A Mom Lets Her Son Wait in the Car. An Onlooker Videotapes this “Crime”

Yes, the real risk is being ratted on by a complete stranger over exaggerated fears of imminent death to unwatched children. It’s been promoted by Homeland Security over the past 13 years. Snitch on your neighbor in case they might be terrorists, or bad parents. After all a Police State needs you to believe only they can protect you so your given the task to instill this indoctrination on your children. Criminalizing “bad” parenting choices thus becomes a way to ensure compliance to all the ridiculous rules at the checkpoints, lock downs, “shelter in place”, “free speech zones”, etc.

If I ever witnessed an adult skulking around videotaping a child like that I’d call the cops on THEM. Where are the laws against that? I think somehow we need to teach our kids to stand up for themselves against these busybodies trying to scare them all the time.

I so have a problem with the use of this phrase – “lapse of judgment” in these cases. As in, the parent in question just made a bad decision to leave the child in the car for 5 minutes because of her temporary lack of good judgment. The same as in the “kiddie porn” article from a few days ago. It’s a bad choice to take pictures of my kid in the tub? To leave them in the car while I pay for gas? When as Lenore says, the bigger risk is putting them IN the car in the first place?

I get that maybe the judge/police whoever are maybe looking for an out that will leave them not having to take the kids away from their parents and have to say *something* because of all the fuss but the truth is these parents did nothing wrong! Is our world so unsafe now that we cannot go outside alone? I should tell my kids “sorry, you can’t go to the park it is not safe in our world? Ridiculous. Fear and control. You’ve got it, Rick – back to the Cold War times – snitch on your friends and all will be well because you are being a good citizen.

I am absolutely sick with anger over this, and the part that bugs me the most is that some fool out there thinks he or she did a good deed by calling the cops.

Standing back and video-taping a perfectly happy child sitting in a car for a couple of minutes, and then turning said video over to the cops after the mom shows up and everyone drives away unharmed, is not being a Good Samaritan. It’s not protecting a child, or looking out for kids, or saving the day. It’s nothing but being a COWARDLY BUSYBODY. A busybody because you’re getting involved in a situation that’s none of your concern, where no one is actually in danger, and creating a problem where none exists. And cowardly because, if the child WAS in danger, you did NOTHING to actually help!! The biggest risk to a child left in a car is overheating, and if you think that is happening you need to act NOW. If a child is actually overheating in a car before your very eyes, break the window and get them out! Scream for help! Call 911 and tell them to send an ambulance right away!

Or, you know, you could traumatize a perfectly happy and safe child and parent by introducing the specter of family services, and potentially destroy their lives just so you can pat yourself on the back without having to actually get involved.

It’s interesting some of the issue is that there isn’t a law clearly defining when it’s an issue, leaving it up to judgement.

In SC, we had a legitimate problem with video poker, and parents leaving kids deliberately for extended periods (80s, early 90s). That’s a case when it makes sense, and we had announcements encouraging reporting. But, if I recall correctly, they mentioned paying was ok, and said 10-15 minutes.

I’d much prefer having a specific law that identified no line of sight, 15 minutes, and possibly an ambient temperature or maximum temperature inside the car (details TBD). It’s a protection against legal system abuse since it removes opinion and gives police a specific proof threshhold to meet.

This is completely insane. At this point, I think we can safely say we are suffering from mass hysteria over child safety, and our perceptions of what is and is not risky are delusional.

What we don’t seem to realize is that there is ALWAYS an inherent risk in any action we take. This week, my middle child has been attending an art camp that is at a gallery about 1/2 mile from my front door (maybe a bit less). It’s been hot and I’m 8 months pregnant, so I haven’t felt like walking over, and have been driving (which, is risky choice #1).

So, I have a few options: I can drive over with all three kids, and take them all in with me, hoping my 2yo won’t get away from me and run near the very busy street and somewhat dangerous intersection it’s located on. (Actually, the time I did do that, I left him outside to play with sidewalk chalk with the gallery owner’s 8yo daughter, while I brought my daughter inside and got her settled in, which I’m sure somebody out there would have felt was grounds for calling the police.) Or, I can drive over with all three kids, and leave my 10yo and 2yo in the car while I drop off my daughter, leaving them alone in a car on that dangerous, busy intersection. Or I could leave my 10yo at home with my 2yo and just run my 4yo over to her class, and hope that I don’t get reported for neglect.

I’ve actually done all three of these, depending on what seems like it will work best for everybody at the time. But the irony is that the one decision I most certainly would NOT get criticized for is the most dangerous one I made, which was deciding to drive the kids over rather than walking. But nobody would fault me for that, while I’m sure I could find a stranger willing to fault any of the other choices I made, to the point where they’d think calling the police was warranted.

This mother did not have a “lapse in judgment.” She made a judgement call, in a world where everything we do carries some degree of risk. I mean, sure, the child could have decided to open the door and run into the parking lot. However, if she had taken him into the store, he could have decided to bolt away from her and run out of the store into the parking lot. There are no 100% risk-free options in life, and we need to accept that, and recognize that rational risk-assessment can lead different people to make different choices, and that’s okay.

@Matthew, I agree. Vague laws are no good. I’ve been looking things up like laws about leaving a child in the car or leaving them home alone in my state, and they are very vague and open to interpretation.

For example, this is directly from the statute dealing with children being left alone in cars:

“(1) A person who is responsible for the care or welfare of a child shall not leave that child unattended in a vehicle for a period of time that poses an unreasonable risk of harm or injury to the child or under circumstances that pose an unreasonable risk of harm or injury to the child…

(3) As used in this section:

(a) ‘Child’ means an individual less than 6 years of age.

(b) ‘Physical harm’ and ‘serious physical harm’ mean those terms as defined in section 136b.

(c) ‘Unattended’ means alone or without the supervision of an individual 13 years of age or older who is not legally incapacitated.”

What on earth does that mean? What is “a period of time that poses an unreasonable risk of harm or injury to the child”? What are “circumstances that pose an unreasonable risk of harm or injury to the child”? What is an unreasonable versus a reasonable risk, especially in a society where we seem unable to tolerate the idea of ANY risk?

Given those terms, one person might feel that leaving a child in the car for 15 minutes on a 65 degree day while they pick up a few groceries is entirely within the bounds of the law, while another might feel that leaving a child in the car for 3 minutes on a 50 degree day while they run into the post office to mail a letter is illegal. I agree that I’d rather see them clearly define what they mean: How long can the child be in the car?, In what temperatures is leaving a child in the car allowable?, How far away can the parent be?, etc., so we’d at least have a clear legal standard to work from.

My state also has no laws regarding when a child can be left home alone. I wish they did. Personally, I’m comfortable leaving my 10yo home alone for a couple of hours at a time if I’m nearby (sometimes I take my little ones to play at a friends’ house a block or two away, and he doesn’t want to come) or for very short periods of time (under 20 minutes or so) with one of his younger siblings. But, I have no idea if that could get me in trouble or not. One thing we’re really having trouble deciding is what to do if I go into labor in the middle of the night with this baby. If it’s 3 in the morning, we’d really rather wake up the oldest, let him know what’s going on, and leave him in the house with his sleeping younger siblings, knowing that we have several neighbors who he call if he needed anything, and have my husband drop me off at the hospital, which is less than 5 minutes away from our house, and then come right back home (and then get the kids settled in with a babysitter in the morning and come back to join me). To me, that seems safer and more practical than getting three kids into a car in the middle of the night, but who knows?

This makes me wonder whether I avoided being arrested because I drove away (without “permission”) leaving the cop standing there, or because my kids were 6yo instead of 4 when this happened to me. I was hoping it was because the cop knew it wasn’t a crime.

We really need someone to go on network TV with a PSA. “Concerned about someone else’s kid? Be a good neighbor! Check it out, ask the mom if everything is OK, maybe lend a hand! But save 911 for real emergencies!”

Her lawyer said:
“Here’s how I look at it. I’m glad we live in a world where people are watching out for kids. I’m glad that when someone thinks they’re seeing something wrong take place, they get involved. But in your case, what happened wasn’t malicious. It wasn’t neglectful. It was a temporary lapse in judgment. This is what we need to stress.”

What’s up for negotiation is the “something wrong”.
A child playing happily in a car is not something wrong! How about putting the camera down and having an actual conversation with a member of your community. A good samaritan is someone who behaves in a helpful manner. It does not support the youth of our community by cowardly submitting videos to police of non-crimes.

I had an incident yesterday with my foster pup who dug a whole under my fence (and ate the wood fence too) and escaped just as the kids were biking off to school. I chased him down for almost 20 minutes but he’s crazy fast and was on a scent of either a rabbit or squirrel so I couldn’t catch him. I went home to get my other two dogs to help me track him down and when I came back to the field he was running in, two college students with leashes and dog treats were actively searching for my dog, trying to catch him. They saw him loose, went home to get supplies, and for 15 minutes they devoted their time to catch a loose dog. The one student was a dog trainer at a local pet store (where I will now shop). She gave me great advise on reinforcing fencing and I thanked them profusely for their kindness and time. This is what I call “watching out for each other”.

This was my fear a few weeks ago. I left my 15-month-old daughter in her car seat (she can’t get out yet) while I popped into the wine store to get a couple of bottles for a gather at my house. It was 41 F. I knew exactly what I wanted, so I went to the back, got it, and went to the register. I was parked directly in front of the glass doors by the register, so she was out of my sight for about 90 seconds.

While I was paying, another customer confronted me about how kids were being snatched out of cars “all the time like that.” A guy next to her told me she was just trying to help. I informed her that no, kids were not being snatched all the time like that. I’m not aware of any kids in my city snatched from a car in full view of their mothers.

Totally ruined my day. I spent the entire rest of the week worried I’d find a cop at my doorstep.

This article saddens and angers me. It’s another example of a prosecutor going for charges because they CAN, not because they SHOULD. Never mind that there is likely no real danger: They have taken their own idea of how things should be and in an abuse of discretion imposed that idea upon the original intent of the law, using any vagueness of the law to run a mack truck through people’s lives to add another notch to their prosecutorial gun.

Beware of prosecutors who campaign as being tough on crime: There is a good chance of getting nothing more than a straight-out bully in the office.

OK…so how do we get legislators, police departments, prosecutors, judges and CPS people–all bureaucrats in some fashion who find it easier to ‘just say no’ to any kind of ‘shade of gray’–in the same room that we are in, get the point across what this is doing, address their own agendas that often have nothing to do with children and everything to do with things unrelated to children (for example, power and control), and get long-term change that puts a stop to this madness?

All of us on this and other websites and discussion groups see it, but most of the ‘powers that be’ folks I list above seem to be in a thoughtless parallel universe where the mindless bureaucratic checklist rules and where even asking the questions about what this does to children, parents and society in the long term is at best discouraged and at worst condemned? Get that notch in the gun, get that scalp in the collection to trot out for the next election, and the collateral damage to lives and society be damned.

When I first came to Germany, I ran a recycling program on a US military base. There was a recycling center on the base that was very popular because of the convenience. People could drive into the center up to the particular bins that they needed. What does this have to do with leaving a child in a car? One day I got a call from a woman with a 2-month-old baby. She said that she wanted to use the recycling center because it was so convenient. But she was worried about leaving her baby in the car while doing her recycling. At the time Army regulations said that kids under 9 could not be left alone in a vehicle. I explained to the woman that she would not get in trouble. She could drive right up to the bin, walk about 10 steps to the bin, and recycle her items. She would be 10-15 feet away from her baby at the most and within sight and sound of him. I explained that a two-month-old could not unbuckle his car seat and crawl out of the car, so he was perfectly safe. It took a while to convince this woman that it was okay to leave her baby in the car while she did her recycling.

I think that paranoia about getting into trouble has led to the decline of common sense. If the woman was within 10 feet of her baby and could see him and get to him if he cried, it makes perfect sense for him to stay in the car. If she were on base and left the baby in the car while she was shopping in the PX for 20 minutes, that would have been another story.

On another note, in Europe it is perfectly acceptable for parents to leave their babies outside when they go into shops, restaurants, or even home. Many Mom and Pop shops are too small to accommodate prams, so the mothers leave their babies outside. The shops are small enough for the parents to be in visual and auditory contact with their babies. I have seen sleeping babies left outside of restaurants while the parents ate. The parents sat by the window, where they could keep an eye on the stroller/pram. When my landlady’s kids were babies, she would leave them outside napping in their prams. She would go for a walk and the babies would fall asleep. Instead of waking them up and dragging them into our apartment building, she left them sleeping outside in the fresh air.

There are not enough words in the English language for me to express my disgust and outrage at the “good Samaritan” who did this horrible thing to that mom! Does ANYONE think anymore? Do these busybodies realize that when they report someone like this, they are potentially RUINING A FAMILY’S AND A CHILD’S LIFE? What do they think will happen to the child if he/she is taken away from the “irresponsible” parent and placed into the foster care system? That things will be better for the kid? Do they ever think of the consequences their so called “good deed” will have on that child’s future if craziness prevails and the parent is arrested, prosecuted and deemed an “unfit parent?” I have a pretty big vocabulary, and I don’t even have enough words to describe the level of outrage I’m feeling right now!

We live in a society that makes us paranoid to even go outside with our kids, lest we be judged by total strangers. When my son was small (he’s nearly 16 now), I actually had to think about where I would get gasoline if he was with me because I was so afraid that someone would “report” me if I left him in the car for ten seconds when I had to go to the window and pay for the gas! (Back then, pay at the pump wasn’t as ubiquitous as it is now. But even then, I shouldn’t have HAD to think about that, especially if the car was within my sight while I went to pay!) I was so paranoid about OTHER people that I actually went to full-service gas stations so that I wouldn’t have to make that “choice.”

Keep fighting the good fight, Lenore — this is an outrage!!

I really appreciate the presentation of Ms. Skenazy’s explanation of risk in the article. There is *always* risk in everything we do, including when we’re sedentary and doing nothing. We need policies that consider relative risk and some realistic cost-benefit analyses, rather than knee-jerk, strict rules. The number of kids left in cars and killed by heatstroke, 44 in 2013, barely registers against all the other causes, including motor vehicles (~6,700), drowning (~1,000), and poisoning (~1,000). In the U.S. there are about 40 million kids under age 10, meaning about 1 in 1 million will die each year from heat stroke in cars. That’s enough to care about, but there’s also room for common sense in policies and focusing on the bigger dangers. I think we can all agree it’s bad to leave kids or dogs in hot cars, but that doesn’t require a blanket prohibition for any temperature or any length of time.

One winter a couple of years ago I left my six-year-old in the car while I ran a 5-minute errand in a store. It was 35 F degrees outside, and the inside of the car never got below 65 degrees. My daughter was wearing her coat while waiting in the car. You can probably guess what happened. Another parent witnesses this and freaks out, scolding me when I got back to the car. I tried to explain to no avail that: 1) My daughter was safe and warm; 2) She was fully capable of walking into the store on her own if she somehow got cold; and 3) She walks to school on her own (gasp) in weather much worse than that all winter long. This woman was seconds away from calling the cops, and it’s quite possible that I would have been submitted to all the same hassles as the mother in this article.

Infuriating, to say the least, and common sense is nowhere to be seen. I saw it all the time this winter. It was a brutally cold winter here, and the wind chills when I was dropping my son off at daycare were -30F on multiple days. Icy, snowy roads. And yet people would haul their infants out of the car, into the freezing cold, and walk across icy ground while carrying the heavy seat, rather than leave a sleeping baby in a warm car for the 2 minutes that it took to sign the older sibling in. How does that make any sense at all?? I routinely leave my kids in the car to run errands. And I see others in my small rural area do the same, so hopefully I won’t see the cops at my door any time soon.

Neil says,

“Not to get overly political, but I cannot help but feel there’s something quite privileged about concern over these kinds of things.”

Yes, but not in the politically correct meaning of the term. Rather, it’s something people do when they feel that they can look down their noses at you, for whatever reason. They’re better than you, they would NEVER do that to THEIR children. And methinks these do-gooders are indeed people whose lives have never included any real risks, so they have absolutely no experience at judging risk. Therefore anything they have not personally experienced constitutes “risk” — no matter how benign it really is.

I suppose that parenting the way I want to will require a string of civil disobediences on my part, in order to let my son live free. Let him sit in the car for three minutes while I run into a store, let him ride a bike without a helmet, let him play around the neighborhood without supervision, let him walk to school by himself.

Thank you, Lenore, for helping to remind us of the true risks to our children. And illuminating the irrational fears.

I’ve said this once, no, I’ve said this a thousand times here and I’ll probably say it at least a thousand more times. In the United States when it comes to children, the constitution doesn’t seem to apply. I am not a parent but I really feel sorry for those parents here trying to raise healthy and independent children. We are becoming, or already have become, a police state when it comes to raising children.

Now you can debate a parent’s judgment to leave their 4-year-old child unattended within a parked car for a very short time on a 50 degree day with doors locked, until the cows come home. Naturally your helicopter crowd will have decenting opinions to that BUT criminalizing parents who make mildly “bad” judgments when raising their children is tantamount to a totalitarian culture. Now when an enraged parent holds a hot clothing iron to their child’s face in a fit of anger, THAT is when authorities should be called. When an irresponsible parent is snorting cocaine in front of their young children AND encouraging them to do it, THAT is when authorities should be called. Running off somewhere for a week and leaving your 5-year-old children home alone, THAT is when authorities should be called. I could go on and on. But leaving a 4-year-old alone in a parked car on a mildly cool day for a very short time while you run into the store or gas station to pay, is nothing close to being flagrant.

The problem is, the term “child abuse” here in America has greatly expanded within the past 30 years. It seems as if EVERYTHING nowadays in America is considered child abuse. If you make your 10-year-old son or daughter bundle up on a subfreezing day and walk 5 blockes to school instead of giving them a ride, somebody will call cps on you. So momentarily leaving a 4-year-old child unattended in a locked car on a cool day is put into the same category as plastering a red hot clothing iron to his face. There doesn’t seem to be any perspective when it comes to children here in the U.S. because EVERYTHING is considered “child abuse”.

Unfortunately I just don’t see this changing anytime soon because these politicians run on the platform of “protecting the kids” and then more crazy laws are passed without any regard to the collateral damage they cause. But since children are such an emotional issue for us Americans, it’s a great way for a candidate to round up some cheap votes.

@Rick: “Shelter in place” is not security theater; it’s common sense. If you live in a place that is prone to natural disasters that may knock out power and/or water or close the roads, and your house is not directly in the danger zone, be prepared to shelter in place now because you won’t be able to go get stuff then. My local government has been producing shelter-in-place pamphlets since the ’70s (earthquakes, tsunamis, blizzards, landslides, ammonia leaks from the fish processing plants that line the waterfront).

This issue makes me sad and angry. I don’t fear child predators, but I do fear my own neighbors, at least in this regard. I hate that I’m reluctant to help build my community because I never know what busybody asshat is going to get overly involved.

A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he surreptitiously videotaped him from a distance, and sent the recording to the Roman police, who arrested the man for indecent exposure.

That’s how the parable of the Good Samaritan went, right?

I think we should get the personal info of the next busybody we meet, and if s/he has kids, file a police report the next time they do something statistically more dangerous than leaving a kid in a not-hot car for a few minutes. Such as:

– drive their kids anywhere
– take them swimming
– go to sleep or take a shower with their kids at home

But wait – that would probably get ME arrested, wouldn’t it?

How do we get some consistency in the results of frivolous reports?

I just did a little internet research to update my knowledge about kids dying in cars from heatstroke.

One thing I had not noticed before was that many of these deaths are caused by safety considerations and fears!

– A young child wanders away and climbs into the car to play, then either falls asleep or can’t figure out how to get out. The family’s first thought is abduction/murder, so they round up a search party that searches for hours, everywhere except inside the family’s car. By then the child is dead.

Also in the cases of little kids crawling into cars, child safety locks are probably an issue – the kids cannot open the doors to let themselves out.

– The number of deaths increased very dramatically from the days when there were no airbags. Why? Before, people let young kids sit in the front seat of the car, where they would not forget them.

– The oldest kid who died in 2013 was 14yo! How could that happen? Well, she had decided to sit in the car waiting for school to start, and her brother went off with the car keys. The car could not be unlocked from the inside without the car keys. She was stuck there throughout the school day and she died.

Some other info that might be interesting:

Only 18% of the kids who died in cars were intentionally left there. 81% were either forgotten or they wandered into the car and found themselves locked in.

Of course the vast majority of the kids were under 2yo.

In 2013, the *lowest* outside temperature associated with a child’s death was 76 degrees.

In every case where the family could estimate the time in the car, it was no less than an hour, usually several hours or even days. There is no case of a child dying of heatstroke in a car in a matter of minutes.

The studies say (on a summer day) the temp rises less than 10 degrees in 5 minutes, less than 20 degrees in 10 minutes. Unless the car was very hot to begin with, this is not enough to kill a child.

The facts indicate that when a parent intentionally chooses to leave a child in a not-hot car for a short time period (10 minutes or less), the child is NOT in any danger of heatstroke.

The site containing all this info urges people to call 911 if they see a child in a HOT car. Not any car.

The site also says that if you are looking for a child, look first in the pool and second in the car. Unfortunately people seem to think of the car last, if at all. 🙁

@Jen, that’s the problem: people are so judgmental, parents always have to make trade-offs.

I’m glad I’m relatively anonymous, because otherwise I would fear somebody would call the police on me. But, just an hour or so ago, I left my 2yo napping on the couch with my 10yo (who was playing video games next to him) while I was out. I was going to wake the youngest, who had just fallen asleep, but my oldest insisted that he would be fine and wanted to stay home with his brother. I did the risk assessment: it was highly unlikely anything bad would happen if they were home, especially since my son knows that there are adults home he can go to if he needs help two houses away in two directions (and if we count neighbors he knows he could run to if there was an emergency in a one-block radius, it’s more like half a dozen). If I woke up the little one and took him, I’d have to carry him around because of the mood he’d be in (and I’m 8-1/2 months pregnant so that is not fun and sometimes quite painful) plus it’s raining, so I’d be waking him up to drag him out in the rain. I decided to let my oldest stay home with his brother. I first had to pick my daughter and a friend up from art camp and bring them home. It was about a 10 or 15 minute trip. I stopped home to see if the kids were okay, and they were. My oldest said his brother was still fast asleep and he didn’t want to come out, so I left them home for another 15 minutes or so while I picked up their dad from work (I did take my daughter with me, because I didn’t feel comfortable leaving my son with an awake younger sibling, since I was going to be about 1-1/2 miles away and she can be difficult). We got home, and everything was fine: my oldest had a great time (he’d just played video games and sent me a few e-mails to tell me things were going well) and my youngest slept the entire time and just woke up about five minutes ago.

I hate that what I think was a reasonable parenting choice that I’m entitled as a mother to make, knowing the maturity level of my children and having more concern for their well-being than any stranger would, is something that a stranger would feel was grounds for calling the police. I also hate that our legal system seems to refuse to distinguish between truly negligent behavior and behavior that is perhaps a little outside the norm but still safe. I want to be trusted as a parent to make decisions, and I think the presumption should be that most parents can make reasonable choices for their own kids. I would not leave my oldest home to babysit his younger siblings while my husband and I took in a leisurely dinner in the suburbs. However, I think he’s perfectly capable of staying home with a sibling who, by all historical precedent, would remain fast asleep for another 90 minutes at least while neighbors he could go to for help were home and I was running errands in a 1-1/2 mile radius (and not leaving him unattended for more than 15 minutes at a time). It’s the line of thinking that goes from leaving an older child and napping toddler in a safe setting for a short period of time straight to leaving the kids to make dinner and care for themselves overnight while mom parties at the casino until 5 a.m.–and assumes we have to criminalize the former because otherwise mothers everywhere will start doing the latter–that bothers me.

And I should add that this is another issue my state has no clear law on, so it’s not like there’s any clear legal guidance for what is or is not allowed.

Just to add, I think we should all operate with the default assumption that, when it comes to kids who are not our own, their parents care more about them and their well-being than we do. So, whatever level of concern we may have for a child’s safety, the parent in nearly all cases has a higher level of concern. Therefore, if we see a child in a situation that isn’t like immediately, clearly dangerous, we should assume that their parents did a more careful risk assessment than we did and leave the situation alone.

This idea that we, as passing strangers, somehow care more for a child’s well-being than the child’s parents do is insane, as well as ridiculously self-righteous. Which is why we should limit our involvement to situations in which a child is clearly in imminent danger, not to situations that seem a bit questionable to us. And, even in those imminently dangerous situations (like a child in a car on a 100 degree day who is showing signs of dehydration or illness), we should want to help a loving parent who may have made a mistake or forgotten their child was in the car or misjudged how long an errand would take, rather than want to punish somebody we decide must be a terrible human being deserving of the harshest punishment.

This makes so livid. We have GOT to start fighting back against these awful, subversive, and nasty people (who are NOT “Good Samaritans”. I’m thinking a Freedom of Information request to identify the busybody (THEY are the one with a “lapse of judgement”), then a civil suit (since criminal probably doesn’t apply, though it’s akin to stalking, if you ask me). The madness has to stop somewhere.

Busybodies are a big problem in this age of Gesta.. uhh, Fatherlan.. Uh, Homeland security initiative to get mindlessly programmed drones to inform on each other to “If you see something, Say something”. It would be easy to call for a busybody laws to fine and jail people for behavior that ruins lives, wastes huge amounts of resources and makes the emotionally warped Busybody feel good about themselves. But in this age of increasing bureaucracy and growing numbers of horribly abused and misapplied new laws, yet another of these laws is something we don’t really need. Instead we have the ability to act to change this situation ourselves rather than waiting for the Govt to fix it for us.

If you see a busybody, videotaping or wanting to call the police to report any non issue, don’t only do your best to stop them, but SHAME them. Draw public attention to what they are doing. I guarantee these emotionally damaged people will not like that kind of attention. Shame against stunted people can be a powerful tool.

It will work after the fact too when they relate to you their prideful story about how they “Saved” someone from disaster through their heroism. Roundly and loudly criticize them, especially if there is a group of you. Send them weeping to a therapist who might be able to help them get to the root of their emotional neediness and victim mentality. The true root of the problem. I find it handy these days to have a stack of business cards for therapists who are looking for new clients, and hand them out to such people once you have them triggered.

Oh, and I wanted to say that this quote is so true and so disheartening. I’m tired of competing already and my twins are only a year old!

“This is America and parenting is now a competitive sport, just like everything else.”

@Renee Anne: I remember when a police department somewhere in the U.S. issued a bulletin telling people to take their kids and babies out of the car every time they filled it up, because a carjacker might decide to steal a car while the pump was running, notice kids in the back seat, and instantly change focus from “part this out and take the money” to “what ho, murder awaits, how smashing!” It was reported here and soundly thrashed. Are you telling me that it’s conventional wisdom where you are that you have to take your kids out with the fumes and the gas drips and the cars rolling by in order to keep them “safer?” If you don’t mind, where are you?

This story is my daughters story. 2 sleeping kids in the car returning home from a full day, 9pm, 50 degrees outside, needed milk for the next day-the people from CP said a “good Samaritan ” called police – lawyer, court, fine, community service, CP visits (to my 4 year old granddaughter: “does your mom/dad ever hit or spank you?” 4 year old crying: ” no “). I’ve read of parents having CP called because their children are overweight and never exercise and the next one being turned in because they let there child run around and play. You can’t win. As a grandma my grandchildren are my world but I believe this mom and my daughter did nothing criminally wrong. My fond memories of my childhood are of getting on a bike in the morning during the summer (often with a swimsuit in my backpack) and my Mom saying “see ya by supper” – no cell phone – and when I got home if she wasn’t there – no worries – the house was never locked!

“I just did a little internet research to update my knowledge about kids dying in cars from heatstroke. One thing I had not noticed before was that many of these deaths are caused by safety considerations and fears!”

Here’s what I remember as a kid: my mom left us in the car nearly EVERY time we went on an errand run, and it wasn’t just a couple of minutes, sometimes it was easily 20. And if it was summer, THE WINDOWS WERE ALL ROLLED DOWN.

Can we talk about how UNSAFE it is to leave kids in a car that is running to keep the A/C going? You don’t want to leave a kid in a running car. That’s WAY MORE DANGEROUS than leaving a kid in a car WITH THE WINDOWS ROLLED DOWN.

Why don’t we leave them with the windows rolled down? Because we think they’re going to climb out the windows? Well, then, they can’t be left in the car alone if they’re a risk for that anyway. Is it because it’s too cold outside? Well leave the windows up then. Is it because we think that locking them in the car with the windows rolled up WILL PREVENT ABDUCTION?

Good Lord, it’s far more dangerous to leave kids in locked cars than it is to leave them in cars with the windows rolled down. Every time we go through these stories, I think of my childhood, sitting in the car WITH THE WINDOWS ROLLED DOWN. DOWN. DOWN.

I know this mom didn’t need to have the windows down because the temp was chilly anyway. But I’m throwing this out there. Doesn’t anyone want to acknowledge that the hysterical “safety” precaution of locking kids into RUNNING CARS is a bit bizarre? Why don’t we roll the windows down anymore?

Hey Lenore. Kim quotes you as saying that about 300 children are injured in traffic accidents every day, and that driving someplace with her child was more dangerous to him than leaving him in the car unattended (or anything else she did to him that day). Does anyone have well-documented statistics on that comparison?

I would love to be able to say, “Which is more likely to harm a child: Leaving them unattended in a parked car, or driving them around for the same length of time? Answer: Driving them around, by a factor of _____.”

The “same length of time” is because otherwise people can say, “Abductions don’t happen as often as car crashes because other parents are smarter than you — they don’t leave their kids in the car!”

(I realize there aren’t any precise numbers on how much time kids spend unattended in cars, but surely an expert could make a reasonable estimate?)

Here are some very rough guesses:

Average number of children harmed in the US per year
…As a passenger in a car, while it’s being driven: 100,000
…Unattended in a parked car: 100

Average number of minutes children spend in a car per day in the US
…As a passenger in a car, while it’s being driven: 40
…Unattended in a parked car: 1

If 1000 times as many children are harmed while being driven around, despite only spending 40 times as much time that way, that means that being driven around is 25 times more likely to result in harm to a child (on average, per minute) than being left unattended in a car.

Again, the numbers above are very rough guesses.

Thanks.

I understand the mentality of the busybodies who call 911 when they see a child alone in a car. I don’t agree with them, but I understand that they are probably really just concerned citizens who have bought the hype that children should never be left alone in a car.

I absolutely don’t understand the mentality of this bystander. S/he clearly didn’t believe that the child was in any danger as s/he recorded the child before ever calling the police. It was clearly a malicious attempt to get someone else in trouble for no reason. No better than a 4 year old tattle tale. Don’t we generally outgrow that behavior during childhood?

What’s the “good samaritan’s” name? Why does the whistle-blower always get to be anonymous. If they’re so set in their convictions, why don’t they go on the public record?

An interesting thought just occurred to me – the people who are so concerned with kids being left alone are usually the ones who think “anything can happen” and that the world is full of kidnappers and pedophiles. Well, as a mom I have to say that someone videotaping my child on their personal cell phone would raise more red flags that that person is a giant creep, and possible pedophile than seeing a kid playing on his iPad in the car.

@Laura, the issue of what happens to people once the are caught up in the legal system is a separate but really important issue. So often prosecutors will threaten excessive and overblown charges if the accused dares to go to trial, but much less serious charges if they’ll plead guilty. Sometimes it’s the difference between risking years in prison or being guaranteed just a few years probation (not to mention the expense of what could end up being years of court battles if you go to trial). It’s hard to think of many situations where a loving, responsible parent *wouldn’t* just give in and take the plea so they could at least keep their family intact. But the fact that it’s okay for people to be bullied into plea deals this way is a serious problem with our legal system.

It always bothers me that the response to going to court for these things is to call it a “lapse in judgement” and that moms like this author convince themselves that the really did have a “lapse in judgement.” No, they didn’t their judgement was just fine. The problem is the training of our society to freak out and presume kid-in-car=death-in-5-minutes.

I nearly called a mom in once. It was a sunny warmish day and I spotted two kids in car seats/booster seats sleeping in the back of a minivan with tinted windows. It was at the way back of the lot of a Target, where I did a lot of 2hr shopping trips. I tapped gently on the window and the kids didn’t wake up. I realized I had no way to tell if they were just sleeping heavy, or passed out from heat stroke. So I worried and paced, and then I thought about their mom. She pulls in with heavy sleeping kids and she maybe just needs one thing (like I did that day). So she would have to disturb them, deal with two tantrums, wrestle them out, take two tantruming kids across a busy parking lot… or just run in and out real quick. I figured I would be out in 5 minutes myself so I promised I would call 911 if the kids were still there when I got back. I figured even if they passed out from heat they could survive 5 minutes. When I got back, they were gone. There were no cops, and there was no report of dead or hospitalized kids on the news the next day.

At the time I felt like the kids had a close call… now I realize the mom had a close call. That she took fine care of her kids and her business. But had I made that call it probably wouldn’t have been handled by someone with knowledge of what conditions are or aren’t dangerous. They wouldn’t have advised me on what I wanted to know (if I should break a window or not). Nor would it have resulted in a cop opening the door with a slim jim, making sure the kids were okay, and giving mom or dad a warning/education on the topic. No, most likely it would have traumatized mom and kids, made a harried mom have to do yet more to satisfy CPS. And for what, for something I did many time at the age of the younger and no doubt hundreds or maybe a thousand times by the age of the older girl. I can still see that girl’s sleepy little face, and I’m so glad I didn’t shatter her rest or get her mom in trouble.

@Ben,
Legally speaking you can video/photograph anyone you want in public without consent. Now of course if you are male it might upset someone and you might have to talk to the police who might say you are causing a public disturbance.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the past few days, and the thing that upsets me the most is the bystander… the “good samaritan.” I keep wondering a) how would I have acted if in that person’s shoes, and b) how I would have wanted them to act/reacted to them if I were the mother. Am I wrong – wouldn’t it have been so much nicer for that person to just wait? Either wait and satisfy themselves that the parent had returned and the child was okay? Or wait and confront the parent? Even the latter, while perhaps on one level obnoxious, would have been so much more human/brave/compassionate. Because acting how they did seems to me to indicate that they really didn’t care about the child’s well-being, but only about “sticking it” to the parent.

The other thing this story reinforces to me is that our current way of life is really not set up to be accommodating in any way to parents of small children. I’ve noticed this dozens of times already with my small child – never have I been more grateful for drive-thrus. I order online whenever I can, just to avoid the multiple in-and-out of car errands that would be necessary otherwise. If any local grocery stores delivered, I would totally take them up on it. And guess what? That’s not a novel concept. My father’s family ran a grocery store in the 1940s-1950s and his first job was local grocery delivery for it. Bring back the milk man, I say. The fact that in America, at least, we depend so much on cars and things are at such a distance, make this a real problem. My husband grew up in a small town in the 1960s. His mother didn’t even drive. Assuming she took him with her when she ran errands, it’s a lot easier to wheel a sleeping/occupied child from store to store in a stroller, for example. Our car culture just doesn’t give the modern parent a lot of options. And if you drag the sleeping child out of the car, resulting in a tantrum or crying fit, you’re judged for not “disciplining” your child properly. Like many of the posters here, growing up in the late 1970s/early 1980s, my parents left us in the car ALL the time. As a matter of fact, I can remember my sisters and I messing with things like the wipers and radio controls so that the car would flip out when my parents returned…

Use public records and call logs find the busy body and place a $10,000.00 lien on them. See how they like loosing money and time.