Posted on 08/23/2007 6:08:28 PM PDT by TornadoAlley3
I’m suspecting that it was a little more than a lucky guess on your part and yes, we all know (and avoid) the type!
;-)
HEY I have ADD — and I NEVER EVER forgot my children in the car!
I simply do NOT get how these people do this. It just stuns me.
I think the reason so many are sympathetic towards the parents is because of their profession(s), i.e, they work to help others, so they’re allowed one moderate to major screw-up.
If the parents worked at K-Mart, my guess is that 80%+ would be flaming the parents; instead 80%+ are enemies of personal responsibility, it seems.
What do you do next after you have done something unforgivable by mistake? Best to forgive yourself and get on with life.
At least you only felt like her. My son says I am her. : )
Megadittos. It’s hard to understand how this happens. But it happened. And now they are just as you describe them.
Normally when children are this young, they are in rear-facing child seats that have separate bases. You strap the baby into the child seat outside the car, and snap it into the base in the back seat.
For the person to have left the child in the car, they would have had to miss a car seat in the back when normally there would be just a base.
Yes, very tragic.
That's irrelevant if you don't know the baby is in the car. Being married with children and having a wife who also works, we both have very busy schedules. I can see how this could happen on a very busy day where both parents may be off to a late start, however tragic. Having said that, I couldn't imagine having such a misunderstanding when it comes to one of our children. If my wife is taking the kids with her when she goes somewhere, I always verify that the children have gone with here before I leave to go anywhere after she's gone.
I'm guessing the mother put the baby in the car while it was parked and the father was still getting ready to leave for work, thinking he was going to drop the baby off at day care. The baby falls asleep, as babies often do in the car, and he never knew it was in there. The father gets in the car not knowing the wiser, thinking the mother is taking the baby to day care.
I really feel for those parents. They are probably feeling unimaginable grief and guilt over what happened to their little baby.
How many parent’s have lost track of their kids...I know I have. Fortunately, for me, it didn’t result in the death of a child, but this was a tragic mistake/misunderstanding.
Seems to me there was a Biblical couple who lost track of “their” child and couldn’t find Him for 3 days and I don’t think they were “bad parents” because of it.
Tragedies and mistakes happen, when we think they could never happen to us, we are just fooling ourselves.
Our own children are more important than our careers. Our children, in fact, ARE our career. When our young ones are on the runway, everything else must change to raise that generation properly. And I would tell any physician in my congregation, your career does not trum your stewardship over the children God gives you.
Our nation’s children seem to be wandering selfish brats raised by wandering selfish brats.
Now, let me back up all over myself, and say plainly that I do NOT know the heart motivations of that physician or her husband. Their design on things may be with the same intended outcome as any thoughtful, caring parents you may ever meet. But their course of carrying things out was wrong. But that is too obvious.
The course didn’t begin with leaving a child in a car. It began with deciding who cares for and trains the child in the early months and years. They had made the decision to let others do it for them. Their life is too involved in their careers to decide otherwise. That is the grief to me.
I’m not so sure, but I have heard two similar stories locally here in the SF Bay area (not a hot region at all). I normally wouldn’t take notice, but after having my first son, things start popping up. The parents in these cases forgot their babies all day and the babies died of thirst.
I think people here at FR are more likely to give sympathy to people who had horrible things happen to them even if they brought it upon themselves. I think many Darwin Award stories would have prayers go out to the victim’s families.
However, since this is the third article of this type I have come across this summer, I think it should be a warning to other future parents. If you want to have a baby be prepared to have the mother take at *least* a *year* off.
I look at it like this: how long would it take for these people to remember they had left their cell phones in the car?
Did you notice that the parents aren’t named? Why is this? Are they ME’s and the editor is concerned that this might have a backlash in the medical community?
They probably had one of those annoying “Baby On Board” signs on the back window. I never understood those signs. Are they implying that the rest of us would drive like maniacs if not for the sign in the back window?
What you said has some truth, if the child spends most of it’s time at daycare and no one is really assuming responsibility then it would be easy to forget the baby is in the car if baby typically spends 12 hours a day, 5 days a week in a day care.
You're so right.
It seems that many people today have to find someone to blame for every single bad thing that happens when sometimes things are simply accidents, and sometimes tragic ones.
It was more than once that I would glance back and see empty car seats and go “oh my gosh - where are the girls?” And then in the next instance remember that they were with Mom!
And TWICE I went to the store, got all sorts of groceries, drove home, opened up the back end and NO GROCERIES!?! (I had left them at the store!) Having collicky twins and the lack of sleep was my excuse - and a dang good one. Their first year is a dull, blurred memory!
Tragedies and mistakes happen, when we think they could never happen to us, we are just fooling ourselves.
Exactly.
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