood as tacitly “correct” and others “incorrect” based on…well, based on what, exactly?
Natasha-
I know! The Dr. Phil episode FREAKED me out. I had (2 days earlier) left my kids in the car at the curb to pick up my dry cleaning. The dry cleaners will come out to the car to meet you but only if you walk up to the door to let them know you’re there. I was maybe 8 feet away and the car doors were locked but after watching that episode of Dr. Phil I wondered if I could have been in this woman’s position.
Ridiculous and scary. And really an illogical prosecution of someone who was trying to make the best decision she could for her sleeping kid.
But, I guess what scared me was, whether it was illogical or not, she still had to face public scrutiny (it was all over the media in her town) and legal action against her. Immediately a mental list of “mommy offenses” popped up in my head of things I could be accused and arrested for using the logic of the police in that instant.
It was one of those instances that made me wonder if I was the only mom in the world to leave my kids in the car to take the trash to the dumpster or drop mail in the post office box. I think that is why I so appreciate the discussion on this post. Confirms that I’m not a completely negligent mother for not having my children glued to my side every single moment of the day.
God knows I’m guilty of the cardinal sin of taking a shower while my kids are unsupervised! And I can neither confirm not deny the possibility that I have taken a brief nap while they watch cartoons at the crack of dawn on Saturday mornings. : )
I have so often wished that I could just leave the kids behind…I did once, at a UPS store with plate glass windows in front, and I parked right out front & could clearly see my kids buckled into their car seats. But I was nervous wreck, and could hardly hold a conversation with the clerk while craning my neck to see my kids. I haven’t done it since.
Once, when my sister & I were little (under 8, I think), my dad left us in the car while he ran into the liquor store (which I totally get…there’s a lot of glass in that place). But that was before mandatory seat belts, and my sister & I were horsing around. My sister kicked the gearshift, and we found ourselves rolling backwards through the parking lot. Someone caught up to the car and pulled the parking brake just before the car hit a fence.
I’ll bet Dad really NEEDED that drink after that!
These really are hard questions. People’s perceptions of what is safe or responsible is very individualized and based on experience, location, age, and so much more. And it’s funny, because we often to be pretty judgemental of other folks who may have a differing view. Physical punishment is the same way. My (38 yr-old) husband was paddled in a public jr high in Texas, so though he is not the executor of spankings at our house, his ideas are pretty liberal (not politically speaking) as to what is appropriate. I, on the other hand, was raised by a psych grad student of the 70s in the NE who would hardly raise his voice. We had lots of interesting talks early on in our parenting …
Anyway, I guess I’m in luck as my oldest is 14 and youngest is 7. I can leave them if I want. And I do. Not for long, but 12 minutes in a store is actually a remarkable short time to be in and out if you really think about it.
Thanks for stopping by. I will graciously accept that you did not vote for me. And I will not vote for you. Good luck to you. I am mostly grateful someone nominated me, but I’d not have signed up for this kind of pressure. Not this week, anyway. I like your blog. I’ll be around.
The CRIME was shopping at BEST BUY – I can’t stand that store . . .
Oh Boy, what a can of worms. I think every situation warrents a different response. I have left my kids in the car, with the older ones, locked and a cell phone to call the police if needs be. I have call my cell phone from my home phone, left the home phone by my sleeping baby’s door and left to pick up a child from school. 3.5 minutes. I have left monitors at neighbors houses, sent 11 year olds to the store on their own and even left my 9 and 6 year old home alone together. It all turned out OK, but I would never recommend doing it. The what if is just too great. But sometimes, convienience outweighs the what ifs.
Haven’t left M alone in the car. Yet. It doesn’t count when the car is in the garage, engine’s off, she’s yelling her head off and still strapped in, and I’m counting quietly outside the door, right? Because that’s more to preserve her life than for my convenience.
Hang on, I’ve just read through most of the comments, and realised I *have* left M in the car, so my thoughts of “that’s one mistake I have made (yet)” are out the window. I have left her in the car right outside the drycleaners/ironing shop, while I go in and pay and collect the clothes. Because I wouldn’t be able to carry a bub, laundry basket, and hanging clothes back to the car. Probably not good enough, but that was my judgement call at the time. Huh.
There are so many what ifs, but we truly need to be wary when participating in judging and watching other parents. Sure, there’s the baby-on-your-lap-in-the-front-seat-of-the-car-doing-65-on-a-highway stuff, but as you said Jane, what about pools? It’s summer here, and even though all pool owners are legally required to have fences that meet regulations (e.g. maybe Sally would be able to open the pool gate by herself, but not Susan or Spot), there have been some fatal drownings of children in pools. Now, our state government wants to legislate annual pool fence checks. But I’m not sure how much of the problem that will solve.
Now I’m recalling the times my sibs and I were left in cars. One particuatly auspicious time was in the rural town my dad and step mum#1 lived in, out the front of the hospital (step mum #1 was a physiotherapist), it was me and another kid from town. We started playing with matches in the car(step mum #1, dad, mum … all smokers) I just remember getting into trouble, so I guess we didn’t hurt ourselves with of our little fire bug games.
Notice how everyone sounds so apologetic for their choices? Even me. “I only did it for 2 minutes” or “But I wouldn’t if…” Wow, it’s grating on me.
I don’t believe we are talking about real serious threats. If your kids can get out of their carseats and the vehicle is running, maybe that’s not wise. But if they’re strapped in, can’t get out, and you’re dashing into a store, and the vehicle is locked, any fear you have is not reasonable. It’s not a reasonable amount of fear for the tiny risk that’s there. It’s TINY, the risk.
A real fear I have is that we are raising a generation of paranoid agraphobes. When I was a kid, my mom slept with a knife under her pillow. She was always afraid that someone would break in. Now, that’s my number one fear, too– that someone will break in and steal my kids or kill us or all sorts of things. It’s not a rational fear. The chances are so tiny but the fear is ingrained in me.
When you’re too afraid to leave your kids for a few minutes, around people, when you have to give them five different warnings before you leave them or before an activity, you teach them to be afraid of people and maybe even life.
Great discussion here! Love the gun/pool statistics and the ideas that media shapes our opinions. And the shower analogy.
And the sleepover facts are just creepy.
I do think that everyone’s experience growing up along with where they live (small town v. big anonymous suburbs v. large busy city) colors their view on this. I know living in the same region as the two cases of moms whose little ones died in hot cars definitely affects my own perspective on this issue.
It’s a judgment call, all of the scenarios of leaving your child for just a minute or two, one that each of us makes individually based on our best knowledge.
What’s sad, no matter whether you agree with leaving them just for a second or not, is the eyes of scrutiny we moms face. Was it Natasha (? would need to scroll up..) who mentioned all the abuse that happens to kids at home and in the home?
It’s sad that good parents (none of us are abusive, I imagine) are afraid to exercise their best judgement because of the potential that some one might make a call to the authorities.
I’ve talked to my hubs about this, particularly during the heydey of my youngest’s terrible public tantrums last summer. Everyone is watching you – and so few people in public seem to genuinely want to help stressed moms, just criticize.
Another brave post, Jane!
Hello…I’m sorry to hear about the difficult situation your friend was in. I just wanted to give you some links that are examples of the infinate number of things that can happen while children are left alone in vehicles. This stuff really does happen!!! These are just a few of the most recent cases we have in our database. Please feel free to contact us.
The mother of the 22-month-old and 3-year-old children, Bridgett Radake, 36, told police she left her 1991 Ford truck to retrieve mail Tuesday night when one of the children apparently shifted the vehicle into drive, sending it rolling into a private pond near their home.
http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2008/10/2-toddlers-die-after-pickup-submerges.html
***F.Y.I. If your vehicle does not have a brake shift interlock system, the car does not have to be on for this to happen.
Police: Car Rolls Over, Kills Toddler:
http://www.newsnet5.com/news/17014132/detail.html
Authorities release name of girl who died in accident in Chickasha
http://newsok.com/authorities-release-name-of-girl-who-died-in-accident-in-chickasha-still-no-cause-of-death/article/3334079
Slain mom’s kids plead for help finding her killer
Tina Davila died defending baby from carjacker: ‘She was the coolest mom’
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/25490690/
Police continue search for 4 suspects in boy’s abduction
CBS 42, TX – Feb 8, 2008
Police are still searching for the four suspects who kidnapped a boy as he sat in his mother’s car Thursday morning
Four Year Old Abused and Buried Alive
The Fresno County Sheriff’s Department has confirmed with KSEE 24 that a 4 year old disabled child was snatched from a van, abused, and buried alive in a vineyard.
http://www.ksee24.com/news/local/36736144.html?video=pop&t=a
KSEE 24 News= Fresno, CA
“A real fear I have is that we are raising a generation of paranoid agraphobes”
this is actually my fear as well. Its strange to me, I was allowed to stay home with my lil sister for short times when i was 9-11 and had a full time babysitting job the summer I was twelve, and yet the thought of leaving ANY 10-12 yyear old that i currently know with my kids is enough to strike fear in my heart. I think its frightening how much less prepared most kids, teens, collegians are prepared for life than i feel like my generation was 20 years ago. (and I was unprepared compared to many of my friends). I find it shocking that we are sending our 3 and 4 year olds to school full time in the interest of them being prepared for education, but what is being taken away from them in common sense and personal responsibility?
We talk about things like this with our kids, just like we do guns, and pools, and trampolines. We have actually had all of these conversations with our boys in the last 6 months. My boys (4 and 5) got BB guns for Christmas from their daddy. They also got a list of rules to go with them and EVERY gun in our house is in a 30 guage steel safe bolted into both the floor and the wall. We are also planning on putting in a swimming pool this summer, but the pool isnt as big a worry to me as the river thats 1/2 a mile down the road from us that I know my kids can both get to and play in…my pool is much less likely to be snakey…
Now the trampolines…completely 100% forbidden….but we have also forbidden skateboards…risk is relative, and it is related to what you know and where you are and what part of the country you are in.
Yes KIDS IN CARS these things all happen, but so do every other scenario we have mentioned on here…
I havent done it in years, but in my teens and twenties I had a habit? not sure thats the right word…i would relax so in the shower that I would pass out….I do not take showers with the infant alone in the house with me…its a reasonable fear to me.
The first year we lived in this house I had an 8 month old and an 18 month old. I was changing the diaper of the 8 month old and heard the back door. I walked out of the bedroom, and could see a string of clothes to the back door. I grabbed my shoes because our yard is covered in rocks, put them on, put the baby back in the play pen so i could run and ran out the door….
When i got to the front of the house i could hear the 18 mo old calling for his daddy….
he was 200 yards down the road out front naked as a jaybird with our boston terrier on one side and the choc lab on the other….
when i yelled his name, the dogs split and ran into the woods on either side and K fell on his bottom.
Thank heaven we live in the middle of nowhere and on a good day back then there might be 4 cars on our road all day…
The point is THINGS HAPPEN….
we need to quit justifying everything we do and judging each other as parents because lets face it in ANY situation the truth is THERE BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD…..
Steff
KidsandCars.org,
No one is saying these things don’t happen. I’m saying they’re rare. Do you want me to give you a list of every bad thing that happens more often than this, to strike fear into your heart so that you’ll never let your kids do anything? My husband has prosecuted three cases where people died from ONE punch in the head. Immediate death. Turns out there’s some people whose necks or something are vulnerable to this and the same thing can happen by a strong knock to the head… like in hockey or football, or whatnot. And you wouldn’t want to let your boys rough house play because they could accidentally be paralyzed or die.
I’d like to know how that three year old knocked the gear shift into drive when his or her mom got the mail. Shouldn’t a 3-year old be strapped into a carseat? My kids have never been able to get themselves out of their carseats.
When I was two years old I rolled off my parents king size bed and hit my head on a toy xylophone. This accident caused me to slice my head open and I needed several stitches. I still have a scar today. My brother, at the age of 16, opened up the medicine cabinet which had a glass door. The glass slid out of the door and sliced his finger open. When he was 12 he tripped and fell, catching himself he accidentally put his hand in a fan and almost lost his arm. It took years of reconstructive surgery with a specialist in Kentucky to prevent him from losing his arm. To this day he has permanent nerve and ligament damage in his left hand and severe scarring. I parked outside of the Little Caesars recently, ran in to pick up my $5 hot and ready pizza and left my 4 YO and 2 YO strapped in their car seats. I was gone less than 5 minutes and nothing happened.
Life happens. I’m sure my mother thought nothing of letting her 16 year old son have a medicine cabinet in his bathroom with a glass door. As I’m sure she thought nothing of letting her 2 year old daughter play on her bed while she got dressed in the same room. And how many of us have fans in our house during the summer? And yet all of these caused far more damage than leaving my pre-schoolers in the car for less than 5 minutes while I ran in to get pizza.
That is one of my nightmares. If I even leave my kids in the car in the dead of winter right in front of our small post office to run in and drop something off I worry that someone somewhere will think that I am somehow neglecting my children. I drag my children out in the cold back and forth between the car and stores, even when they beg to just wait in the car. Kids’ don’t understand the scrutiny that parents are under.
I think that the kinder thing for those people to have done would have been to wait a a few more minutes.
The law is very difficult to research. And it is VERY expensive to pay an attorney, who might not be able to help anyway.
What is really bad is that the mother had to feel so badly over it. This is an area where the atonement is really really helpful in allowing us to let go of what we can’t control in the past and gain more confidence in our present.
Great post, great comments!
What about the question: if you were the passerby who witnesses such an *innocent* “maternal-attention-lapse”, what is the appropriate response? IE the person / couple that comes across 1-2 children strapped inside? I would love to think that someday I would have the maturity to stop what I was doing, stay and watch over the children, patiently awaiting the return of the mother, then when she returned, smile, tip my hat, and leave without a word of any kind, and without a critical thought, knowing that mothers do love their children, and do sacrifice so much already, and that I would like to lessen their load somehow. That is what I would hope to someday be able and willing to do. I love and honor all you mothers!
Grandpa Hyatt
I have left them while I pay for gas or buy snacks in a convenience store.
Since my oldest is 6.5, and the younger one 3.5, I trust that they know the rules for the 3-4 minutes it takes to wait in line to pay for gas, and in gas stations, the front wall is frequently all glass, and I can see my car.
My fear is usually not abduction or car theft (nobody would steal my car, lol), but being rear-ended. Thankfully I haven’t got airbags in the back seat, but the “what if someone DOES disobey and unbuckle” is there in my mind.
Oh, and heat stroke. We live in FL, and just the other day (yes, in Jan) it was 89 degrees outside, and probably 95 in the car. I would never leave them in the heat!
I read on one website that if it was 60 degrees and sunny outside, the greenhouse effect could turn the temperature in the car dangerous/lethal within (15?) minutes. Scary. — Jane
My comfort level for my kids (boys 6 and 2) for exiting a (locked, carseat-strapped, temperature normal) vehicle is “within my line of sight, less than five minutes”. Dropping a library book in the outside drop while the car remains at the curb, sure. Or donation dropoff, yup done that (so the Dr.Phil story scares me). Or even gas station or other store briefly IF I could SEE THE CAR/KIDS the entire time. I would not have done the Best Buy scenario due to both the ‘out of line of sight’ and time involved. But once I did leave 6 yr old and friend 6 yr old in our Suburban (tinted back windows, cell phone available, safe area) while I picked up 2 yr old from our school’s MDO daycare (4 minutes) when it was pouring rain. I have never done the leave at home briefly while sleeping due to the ‘what if’ of getting in a car accident/etc. But I have gone to the next door neighbor briefly while leaving a (crib-tented) napping child (baby monitor in hand).
I’m probably more vigilant on the shower issue due to the nature of my 2 yr old – with older son at that age I was fine with him watching a video for 10 minutes (he loved Thomas so much he didn’t move!); with this one I only shower during nap/sleep times because he is constantly getting into things and is incredible with his hands. A couple mo ago this child slipped upstairs while I was loading the washing machine, flipped a laundry basket to facilitate climbing, reached a high dresser where my husband had left a folding utility knife, unfolded the knife (which I can barely do), and cut his finger (stitches, no lasting damage) all in under five minutes.
With the exception of egregious stupidity/clear cut neglect, I am a big fan of “there but for the grace of God go I”….. Great discussion all, especially the ideas of relative risk.
[...] Well, the truth is, I care too much. Oh, not about what others think, exactly. In fact, I like nothing more than a well-thought-out disagreement. (See the great comments on Bloggy Prostitution or Kids and Cars). [...]
Yes, brave post, Jane. And I LOVE the new ‘What About Mom’ graphic at the top. Sadly for me, I’m quite ADD even though I actually have a husband who truly comes in the door and says, “What can I do to help?,” and just starts picking up, making dinner, and usually not showing disappointment in a messy house, messy, chaotic kids, and dinner not even started. Okay, also yay for me because he is one in a million. : )
Ok, for your post about us as moms always worrying that we will be judged, worrying about relevant risk (come on, most of us have been pretty real about the risk ratio we use every day in making multiple small and big decisions concerning our kids’ safety).
I saw the post, and actually chose to allow my kids to stay in the van after reading it (I hadn’t yet read all the comments, I might not have left them if I had). I was at Walmart, and my oldest is 9. The 4 year old is a little iffy, but the 9 year old was ‘watching’ the 7 and 4 yr old. I was gone less then 8 minutes to have a coupon attached to a receipt(I had already completely taken them inside, done my shopping, returned to the van, buckled them up, and then realized I forgot to use my $2 coupon off a product.
My risk ratio is that if I had a .25 coupon, of course I wouldn’t have gone back in the store. But when I had specifically dragged out the coupon and meant to use it in the store, I chose the risk that the said 9 year old could work better on his homework and the kids stay in the van while I ran back into the customer service desk. Had there been a line, it would have altered my risk ratio. I probably would have backed out of the store and tried to remember to bring the coupon with the receipt another time and asked them to take it off (yes, I’m anal that way). But there was NO line.
Now, one time I did have another time where I had done all the shopping w/ the kids (again at Walmart), and had everyone completely buckled before I remembered that chewable children’s tylenol had escaped my shopping list, and we all know how important it was for me to replenish that supply for my kids. So I left them all while I ran inside, trying to keep a low profile, more because I was worried someone might call CPS/police on me for negligence, not because I was concerned that something bad might happen to my children; I felt the risk was extremely small for that. (Interestingly enough, I feel really, really strongly about pools and would own one because of the incredible danger factor of drowning being one of the most quick and silent child killers) My van was locked and turned off, in a crowded parking lot in bright sunlight with lots of customers traipsing between vehicle and store. The chance that someone would see my kids through the tinted windows and attempt to break them out is, again, extremely small, and the chance that someone would want to steal my non-running car is even smaller still.
Anyway, I didn’t make direct eye-contact with anyone, and I saw a mom park and look at me (out of the corner of my eye I noticed this, of course), and not get out of her car. I ran inside, grabbed the tylenol, lucked out with a short line, and was back in under 4 minutes, 5 minutes tops. Then the lady got out of her car and went inside, looking concerned.
I wish I had been brave enough to thank her for keeping an eye on my kids, or at least make eye contact with her, but I was too scared of the judgment she might feel, or that she would tongue-lash me, and the truth is, I did take a risk. In the van as I drove away I reflected, and quietly thanked her out loud for being so responsible to stay and watch to be sure I didn’t neglect my kids.
My neighbor once said that she waited by some unattended kids at a store for over 30 minutes before she called cops, so I feel this lady did the right thing in my case. Also I once went to drop by someone’s home who I visit-taught, only to have her just barely 7 yr old open the door to me, who was playing video games while his 3 year old sister wandered around the little apt. with a huge open sore on the heel of her foot (I kid you not, it was at least an inch deep, like someone had taken a cone-shaped chunk out of her heel), and the baby playing in her crib (maybe 6-7 months?). My vt companion happened to be just as prompted as I was, and also happened to stop by unnanounced. We couldn’t find any food in the house, or even a can opener to open a can of formula we found to try and feed the baby. I got my first aid kid and dressed the girl’s wound, and had some sandwiches in my car to feed the kids. I can’t remember if we found a way to feed the baby any formula. Even though all of this together looked bad, like there were no sheets on the kids’ beds, the little girl and baby both had diapers on that had not been changed that day (it was nearly noon), and the baby had a bottle that had not been rinsed or washed out within the last 9 or 10 times using it (you know how gross bottles get, quick), you could catch me at any given day with any one of those factors, a bandaid has fallen off a wound, a bottle has gotten extra dirty, it’s been awhile since I changed a diaper, the sheets are all in the laundry from kids who wet beds, etc.
But as the vt companion and I stayed with the kids to ensure their safety, we waited an entire HOUR before the mother returned, with valentine gifts in a shopping bag for her husband (she later claimed that her babysitter took off because his brother was shot, without calling her. though we lived in a rougher area, I do not believe there was ever a babysitter, I think she thought she was safe to leave them at home for well over an hour unattended). In this case I prayed and worried and asked the bishop what I should do, and it is the only time I have ever called CPS. The mother was so upset when they came out several weeks later, and knew by the date the call was made that it had to have been me or my companion. I was honest and told her it was me, and she was furious that I didn’t just talk with her about it. I explained that if there was danger for those kids, and I had talked to her about it, she could have hidden the signs of danger before someone checked the place out. I reassured her that I was acting in her kids’ best interest, and that if she had done nothing wrong, she had nothing to worry about. I do think it was a wake-up call for her, and I truly don’t judge her.
Anyway, it’s nice to know people are honest enough to admit that we worry about these things and actually talk about it. Seeing hard statistics is always really helpful. Like people being terrified of airplanes (I mean, what if it crashes?, they say) when the statistical chance of them getting in an auto accident is quite significant, at least 100 to 1. And here they’re going around in their cars every day, ‘feeling’ much safer, even though they’re at much greater risk for accident.
I’ve left a window open for my neighbor’s housekeeper when I ran down to the school to pick up a sick kid, so she could hear if my baby woke up. I’ve walked down the street and talked with neighbors as far as 6-8 townhomes away, once my kids were asleep, sometimes up to 30-40 minutes inbetween stepping home to check on them, ‘just in case.’
Then again, I was home watching TV, exhausted mentally and emotionally, when I was prompted in my zoned out state to go check on my sleeping boys. I didn’t really hear any noise beyond normal crying, whining, that often doesn’t warrant checking into. When I entered the room, to check, ‘just in case,’ (which is why we continue to do the ‘just in case’ checks on our kids), my baby (under 1 year) had somehow crawled up the bunkbed ladder and then somehow wiggled between the bed and the wall, and was hanging by his neck, literally, his head stuck above the frame of the bed and the wall, his body hanging down below it.
I still shudder to think what would have happened if I hadn’t checked on him. I’m hoping it had just happened, because there never appeared to be any lasting damage. I rushed to him and supported his weight for over 15 minutes from underneath, trying to figure out how to move the bunkbed by myself (hubby was at work) while supporting my baby’s weight. It was a terrible time. I didn’t dare leave him even for a moment to go grab a phone and call 911. After quite some time, I yelled out enough to my 5 year old that he woke up and got out of bed and helped pull as I was pulling, and together we got the frame to move half an inch or so, just enough that I could get the baby out. My shrink was really nice to me about that one, and helped me process my “what if” fears.
Or there’s the time my oldest was less than a month old and chocked on some snot/spit and stopped breathing. My mother heard it from three rooms over and came running because she recognized from his strangled cry that he was not getting oxygen. She, a volunteer EMT at the time, performed the baby heimlich on him while I called 911. Whatever it was eventually dislodged and he swallowed it and then breathed, even before the ambulance arrived. How grateful I am for her medical training in saving his life. Despite being pale for the rest of the day, my baby had no lasting effects. And, in fact, this summer my mom taught baby heimlich, baby, child, and person CPR at our family reunion, which was an awesome refresher course for many of us.
It’s just made me realize, there are so many things that could go wrong. Some of them we can minimize (they’re saying now that a fan in a baby’s room hugely cuts down on the risk of SIDS), like having the right carseats for our kids and making them get buckled in them correctly, but if we just stress about all the risks all the time, we literally would fall apart from the burden of stress.
So we look at the relevant risk and make decisions every day, and don’t freak ourselves out playing the What IF game, hoping to make the best choices possible and stay sane, and praying for protection from a loving God, and understanding that we don’t fully understand God’s plan for us if we end up being one of the statistics that everyone hopes they’ll never be.
Good luck, everyone! Try to be safe with your kids, but don’t drive youself so crazy that you can’t be a nurturing mother to them.
Sorry for being so wordy, and probably after all the commenters have already moved on to other blog topics. So, Jane, enjoy.
Hi there. 1st visit to your great blog…
I live in Australia, and something happened just last week. A mum in Brisbane (Queensland), had her 10 week old baby in the car. She had to pay a TV repair guy some money for the quote she had gotten. His business was under his house. The house had a long curved driveway, away from the road. It is very hot here in December (unlike you guys), and as it was a 3 min exchange, and baby girl was asleep, she left the car running for the airconditioning. Yep, I am sure you can guess the story. She came out to her car…. and it was gone!! Baby and all! I live in North Qld, and there were alerts on the TV on the lookout for the car. I prayed to the Lord for the safe return of the baby, as I am sure countless other Christians would have.
The thief didn’t expect there to be a baby in the car, as a car was all he wanted. The baby started to cry and cry apparently. The thief panicked, and found a mobile phone in the car. He called the last number dialled, and it was the mother’s sister. He told her where they could find the car. By the time police got there, he was gone, but the baby was safe, and reunited with her mother. This happened over a 3 hour period. I am sure that would have been the worst 3 hours of the mum’s life. It would have been sheer agony for me!
But, I have been guilty of doing such things when my children were small. The possibilities of things happening are real I guess. Also, more weirdos in this world to contend with. Also, those who totally don’t do the right thing, ie leave kids for hours and hours in a car, while they gamble or whatever, really make the law crack down on the innocent caring mothers, who just need to take a shortcut or two, to get through the day.
Great post, thank you. Good food for thought.
Blessings,
Amanda
I think the thing that bothers me about the whole incident, more than anything, is that there are people watching mothers all the time, ready to pounce on any action. My friend’s daughter walked out of her house one day and went to the neighbors yard. She was gone for maybe 30 seconds when my friend realized she was gone and found her. My friend let her neighbor know what had happened, because there was an artificial pond and my friend was afraid there might have been some damage to the pond. Anyhow, the neighbor call CPS and the CPS called my friend and had her come in. My friend said it was the most horrifying experience. And for the record, I don’t think she was a neglectful mother. No mother can be a supermom. We can’t have our eyes on our children all the time. We just do the best we can.
I’m not convinced that your friend in the original post did anything wrong. Nor am I convinced that the couple who called the police did the right thing either.
I guess I’m rather inclined to follow Natasha’s thinking. The dangers of slumber parties are more serious to me than leaving your kids in the car for five minutes while you run an errand.
lengthy listing you corner
I was tricked into it.