Elizabeth Vargas, 20/20, Me, and Kids-in-Cars Hysteria

Reading any comment section on this topic is unreal.

They are fanatics and extremists. These people that go on and on about NO NEVER………..are one step away from being suicide bombers.

I have directed them to check the FBI stats on crime, and they come back basically calling the FBI liars to make themselves look good.

And if I read one more person bring up Adam Walsh again, Im gonna puke.

So what that last woman is saying is: it’s OK if children die in wrecks or are run over, as long as they’re being adult-supervised at the time.

Some very funny comments on the video here:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/hot-debate-leave-child-car/story?id=24869147

Lenore — thanks for sharing that. It’s wonderful to see this presented in this manner and thanks to Kim Brooks for being brave in the face of all this.

I did have to laugh…in the footage they used, they show a car driving in a parking lot. Both the car on camera and the car from which it was shot, were going the WRONG way down a lot with angled parking spaces. Something that surely contributes to parking lot mishaps, lol.

Dirk WHO CARES what the society’s convention is now? I am the parent, not society, it is MY child and MY decision alone how to parent MY child. Any ideology or laws that disagree with this should be destroyed, and disobeyed in the meantime.

“Society” didn’t create my child, they don’t cloth my child, they don’t discipline my child, they’re not the ones cleaning the mess when my child throws up all over the seat, they’re not the ones responsible for getting them to school, they’re not the ones toiling at a job to pay for their daycare and Barney hug-a-bears or whatever. I am. The minute they start doing all of that, then and only then will I give two turds what they think. They can otherwise accept my invitation to climb inside a supersized barbecue grill and turn on the gas just before they flick their cigarette lighters.

LRH

@Dirk
“You have to know that this is the social convention by now. Even if you disagree with it. Under no circumstance does our society allow this now”

Implication: we cannot trust any person or institution in any respect to any degree.

Possible exception: people you’ve known personally your entire life.

@Dirk — huh?

Kim Brooks should have taken her child out of the car, if she didn’t know that someone might call the cops (even if to do is itself stupid) then I really have to think she can’t make the call when it actually matters because point 1 and point 2…

How can someone predict a “stupid” (to quote you) and never experienced before reaction to something that was not unsafe to begin with. So you are saying her ability to “make the call” on a parenting decision is compromised because she didn’t anticipate someone else’s paranoia and rush to judgement?

That’s some warped logic…because it can be applied to ANY situation where your kids are unsupervised. Do I let my kids go…this far…for this long…or do I need to figure in that some “stupid” reaction is going to involve the police.

The person in that story that came off in the worst light was the women with Vargas advocating for kids/car (or whatever the org was)…when Vargas pointed out it wasn’t in the top 10 risks for kids, she had no comeback.

I have to say Lenore, that this is the best video of you I have seen yet. So often the newscaster comes along as confrontational and when that happens you tend to get excited and over emphasize which turns off some viewers. This was extremely well-done and your execution of the data was professional and reasonable. BRAVO

Dirk – So “social convention” should dictate how we raise our children and we should make no attempt to change “social convention” and should just go with the flow against our own desires and belief of what is right? We should all just be okay to abdicate our role as parents to “societal convention?”

Where do you draw the line? Being religious is far more social convention than being an atheist. Do I have to pick a church to take my child to every weekend? How about homeschooling? Although becoming more common, it is still against social convention. Should it be illegal? Spanking? What decisions do I get to make about my child’s life and what decisions does society get to make about my child’s life?

@Donna
@Warren
“Social convention” is a cop-out anyway. There are specific, identifiable people doing these things, or advocating them. They have names and addresses (including email). But even Kim Brooks, writing for herself, didn’t name her accuser. These people should be publicly named and made known. They should find out that not everyone is on their side.

@Dirk – “You have to know that this is the social convention by now. Even if you disagree with it. Under no circumstance does our society allow this now”.

Isn’t this exactly the same sort of reasoning that kept women in restrictive garments, kept them deprived of educational opportunities, blamed women when they were sexually assaulted, etc? “Social convention” said slavery was ok. “Social convention” said child labor in factories was ok. Social convention can kiss my ***.

@ChicagoDad

I took your advice and read the comments, or as many as I could before I my brain started to hemmorage.

These people are INSANE! “Never leave your kid in a car ever for any reason.” Seriously? “There is no such thing as a good neighborhood.” Are you kidding me?

According to these people if I but my baby in the car seat in my tuck in my driveway, and then run back into my house for the diaper bag or blanket, I don’t love my kid, don’t deserve to be a dad, and should go to jail.

There are plenty of times that it’s totally reasonable, e.g, change baby on tailgate, put baby in car seat, walk 100 feet to trash can by store entrance to throw away diaper, walk back to car, drive away.

We need to take a “no harm – no foul” policy for stuff like this. Ok, after 20 min in a hot car, if mom is still not back and the kids are getting distressed, I call that harm. But “not ever” is just too extreme.

Seriously, the case of the mom interviewed scares me more than the phantom molester issue. I’m not worried that if I walk away from my truck with my baby in it, he’ll be snatched by goblins made into a soup, I mean a pedophile and disappear. I am worried that if I walk away from my truck with my baby in it that I’ll get the cops called on me.

Excellent piece, well done, Ms. Skenazy! I agree that the part about being accused of being not fearful enough was right on and beautifully stated.

My own child-in-car scary story:

Last month one day I parked in front of the liquor store in a strip mall, and I was directly in front of the door, which is right next to the check-out counter. My six-year-old, who knows how to unbuckle the seat belt and get out of the car, wanted to wait for me in the car. It was about 70 degrees out. So I opened the windows and told my daughter, “if I don’t come back right away and it’s getting too hot in the car, get out and wait over there in the shade.” She said okay.

I proceeded into the liquor store and spent about 8-10 minutes on my selection and transaction. Just as the cashier was handing me my change, she turned a bit, saw my car, and said: “Is that a child in the car?” I assumed I was in for a lecture and replied “Yes but the windows are open and she knows how to get out.” As I said this, the cashier reached under the counter, pulled out a big bowl of lollipops, and handed me one for my daughter.

I was shocked and relieved and said “I thought you were about to call CPS on me for leaving her in the car alone!” She just laughed.

It turned out to be a nice, friendly moment with a stranger, but really, it could have gone the other way for me. I’m grateful the liquor store hired someone sensible!

“What decisions do I get to make about my child’s life and what decisions does society get to make about my child’s life?”

Don’t forget about eating and exercise. Social convention says fruits, vegetables, and healthy food choices are best for growing children. So if you feed your kids junk food, candy, and processed foods and let them play video games instead of riding bikes, do you invite others to react negatively to every morsel of food you put into your children’s mouths? After all, you could be contributing to the obesity of a minor. Flip out the smart phone in line at Mickey D’s and start reporting those bad parents to the authorities.

If we take every minor parenting judgement call to the extreme, we are ALL doing it wrong. The kids in car craze is parenting extremism and takes away all reason and community. If you are truly concerned for a child, wait for the parent to return to the car. Calling the police and unleashing legal hell on innocent families shows you have NO concern for that child. Put the phone down and interact with people in your community.

The true danger of the “never leave a child alone” in a car or anywhere is that we are conditioning children to never feel safe, anywhere, by themselves. Creating irrational fears and anxiety in children for no reason should be the crime.

What is with the desperate need to leave your child in the car?When is this soooo necessary that you simply must do it?

How long would you leave your 6 year old child at your house alone? How about a 10 week old baby? I don’t mean in another room or the backyard. I mean you put the kid in their bed or crib leave the house and walk away. How long and far can you go before you have to return. This is an honest question.

Maybe it should be illegal for single moms to drag their trash cans to and from the curb, too. I mean, anything could happen. You never know.

SKL…

My point exactly. You make my point! You say that you go for short walks? “I have gone for short walks (in sight of my house) while my young kids / babies slept”…You are not going into a store and not coming out for an hour. When you are going for a short walk that is always in site of the house you can intervene if you see busybody walk up to the house or the cops. If you go into the store and can not see your kid in the car then you can’t intervene when you need to. And don’t say you shouldn’t need to intervene because the entire reason you stay within sight of the house on these “short walks” you speak of so that you can indeed intervene if need be. Otherwise you would go farther.

So when your baby is asleep in it’s crib…how far and how long can you go? According to you you have to remain within sight of the house but not within sight of your car? Why?

Dirk,

Who said it was OK to leave a kid in a car for an hour? Where did you get that number from?

In many ways, a kid in a car is safer than a kid in a crib. Most kids can climb out of a crib if they try, starting before age 1. They can bang their head or break a limb in the process, or they can spend the next hour crawling around the house tasting the electrical outlets while Mom sleeps. Or decide to try to cook something or give themselves a bath or go pet the skunks or swim in the neighbors’ pool. In a car, assuming car seat laws are followed, a tot is unlikely to be able to get out. The only real danger is if it gets hot etc., which is not an issue if you leave your kid in a temperate car for 5 minutes.

The reason I didn’t walk farther away from my house was not because I was afraid my kid would climb onto the roof and play birdie and jump off. I would not have been able to hear or see whatever my kid was doing if she woke up and got creative. It was irrational, really, the concern that someone would come along and realize nobody was home. Just because I did something based on an irrational feeling does not mean it has any bearing on what the law should be.

Dirk’s comments remind me of an old internet argument about a lady who lived behind the public swimming pool. She had a bunch of kids and she would put the baby down for a nap, then take the other kids swimming, with the baby monitor in hand so she would hear if baby woke up. Most moms were horrified. She and all of her kids should have stayed home if the baby was napping.

Dirk, do you have children?

I read the comments in the link ChicagoDad posted and some of them were so funny, I was literally crying I was laughing so hard. In particular, the comments posted by Cat, Bufflew, Catherine Mustico and Casey were hilarious! They really made their points well, in the most fascetious manner possible. Of course, there were the usual ridiculous “the sky is falling” posters too but it is definitely worth a read.

Dirk – You basically did nothing but ask people about leaving children in houses and then comment that it was different because it was a house.

And, I rarely drink anything other than water. That was your assumption (and one I assumed that someone like you would make). The bar was Samoan fale (building with a roof, but no walls) with an amazing view of the sunset and a cool breeze. We were friends with the owners and it was a delightful place to socialize, with or without an alcoholic beverage. My kid could choose to come and swim in the ocean or play with the owner’s kids if they were about, or stay home or wander back-and-forth at will.

“Do you really think it was awesome to leave a 3 year old to go buy yourself medicine in the middle of the night?”

Was it something I would do every day? Nope. Do I think it was dangerous? Nope. Do I know my child enough to know that there was no way that she was waking up while I was gone? Yep. Do I regret it? Not in the least. Do I second guess my decision? Not in the least. Would I have done it again? Yep, but the need never arose until she was older.

“Which was arrange the situation so that you could probably intervene if something did require it.”

How exactly was I going to intervene while I was two blocks away walking the dog? How exactly was I going to intervene when I was down 3 flights of stairs and across a parking lot getting my mail? How exactly was I going to intervene when I was down 3 flights of stairs even as close as my car?

“(I assume your baby sleeps in a crib)”

Not until she was over a year old. Nor would she have been “sleeping in a crib” when she was awake and I went to get the mail or load the car. But, how exactly is being confined in a crib while I walk to a mailbox in an apartment complex and being confined in a car seat while I walk into the post office to drop off a letter inherently different?

Further, how is containing my child in an apartment while I went to a neighbor’s apartment completely out of view of my own apartment somehow different than containing my child in a car while I go into a store (something I also did frequently at age 6 — or as frequently as she would allow since the store was air conditioned and the car wasn’t)? I guarantee you that I was gone to the friend’s house for much longer than it takes to grab some head phones.

E. Kim Brooks action was stupid because if every single person knows that you aren’t “supposed” to leave your kids in the car. I am not saying it is correct or that there is any high percentage danger in it for the child. I am saying you have to be figuratively stupid to think that people aren’t going to be all “what is wrong with you?”

Reziac, naw…try this out for size…

A Fishers woman was charged Thursday with felony child neglect after police found her 16-month-old daughter left alone in a hot SUV last week.

Meg Trueblood, 30, is accused of leaving her daughter for at least an hour while she went shopping Saturday afternoon.
According to the probable cause affidavit, Fishers Police were called to the scene outside Simply Chic on East 96th Street at around 3:30 pm after someone noticed the child inside the SUV.

The responding officer went inside the store and asked if anyone there owned the SUV, but he could not locate the owner. He went back outside, smashed the window and took the girl out of the SUV and into the store.

Police say the temperature inside the SUV was 124 degrees, and the temperature outside was 102, with a heat index of 107.

The little girl was limp and unresponsive, and began to go into seizures as the officer and store employees tried to cool her down. During that time, Trueblood identified herself as the girl’s mother.

A store employee told the officer that Trueblood had been in the store for around an hour. The employee said she was helping Trueblood find a dress because Trueblood told her she was meeting a man later that night.

http://www.wthr.com/story/19012040/fishers-woman-charged-after-leaving-baby-in-hot-car

I am not saying this is what happens less than a fraction of the time a kid is left in a car, I am saying it happens at least a bit less because people don’t put up with it.

To Donna @ Tue Aug 12th 2014 at 4:31 pm

No, I commented that it was no different than a house and that is why you need to think about it.

Samoan fale–great you make it sound like your kid would be playing in a neighborhood and able to find you. A 6 year old should be able to do that.

“Do you really think it was awesome to leave a 3 year old to go buy yourself medicine in the middle of the night?” You may have “known” that your 3 year kid wouldn’t wake up and feel abandoned. And bully for you. I don’t think anything would have happened to the kid. I do think it was simply a mean thing to do. I don’t think there is a one size fits all for morality. I do think that it wasn’t something parent should do to a 3 year old. I mean that isn’t free range, that isn’t about giving the child responsibility. That is just you thinking it doesn’t matter, which it probably wouldn’t since the kid didn’t know. But, also, it isn’t like leaving your kid in the car because your kid wouldn’t be prone to passerby who would get in trouble with the cops or what have you. Unless the kid started wandering down the street in a daze looking for you.

“Which was arrange the situation so that you could probably intervene if something did require it.” If your kid of whatever age was going to just hang out in the apartment then a passerby wasn’t going to call the cops like they did on Kim Brooks would they? But also 6 year olds play within their neighborhoods all the time. That isn’t free range that is life.

“(I assume your baby sleeps in a crib)” What I meant was a baby isn’t going to off on their where a busybody is going to want to call the cops are they? Nope.

“Further, how is containing my child in an apartment while I went to a neighbor’s apartment completely out of view of my own apartment somehow different than containing my child in a car while I go into a store (something I also did frequently at age 6 — or as frequently as she would allow since the store was air conditioned and the car wasn’t)? I guarantee you that I was gone to the friend’s house for much longer than it takes to grab some head phones.” This is your best response Donna. This isn’t a safety issue. Kim Brooks left her child in a perfect position to have someone call the cops. She invited the reaction. You leaving a 6 year old in an apartment equals the same thing except no one sees. It isn’t a difference in safety…it is a difference in what will happen though because there are no busybodies.

Dirk, first of all, that Kim lady’s incident occurred in 2011, before it was a trend to call 911 the instant you saw a mom leaving a car that still had a minor in it.

Secondly, I did have someone call the cops on me for doing exactly that, when my kids were in 2nd grade and I popped into a storefront (FedEx) for less than 3 minutes. The cops were driving up to block my parking space when I exited the FedEx to walk back to my car. So I guess I am doubly stupid! That was one year ago this month.

Third, why should I answer your question when you are sounding more and more like a troll?

SKL are you insane? I got my license in the 90s and it was 100% policy to call the cops on people who left their kids in the car back then. I posted on another hysterical blog entry about a person getting arrested for abandoning their kids in a car about the one time I found some babies in a parked car. I contemplated calling the cops, the dad came out in less than a minute, I gave him a dirty look and drove off. This isn’t recent. It’s been the norm for at least 20 or so years.

It isn’t fine and dandy for children to be taken away from loving parents. The depictions that occur on this website of such things are not the norm. They aren’t. But again. Don’t leave your kid in the car and relocation camps are not the same thing.

Dirk, maybe where you live it’s long been the norm to call the cops about kids who you know have NOT been left in the car long. That is not the case here and probably in a lot of other places. Nor should it be.

Of course I knew about the danger of kids being left in the car a long time, usually by accident. I too have watched to make sure a mom came back within a short time period (but I did not give her a dirty look). But calling the cops would be an extreme action that I’d only do if the parent was nowhere and didn’t show up soon and the kid inside looked hot or otherwise in distress.

I think people have a right to expect that strangers will not go out of their way to cause legal problems and possible disruption of child custody when they know the kid was sitting happily playing his video game in the car for five minutes.

Stop calling people names, it’s ugly and foolish.

Dirk – Your point is exactly what I said. It is nothing more than “you shouldn’t leave your kids in the car because some in society don’t like it and may call the cops.” Again, we got that in the first post. You could have stopped there.

Dirk, how does my being able to see the car stop a meddler from calling the cops?

I could see my car. I did not know some hag was calling the cops.

No, the number of kids dying in hot cars is low because most parents would not intentionally leave their kid in a hot car, and it is very rare for people to do it by accident.

But again, I also think it is possible that child car heat deaths are relatively low BECAUSE society frowns on leaving children in cars…just saying…

SKL show me data on the number of “rescues” a year and the number of parents arrested and I might agree with you.

SKL and what happened when the “hag” called the cops? You saw the cruiser and immediately came out of the store? Yes/no?

What did the cops do? Did you get arrested?

SKL, tell me what the re-education would look like.

Dirk,

The re-education would be similar to the 20/20 episode, but with more facts regarding the danger to children, and suggestions on what you can do instead of calling the cops if there isn’t evidence the child is in distress.

Well I have to go pick up my poor, neglected kids in a few minutes so ta ta.

@Dirk, I get it. Your motivation is to avoid the confrontation with police because we are beginning to see that people will report you. That’s your choice. But you don’t judge the person that a) has a legit reason to make a different choice (however they define legit) and b) presume everyone knows the legal situation about to be unleashed on them.

These same people could decide to stand in front of your yard, video your child playing (w/o supervision) and call the police. Will it be ok to have that to become the next “societal convention”?

I call BS on you claiming to even seriously consider a call to the cops in the 90s. See, I was a parent in the 90s. And two things come quickly to mind:

1) Most people didn’t have cell phones (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0933563.html) — calling the cops would require going into a store and asking to use their phone. Not a common practice.
And Honestly most people don’t do things that are inconvenient for them. If the cops are in your pocket, you’re way more likely to think you can call than if you have to go out of your way.

2) Most gas stations still required that patrons GO INSIDE to pay. Pay at the pump was not common. So leaving small children in the car while running in to pay WAS common. And drive through pharmacies, and drive through coffee shops? They didn’t exist. (I do remember a drive through liquor store, though LOL) Even drive up ATMs often required getting out of a car walking across a sidewalk. No red box – just video stores where you had to GO INSIDE to return those pesky VHS tapes. I remember how excited I was when our library added a drive up book drop.

So the social acceptance of running small errands was very different because small errands were recognized as just that and a part of daily life in a way that they aren’t so much now.

@Shari-
You must have been at the beach the same time we were. We were at the shore when the warnings for rip currents from tropical storm Bertha started to hit. Yes, the waves were HUGE. I got texts from my MIL warning me to keep my kids out of the ocean and to “be safe”. We assessed conditions, realized they were rougher than usual, and used an abundance of caution before boogie boarding the day away and riding some awesome waves.

Ironically, my MIL who warned us to stay safe in the ocean fell out of bed and hit her bed post and needed stitches in her lip the same week. So yes, anything can happen.

And we are worried so much about kids alone in cars…why not adults too? Can’t adults get kidnapped sitting there like ducks? What about the elderly? They could overheat easily too. If we are going to patrol parking lots for supervision infractions, lets not discriminate. Don’t leave Pop Pop in the car or I will call the Po Po.

@SKL–While I do agree that it is sometimes ok to leave a child in a car and that the choice should be the parents’, I have to disagree with your statement about heatstroke.
Five minutes is a LONG time and a newborn in a closed car for that long could easily begin to get overheated to the point of heatstroke IF s/he lives in the desert. When it’s 120 here, I start to get dizzy/nauseated in the parked car with the window OPEN after about 5 minutes….And I am a full grown woman with a brain that regulates body temperature.
Again, common sense should dictate, but blanket statements serve no purpose. Different situations cause different problems.

I dunno, America.
I think the 50 states should soon represent at least three quarters of the population of the planet.
Because the entire third world should be dying off like dinosaurs.
They um, don’t really supervise their kids.

Yet somehow, they stubbornly persist in surviving…and to adulthood, too.
We’re not quite sure how they do it.
But obviously, we don’t seem to be too interested in learning how.

But then, this is why I don’t watch tv.
I would become far too lonesome, yearning for the sound of a reasonable human.

Lenore, could you please write a book about this topic?

I know this website’s only purpose is to sell books (snicker), but I really, really, REALLY want you to write a book about kids and cars.

Because it’s so easy to gloss over that simple fact that MORE KIDS DIE WHEN THE CAR IS MOVING than die when the car is not moving.

I want LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of press about this issue, challenging what “Dirk” calls “societal norms” or whatever.

My mother, who was born in 1939 and raised two kids in the 70s, has a hard time believing that parents these days are actually expected to watch their kids every. Damned. Second. We’ve made childhood a misery, we’ve made parenthood a misery, and we’ve made neighbourliness nearly extinct. WE NEED TO SAY SOMETHING. WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING.

I want a book, Lenore. And I want a “leave your child in the car while you run an errand” day type of civil disobedience tied into the book launch. I want press, I want more discussion, I want people to look again at what they are doing to children and families in the name of “safety.”

Please.

@Beth, I don’t live in AZ, but I’ve lived in places where at certain times of year, I would not want anyone to be stuck in a car for 5 minutes.

Last Sept, we were in CA. We started the morning in the Sierras where a jacket was nice…as well traveled to the coast, we stopped at a gas station in the valley. My husband went inside to get soda and I remained in the car. In that very short amount of time, I got uncomfortable enough to open the car door.

Sure, maybe no one has died after being held in a car for 5 minutes regardless of temps, but it doesn’t mean that that’s a reason/excuse to do it. If someone left a child unable to open a door in that kind of weather with the justification that they won’t die, well that’s inviting some questions about their decision making — and it would be justified.

If you are talking about the difference between 5 or 10 minutes for safety — it’s way too close to even consider.

I’m sure that if it were 90 degrees instead of 40, Kim Brooks would not have made the decision she did — reasonable people would not, even if it were “just 5 minutes”.

Hi Merrick. Save your BS call. I was a teenager with a new license in the 90s and clearly remember as part of driver training being told to do something if I saw a baby in a car alone. Yeah, I would have walked back into the pizza place I had just come out of and from which the dad walked out like a minute later.

And no, in response to how great the need was to leave kids in cars for more than a minute or two and out of your view and the lame examples of when you would need to do so in the 90s, you could totally pay for gas at the pump in the 90s, stopping in front of a west coast video to return tapes would take 5 seconds and you wouldn’t be out of sight of the car (and yes I even remember being left in the car in the 80s for just such a VHS tape return!), but banks have had drive-throughs that did not require you to leave your car for as long as I can remember and even if you had to go out of the car to the atm it would have been within what? 10 feet of your car. Bad examples man. It was probably easier to leave your kid in the car because people did a better job of doing it. But it doesn’t matter.

Go ahead. All of you. Leave your child in the car on purpose for…oh I don’t know, 15 minutes in front of a Dunkin Donuts every day for a week and see what happens. Take a guess what will happen. Someone will be like hey did someone forget their kid, someone will be all what the hell is wrong with you, and someone will call the cops. On a long enough timeline someone will always call the cops because on a long enough timeline the kid will in fact die.

@ SKL

Your Tue Aug 12th 2014 at 5:14 pm comment makes a lot of sense in a way.

You said it is wrong to “call the cops about kids who you know have NOT been left in the car long.” My response is to say I have no idea how long the infant has been left in the car at all. So when I saw the two babies left in the grand marquis in high school yeah my friend and I paused as we buckled up and put our sandwiches down and debated for a second on what to do. Like your experience “(I too have watched to make sure a mom came back within a short time period (but I did not give her a dirty look)” we looked around and saw a man (within sight of the car right inside the same pizza shop) look like he was the parent, we waited a minute or so and the man came out. And yeah I gave him a look because you are not supposed to do it. He was probably fine doing it sure, but it isn’t the greatest of habits. The people who immediately call the cops feel stronger about it, and interestingly the laws in 19 so states or what have you is on their side. You want to change this? Call you governors, write the book, start a campaign, I would contact the American Association or Pediatricians for a start!

Gina,
If in less than 5 mins, after running the ac, your car heats up to health risk temps……….then there is something wrong with your car.

E,
Really think about your example. You started your day when it was cool enough to wear a jacket. So you would not have been trying to cool the car down while driving. You probably just let the car heat up naturally during the drive. So considering you dressed for cool temps, didnt attempt to cool the car, then sat in the car for a time in the afternoon heat…………duh yeah you got hot. Bad example.

Dirk, you are wrong. People are being encouraged to call – and some do call – when they see a parent just leaving the car or coming back to the car. In other words they cannot tell themselves that they need to call the cops to save that poor child from imminent death. They are calling either because they want to hurt that family (teach them a lesson at the kids’ expense), or they actually believe that a child left in a car for a few minutes could die. And the real life examples we’re talking about are not in AZ at the peak of the heat. In Kim’s case it was early and cool out. In my case it was sunset and pleasant out. If the people calling the cops (in these types of cases) have any heart at all, they are calling because they are miseducated about the dangers of kids in cars.

Even if you have no idea how long a kid has been in a car that might be heating up, you can look at the kid and see – is he sweating or uncomfortable or showing other signs of trouble? Most of the time we know parents who do this during sunny hours are running a quick errand. It is crazy to err on the side of “this child is about to perish” despite evidence to the contrary. Unless you see evidence of distress, wait a few minutes if you really care about that child’s well-being. That’s the advice people should be given.

And by the way, why is it a problem if Lenore promotes her book on this site? Ever heard of free enterprise? If it bothers you that much, you should probably stop reading here.

This is ultimately about the misinterpretation of danger.
There is danger, which is real, like a storm just picked up and is blowing a lamp post down on a car with a child inside. Or a hot sweltering day and a persistent crying baby with a red face, sweating. Then we have irrational fear, which makes someone videotape a happy child playing a video game in the back of a car for 5 minutes and sending it to police.
How, as a society, we cannot differentiate the difference between fear and danger with regards to our children and apply the law incorrectly to persecute good parents should concern us all.

@ SKL Wed Aug 13th 2014 at 11:04 am

I liked the free range book but lenore is replacing one type of fear mongering with another. I am disappointed by this…

When you say that most of the time people who do this are on a quick errand…I am really surprised you think so. How often are you seeing babies left in cars? I have only seen this once 20 years ago. I have never seen an older child left in a car (I guess the last one would be me as a child then…) This isn’t the normal practice and that is why their is ANY reaction to it…

“Unless you see evidence of distress, wait a few minutes if you really care about that child’s well-being.” Yeah, no der. But also if you see no distress as well. And I ask how long should you wait. What happens if you wait, and wait, and wait. And what? 15 minutes goes by? 30? When do you do something?

But also I go back to how much do you think this is happening? I never ever see babies or kids in the car. The rarity is what prompts the response.

Dirk, on another very active mom forum, this question came up. Now without giving too much info, this forum is for moms who are far more involved in the well-being of their kids than the average mom. Most of them are stay-at-home moms also.

So it turns out that in that group, in modern times, there are many who leave their kids in the car for brief periods of time for a variety of reasons. There are others who don’t. Most of the ones who don’t do this are moms who have a range of other choices. For example, run errands when the kids are with their dad (doesn’t work if there’s no dad) or don’t be in such a hurry (not always feasible if you’re a single working mom with multiple kids).

The fact that you never see kids in cars could be because (I hope) you don’t go around peering in other people’s car windows. I know I don’t. I also don’t notice which cars have child seats and which are full of clutter.

The time I had the cops called on me, I was talking to my kids as I exited the car. I told them to look under the seats for some missing library books, then get their seatbelts on before I got back because I didn’t have time to wait around for them to do that. Then I said “stay in the car, I’ll be right back.” So it is almost certain that some busybody heard me say that and that is the only reason she noticed that kids were being left in a car. (And that is also how she knew that they were not in any danger of baking to death.)

As for kids waking up scared etc, parents are in the best position to know whether that is an issue. My own kids, as babies/tots, could not be left alone in the car because I knew they would scream their heads off. So I didn’t do it. Other people’s kids are different. In contrast, I never had a monitor or anything for when they slept; they were perfectly fine being alone all night without interaction; but other people’s kids might be more needy. Parenting isn’t about treating every child as if she has every fear and shortcoming in the world. It’s about responding to our own kids’ unique needs and abilities.

You are entitled to your *opinion* about how people should handle their kids. You can even express it. But believing it should be codified into law is just wrong. This country is supposed to guarantee individual freedoms. Laws against personal choice are supposed to be made only when absolutely necessary. And when the cops and government agencies use their powers to take away personal liberties, that’s the same as having a law against parental authority. You don’t have a problem with that, apparently, but most of us do.

Dirk – Huh? I have no idea what you are talking about. I’ve never needed to intervene when I’ve left my child in the car. I’ve never been questioned, but I don’t actually do it that often. My kid rarely comes with me on errands.

You don’t have to codify it into law. Laws dealing with abuse including abandonment cover a lot of ground and law enforcement and the courts have a lot of leeway in this (some of the time).

But don’t you want to codify it too or create social conventions as well? I saw the babies in the car that one time because I was walking next to the car, parked next to it actually. And I assume that is indeed when/how kids are seen in cars when things go down. But you want to create a social convention of see the babies in the car and what? Ignore them, wait one minute then move on, wait until parent comes back, what? Or is it do nothing unless the kid the is in obvious distress, but a passed out kid offers little sign of distress other than sweat…What explicitly SHOULD the social convention be?

Oh sorry! Meant SKL….

SKL, no one is taking away my personal liberties. There is no epidemic.

“I never ever see babies or kids in the car.”

You wouldn’t see mine. I have tinted windows.

I never see pedestrians run over in parking lots, but that doesn’t it’s not happening.

@ Dirk,
I had driver’s ed in 1997 and got licensed in 2000. I actually read the whole DMV handbook too. And none of my driving education involved lessons on calling the cops if a kid or a baby was spotted in a parked car.

You are assuming a universality that wasn’t there in the late 90’s.

@Dirk-
Getting hit by a car is the third leading cause of death for kids 5- to 9-years-old, and kids up to age 15 make up a disproportionate number of pedestrian casualties worldwide.
(from the CDC website)
Not an epidemic, but among childhood causes of death, it’s pretty high up on the list. Parking lots are deadly places for kids.

Dirk, I’ve said it enough times. Convention should be that IF you see a child in a car who cannot get out in conditions that could lead to a hot car, then you see if the kid is in distress or just fine. If the kid is just fine, you wait 5 minutes or so to see if the parent just left the kid briefly, and if the parent comes back, say hi and move along. If the parent doesn’t come back AND conditions mean the car could get hot, then you go into the nearest storefront(s) and try to figure out who the parent is and tell them you’re worried the car could be getting too hot for a kid to be in there. In the rare event the kid is still left in the heating car after all this, then call the cops.

If you see a kid who is big enough to get out, you do nothing. Move along.

If weather conditions are safe for a kid to sit in a car for a long time, or if the car is in the shade, and the child is not in distress, you do nothing. Move along.

You don’t know what is going on in the lives of each of the families that choose to leave a child in a car in safe weather conditions. Someone could be sick / hurting, they could be in a frantic hurry for a very understandable reason, or there might be something about the kid that makes it better for him to stay in the car. It’s not your business unless someone is dying.

I think there should be some repercussions for people who do things like the video of the 4yo and the lady who called on me for leaving my 2nd graders in a car at sunset for what was clearly going to be a very short time period. For example, wouldn’t it be great if the lady who made that video and sent it to the cops had her identity revealed on 20/20, if people banged on her door and called her house demanding to know what the hell she was thinking and how she could be so uncaring about that family? And if she’s a mom, people could hang around her house and car and videotape every move she and her kids make. I think it would be awesome. People who do what she did should not be treated as heroes. They are just one step up from kidnappers.

I saw a mailman tell a lady off for leaving her kid in front of her apartment building the other day.

I remember in drivers ed being told not to leave babies alone in a car. Guess I grew up during that time and place.

SKL, glad to konw that you think you should check up on babies left in parking lots and wait 5 minutes then go and try to find the parent and if you cant then to call the cops. See! We agree!

Sorry to upset everyone.

“SKL, glad to konw that you think you should check up on babies left in parking lots and wait 5 minutes then go and try to find the parent and if you cant then to call the cops. See! We agree!”

Actually that is not what SKL said at all. She said that you should do these things IF you have a reason to believe that the child is in danger of becoming too hot inside the car. Nowhere did she say that you should call the cops EVERY TIME.

What counts as hot out? 80 degrees? On an 80 degree day, the inside of a closed car can quickly exceed 100 degrees. In just 10 minutes a car can heat up 20 degrees. Cracking a window does little to keep the inside of a car cool.

“I never see pedestrians run over in parking lots, but that doesn’t it’s not happening.”
That just means it isn’t an epidemic!”

Wow, I wasn’t aware that the fact that ONE PERSON (out of the 317,000,000 or so currently living in the US) personally never saw something happen means that it can’t possibly be “an epidemic” (whatever the heck that means in this context).

I’ve never personally seen a vehicle accident involving a fatality. I guess that shouldn’t be a concern either.

“I’ve never personally seen a vehicle accident involving a fatality. I guess that shouldn’t be a concern either.”

Isn’t that the same arguement for leaving your kid in the car? Odd are low? Isn’t that one of the responses to saying don’t leave your kid in the car? That it is less sage on the road but that doesn’t stop us from driving we still consider it safe?

Dirk – There are many times when it is perfectly acceptable to leave a baby in a closed car and it will not get too hot. There are times when it is not. If you didn’t insist on the (total lack of) thought process that “this is never okay,” I’m sure you could probably figure it out. Or you could at least stand by the car and google it with all your fabulous internet research skills that you like to show off.

The vast majority of the time, it is perfectly fine with windows rolled down (I don’t get this insistence about windows being rolled up). It may not be the most comfortable situation at times, but unless the kid is going to die outside, the kid will be fine in the car with windows down.

Dirk,
One question.

Do you honestly think that if all americans agreed to never leave their child in a car while they ran a quick errand, that it would save any lives?

It won’t.

“But even on a 70-degree day, the inside temperature of a car can exceed 120 degrees even with windows partially open.”

You’re moving down the ladder of reasonableness at this point.

It’s 70 degrees outside. It’s overcast. I just spent two and a half hours sitting in my car with only the front windows rolled partly down and reading a book because my kid was undergoing placement testing for school and there was a strictly enforced “no parents waiting in building policy”.

Would I have left my kid in the car, reading a book, under these conditions on this day? Yes. As I said above, I spent two and a half hours in there without my (dark blue car with black interior) getting to the point where I even found it hot. Sure, if it had been sunny and the car in direct sunlight, it could have gotten hotter. But it didn’t and it was pretty reasonable to expect that it wouldn’t because it’s been overcast all day long.

Saying that kids shouldn’t be left in cars at all, for any reason, under any conditions is unreasonable.

@Warren, the bizarre thing about people bringing up Adam Walsh is that he was abducted from a mall, not a car. If he had been left in the car while his mother shopped, rather than brought into the store, maybe he wouldn’t have been kidnapped. I’m not aware of a single child abduction that involved a child being snatched from a car in a parking lot, while there are stories of stranger abductions that involved a child being taken while in a store with their parents.

I was thinking, reading this and the comments, about a story I saw the other day about children and risk, where one woman interviewed talking about making children “as safe as necessary, but not as safe as possible.” I think that’s wise. The problem is that we seem to think that loving your kids means making them as safe as possible, when 1) that’s not possible to do when there’s risk inherent in everything and 2) that’s not even desirable because it stunts kids’ development. Instead, we should think about making our kids as safe as necessary. A child left in a car for a short period of time is not as safe as they could possibly be, no. But, neither is the child being taken through the parking lot and into the store. Both children could be safer, so if our standard is “as safe as possible,” then parents pretty much will never win. But, assuming it’s not very hot and the windows aren’t up, the child in the car as is as safe as they need to be. And, assuming they aren’t a toddler allowed to run wild through the parking lot, they are as safe as they need to be going into the store. That doesn’t mean that something awful couldn’t happen–because it always could, in any situation–but that the children are protected from obvious, genuine, imminent hazards and that’s enough.

Maybe this is OT, but I think we just have to resist the urge to equate being “as safe as possible” or “better safe than sorry” with love. My daughter who was born a month ago had a false positive result on her newborn screening for a genetic condition that would have meant, in part, that she had to be fed every 3-4 hours to avoid really serious health risks. So, until we got the results of the retest and discovered she was fine (the screenings have an extremely high rate of false positives) about ten days later, I was waking her up for feedings every 3-1/2 hours. That was necessary during that time, because if she did indeed have that disorder, she’d be in genuine danger if she wasn’t fed on that schedule. However, part of me, once we got the results back that she was fine, was tempted to keep feeding her every 3-4 hours, “just in case.” I mean, better safe than sorry, right? Just in case the test was wrong? But I realized that, first of all, the chances of the retest giving a false negative were extremely, extremely small–as opposed to the high likelihood that a first screening will give a false positive–and that waking her up from a sound sleep during the night to eat was not pleasant for either of us, and was disrupting both of our sleeps more than needed, and so wasn’t something I should do in the name of hypervigilance. (She’s up every 4-6 hours during the night anyway, so I’m just trying to enjoy the longer sleep periods when I can get them.) But the push to be “as safe as possible” can, I think, lead us to make unnecessary and irrational choices that are not good for us or our kids.

@anonymous mom

I didn’t even “have” to wait in the car, there was a Starbucks nearby. I went into the Starbucks, found it was full of annoying adults being loud and obnoxious (probably the parents of other kids undergoing placement testing), got myself a hot coffee and returned to my quiet and comfortable car.

Sitting and relaxing in a car in a parking lot is not a punishment or an undesirable place to be, when the conditions are fine.

Speaking of epidemics, personally I’ve never met anyone with Ebola, but I tend to trust the medical types who tell me it’s happening at the moment. Am lucky to have also never personally witnessed a fatal car crash, but I gather they happen…

I always pulled the car up to the kitchen window, left the windows down and the babies to it sleeping in the van when they were little. Am so glad no nosey parkers called the cops on me. Though the police no doubt would have laughed….it’s not a rare thing to do here, and has never been fatal, or even ‘sickness-producing’ that I can recall.

If you really want to go nuts about safety, which is what never leaving kids in cars is, what about free-standing ovens? They very occasionally kill kids, and yet we still cook in houses with kids. Remarkable, really. Why aren’t the cops being called….?

I have a few friends whose kids are involved in sports or drama in places a good drive away, and they will often just relax in the car while their kid is at practice, rather than drive home than have to drive right back. This is not uncommon. None of them have died. Common sense would tell us that short periods of time in a car, even in warm weather, is not nearly as dangerous as the media wants us to believe.

I am not saying you it isn’t reasonable to leave a baby or kid in a car. For the last time. But I am saying that doing it for more than a literal minute or 2 or maybe even like say 5, et cetera, isn’t a good idea, and that one should stay within sight of the car. The reasons being 1) You know for a fact that on a long enough timeline someone will indeed call the cops. After a enough time goes by, a totally random amount of time for sure, someone is going to get nosey. Not being aware of that is indeed dumb in this day and age. Not saying it is right. Just saying it is true. 2) It can indeed be dangerous even on a nice day AFTER enough time has gone by. That is why I said anything more than a short interval isn’t a good idea.

http://www.kshb.com/news/firefighters-bake-cookies-on-hot-car-to-highlight-danger-posed-to-children

Now you are going to say it isn’t my business. But a few of you have commented yourselves that you would be worried and do something about a baby or a kid locked in a car that was in distress and even not in distress.

BUT AGAIN: I am not saying you it isn’t reasonable to leave a baby or kid in a car. For the last time. But I am saying that doing it for more than a literal minute or 2 or maybe even like say 5, et cetera, isn’t a good idea, and that one should stay within sight of the car. The reasons being 1) You know for a fact that on a long enough timeline someone will indeed call the cops. After a enough time goes by, a totally random amount of time for sure, someone is going to get nosey. Not being aware of that is indeed dumb in this day and age. Not saying it is right. Just saying it is true. 2) It can indeed be dangerous even on a nice day AFTER enough time has gone by. That is why I said anything more than a short interval isn’t a good idea.

“The reasons being 1) You know for a fact that on a long enough timeline someone will indeed call the cops. After a enough time goes by, a totally random amount of time for sure, someone is going to get nosey. Not being aware of that is indeed dumb in this day and age. Not saying it is right. Just saying it is true.”

(1) I do not know for a fact that someone will call the cops. In my community, that is actually extremely unlikely. I know this from experience. Like I said, people praised me for leaving my nine-year-old in the car for an hour in the cold. Weren’t you the one that said this website exaggerates the likelihood of police involvement?

(2) I am okay with defying certain social conventions, and I will not cave and comply if the government, the media, or a lynch mob of crazy parents insists on imposing their social conventions on me. I’m pretty sure you feel the same way; you just draw the line at a different point. What if it became social convention to do something you consider crazy helicopter parenting…would you follow it?

(3) I don’t call the cops merely because I disagree with a parenting choice. OTOH, there are some cases that demand CPS involvement. Let’s encourage people to find a reasonable middle ground, not praise them for calling the cops at the drop of a hat.

@ W,

Come on…you know I am not lockstep stooge…

That being said I do think leaving your kids in the car for more than “a bit” and out of sight of the vehicle is not a good habit. I also am aware of the social codes of the day.

“If I left my thirteen-year-old home alone for a month, someone is probably going to notice and call the cops.”

Right, somewhere between day one and day 30 for the 13 year old at home someone is going to call the cops (although I am not too sure about that but it was your example so lets role). And yes somewhere between hour one and hour 24 someone is going to call the cops on a baby in a car.

damn auto correct…”let us ROLL!” I mean.

@Dirk: “Yes on a long enough timeline someone will always call the cops because on a long enough timeline a baby or small child locked in a car will die.”

I have no idea what this means. There is a big difference between 15 minutes and 15 hours. And, if we’re truly being realistic, unless temperature is an issue, a healthy infant or small child left in a car for many hours probably won’t die. If the car is a safe temperature, the child will likely get cranky, thirsty, and hungry, but the child won’t die unless they are left there for days.

I mean, from around the time they are a year or so, my kids get put into their crib or bed, and then are expected to stay there until morning. I don’t bring them food and drinks throughout the night. They manage to stay alive a good 12 hours or more. Even my one-month-old breastfed newborn has gone 6 hours stretches without needing to eat. Kids, even very little ones, don’t spontaneously die because they are out of adult sight.

I’m obviously not saying that leaving a child in a car on a 50 degree day for 6 hours is good or right. It’s not. But, it’s not going to be fatal for a healthy child. When children do die after being forgotten in cars, it’s nearly always from hypothermia, because of the temperature inside the car, not because the child died of starvation or because lack of adult attention is fatal.

Yes, a baby or small child locked in a car for days on end will die. But, unless the car is hot, a healthy baby or small child forgotten in a car even for several hours will probably be unhappy and thirsty, but will be physically okay. There’s not anything magical that happens in temperate cars that causes children to die. When kids die after being forgotten in cars, it’s because of the temperature inside.

Anynmous Mom: “I’m obviously not saying that leaving a child in a car on a 50 degree day for 6 hours is good or right. It’s not.”

Exactly, so we agree!

Anynmous Mom: “I’m obviously not saying that leaving a child in a car on a 50 degree day for 6 hours is good or right. It’s not. But, it’s not going to be fatal for a healthy child.”

No, we don’t agree. Locking a baby in a car for 6 hours will certainly have some health effects and possibly be fatal. Heatstroke can occur in temperatures as low as 57 degrees. In 10 minutes a car can heat up 20 degrees. Rolling down a window does little to keep it cool. Even outside temperatures in the 60s can cause a car temperature to rise well above 110 ° F. A child’s temperature heats up 3 to 5 times faster than that of an adult’s. Body temperature may rise to 106 degrees F or higher within 10 to 15 minutes.

You leave the baby in a car for 5 or 10 minutes on most days the extent is the baby gets cranky. Sure. Don’t say that leaving a kid in a car for 6 hours wouldn’t make the kid sick.

In June 2000, a mother in New Jersey left her son in the car with the windows rolled up for two hours. During that time span, she checked on him several times without realizing the temperature of the vehicle was nearing deadly temperatures. On her final check, she found her son passed out. She rushed him to the hospital, but he later died of heatstroke. An hour after his death, the boy’s body temperature was STILL 108 degrees. The temperature outside the vehicle was in the low 60s…

You mentioned a 50 degree day? Children have died locked in cars on 50 degree days. Children have died being left in running cars when it was 30 degrees out. William and Tyler Jensen for example were left in a running SUV for about 90 minutes in 35 degree weather, they died.

I am not freaking out over something I don’t think will happen because I am not freaking out over leaving kids in cars. This is not a daily concern of mine. I do think that leaving your kid in a car in any weather for more minutes than you have fingers isn’t smart, and the ones you have on one hand barely better.

So when you say “I’m obviously not saying that leaving a child in a car on a 50 degree day for 6 hours is good or right. It’s not. But, it’s not going to be fatal for a healthy child.” You are definitely wrong, it can happen in 70, 60, 50, 40, 30 degree weather and does not take being left in the car for a day, it clearly happens in as a little as 90 minutes or even less…

“are you insane? I got my license in the 90s and it was 100% policy to call the cops on people who left their kids in the car back then.”

Uh, I got my licence in the 2000s and I wasn’t familiar with this policy.

Really, up until THIS SUMMER, I have only heard about calling the cops about kids being in cars on sites discussing free-range parenting issues. With people calling the cops being so rarely talked about (and, when it does happen, the people being far away from me) I have always considered it too small of a risk to worry about.

I’ve seen/heard discussion about *whether it’s safe or not* elsewhere, but people saying they will call the cops, I hadn’t heard. But then this summer I have seen/heard a few people saying that if they see a dog or child in a car on a hot day with the windows up, they will break the windows and THEN call the cops. And I’m amazed at that reaction because with modern-day cars, you can’t even tell if the air conditioning is on or not! My 2009 car is silent when not moving. In the winter you see the exhaust, but not in the summer. When I point this out, people say “well I’m not going to take that risk.”

So… really, most people would rather harm my child/dog with broken glass, and have them taken away from me, than run the risk that I DON’T want to kill them? If I’m just going to kill them as soon as an opportunity to leave them in the car arises, and all that prevents that is a good samaritan waiting to call the cops… why am I allowed to have them at all?

Dirk u seemed to be genuinely asking when it would be necessary to leave ur kids in the car. I have 3 kids in carseats. My 3 yr old goes to an in home preschool in a very safe neighborhood (w huge custom homes that i drool over). We have a dvd player in my van. When i drop him off i can either- lv the other 2 in the car w the car running and lock the door w my spare key. They continue watching tv, i walk my son to the door, sign him in and say goodbye. Or i could get my 1 yr old out of the seat, turn off the car, listen to my 5 yr old complain that she wants to stay in the car and watch the dora, walk to the door say gbye to my son, sign him in while trying to hold the baby, take the baby back to the car and try to put him back in the carseat where he arches his back angrily bc he hates being put in for some reason, by now we are getting late for dropping my daughter off at kindergarten. Ex#2, on saturdays my kids like to get donuts. We live in a small town. The donut shop is glass so u can see ur car while inside the store, u can pull rt up to it. I can lock my doors and let them continue their movie and come back w donuts OR spend a painful 5 mins getting them all out of the car, try to keep my spot in line while they scatter around the store, try to grab the donuts and the pay w one arm while holding the baby, battle the older 2 over what donuts they will get bc now that they can see the selection, it is a whole new donut world for them. Ex# 3 the atm. The atm in our town is next to a busy grocery store complex. It would take me 2 seconds to run up and get money. The parking lot is so congested that it actually feels safer leaving them in the car. I have 2 hands and 3 little kids-one that cant walk. In order to get them across the parking lot safely i would have to get the stroller out of the back and have the other 2 hold the handles. What could take only a minute now is a fiasco. A somewhat dangerous one. I was hit by a car when i was a kid so i am a bit paranoid in parking lots so even if they dont get hit by a car, it stresses me out a lot. It is not unusual to see me yelling ‘go go go!!!’ To my kids when we cross anything lol. Ex#4 unloading the groceries. I always unload my groceries first, bc it is hard to keep track of who is where when i am going back and forth to the car and the front door being open is a hazard w 3 under 5. One time my son got out the front door and hid behind my neighbors porch post thinking he was making a great joke. I think i had a mini stroke. I couldnt find him for like 10 mins but it felt like at least 2 hours. But really the point is that this zero tolerance for kids in cars policy takes away our rights as parents to make decisions in the interest of our families. Who cares more about my kids than i do?! I had (very extreme) woman the other day tell me that its lazy and irresponsible to leave ur kids in the car even to pump gas. Can u imagine what a hazard that would be if ppl started pulling their children out at the gas station?

@T.S.

Pick your battles?
That TS is the cry of the coward. I have found those that say we shoud pick our battles, never seem to find a battle worth picking.

So retaining the authority and responsibility to parent as you see fit, is not worth fighting for? Then what is?

Let’s not forget how law makers work. Once they take an inch of power away from you, it sets the stage for them to take more.

@April – With you the whole way.And yes, imagine the chaos if we all took our children out of the car to pay for petrol.

@Dirk – with the windows down and in a temperate climate, you can leave a baby sleeping for hours in a car. I’ve done it myself on numerous occasions, and all of my friends with children have too. I must say, the idea of ‘windows up’ never gelled with me – I’m a fan of fresh air- but I guess if you live in a paranoid culture you have to take advantage of the tinted glass, which would be impossible if the windows were down.

Personally I am paranoid about leaving babies alone in a house for any period of time (e.g. going to the pharmacy late at night, as Donna had to do). But I recognise that as my own paranoia, and it has more to do with the state of the housing here, and the speed of fire in said housing (often old, extremely dry timber framework). I do not think my assessment would hold true for many countries, most of which will have a different style of housing. Same with the kids in cars thing. In most places, even in the States, kids are not going to die from remaining in a car for a time.

Especially if you leave the windows down. And, speaking of paranoia, there are no mountain lions or bears in the vicinity 🙂

I am so sick of society determine what IT thinks is safest for MY children. If I could leave my kids in the car while I ran into a store quickly, I would absolutely do so. It is far safer for my children to be in the car than to be taken out of the car and have to walk through a parking lot, where they have already almost been hit by cars (because they are too short to be seen). I HATE that this society forces me to put them in an unsafe position because society is too DUMB to realize that keeping them in the car is safer and it doesn’t trust me to do what’s best for them, despite the fact that doing so is my 24/7 job and has been for years. If anything happened to my children, would society care? No. But I would be DEVASTATED. And yet, I have to follow the terms of safety as dictated by a society that couldn’t care less about my children? Nonsense. And eff you, Dirk, for suggesting that we should sit back and accept that.

If anyone’s curious about Dirk’s reference to “William and Tyler Jensen for example were left in a running SUV for about 90 minutes in 35 degree weather, they died.” — The heat was blasting for ninety minutes and they died of overheating, according to authorities who initially thought carbon monoxide poisoning. So don’t blast the heat continuously if you’re leaving the kids in the car for ninety minutes — or driving down the road for ninety minutes.

Actually Andrea I totally agree with what SKL said. I’ll post it again.

By Andrea Fri Aug 15th 2014 at 2:06 am
By Dirk Wed Aug 13th 2014 at 3:53 pm

“Convention should be that IF you see a child in a car who cannot get out in conditions that could lead to a hot car, then you see if the kid is in distress or just fine. If the kid is just fine, you wait 5 minutes or so to see if the parent just left the kid briefly, and if the parent comes back, say hi and move along. If the parent doesn’t come back AND conditions mean the car could get hot, then you go into the nearest storefront(s) and try to figure out who the parent is and tell them you’re worried the car could be getting too hot for a kid to be in there. In the rare event the kid is still left in the heating car after all this, then call the cops.” – SKL

That is exactly what I would do. But, don’t say there is zero danger (there is, and unlike the sentiments expressed in some of these comments most of the kids who die or become ill do so after being in a car for less than 2 hours). Saying there is zero danger and that the idea of the danger itself being stupid is like saying hand guns are perfectly safe and there is automatically zero danger. No, both things are dangerous and should be respected. Don’t knee jerk to the other end of the spectrum is all. Some of you think people are living in fear of the car or something. It isn’t, it is treating it them same as teaching gun safety or telling your kid not to run on the parking lot or to look before the cross the street.

http://reason.com/blog/2014/08/07/mom-gets-out-of-car-to-smoke-is-arrested

Like Lenore I think it is certainly ok to leave your kids in the car for a few minutes and are nearby. I don’t know much past that.

@Dirk – I shouldn’t even be paying attention to you, but the cars and petrol comment is too silly to ignore. Please explain why leaving kids in the car when paying for petrol is magically different than leaving kids in the car while you go into the dairy to pick up milk, or the fish and chip shop to buy chips? Or the supermarket, etc etc.?

Really….? Your gaps in logic are just astounding.

You know what I find amazing is that you can’t see the difference between what would take a few minutes while you are always in sight of the car and what ever else it is you want to do that takes you more than literally a few minutes and keeps you in sight of the car. You need to not only be aware of how the kid is doing (most likely fine) but also be able to stop busybodies from doing their “good work.” That is the world you live in take your blinders off.

Hi Donna,

“Calling the police for children in the car is such a social convention that it should be expected and, yet, you insist that arrest for this is virtually non-existent. Huh?” You say.

It will always happen if you leave your young child in the car on a long enough timeline. It may take 1 minute it may take 12 hours but someone will eventually call the cops yes.

ugh, sorry about the typos the phones tiny keyboard and auto correct constantly hurt me….

Also, I don’t think Lenore is fighting for what you think. She never talks about leaving kids in the car for more than literally a few minutes (one or two, a couple, two or three) Like walking into a pizza store to pick up the pizza.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/hot-debate-leave-child-car/story?id=24869147&singlePage=true

And I agree with here. It is certainly ok to leave a child in the car for a single handful of minutes, and I would also suggest you stay in sight of the car to prevent a Kim Brooks situation. In the case of Kim Brooks she actually did break the law (it is illegal to leave a child under 6 in the car where she was) but if she had keep sight of her vehicle (or not let her child dictate what she was going to do, she actually wanted to bring the kid in the store) she could have intervened when the busybody arrived. It should also be noted that sanity EVENTUALLY (after she had been through a lot to be sure) prevailed because the DA rightly decided NOT to press charges…

Again, I agree with Lenore. It is certainly ok to leave a child in the car for a single handful of minutes, and I would also suggest you stay in sight of the car to prevent a Kim Brooks situation.

I would love to hear her actually clarify her position though with more details!

Well then you disagree with Lenore Warren. She thinks it is reasonable to look for parents of kids left in cars, pets too I would think.

Dirk, So we’re supposed to then be okay with busybodies harassing us in parking lots even if police aren’t called?

I guess I don’t understand what you think is happening here. Is it that you truly believe that passersby are just standing around watching cars with kids in them and then nicely smiling when you walk up? If so, on what do you base this belief? You state that you don’t leave your kids in the car so it isn’t personal experience.

I’m also not sure why you are insisting that we are advocating for leaving children in cars for hours on end. Most here are talking about leaving young children for no more than 5-15 minutes while they run in somewhere.

“In the case of Kim Brooks she actually did break the law (it is illegal to leave a child under 6 in the car where she was)”

No, it wasn’t. Quote from the original article “A few years before, the state had tried to pass an ordinance that would make it a misdemeanor to leave a child under 6 alone in a vehicle if the conditions within the vehicle or in the immediate vicinity of the vehicle presented a risk to the health or safety of the child. The penalty for a first offense would be a $100 civil penalty, in other words, a ticket. But the legislation didn’t pass …”

First, the law was children under 6 couldn’t be left in cars IF IT IS DANGEROUS and the LAW NEVER PASSED.

“It should also be noted that sanity EVENTUALLY (after she had been through a lot to be sure) prevailed because the DA rightly decided NOT to press charges…”

She was prosecuted!!!! The DA dismissed the charges after she did 100 hours of community service and took parenting classes. This is a pre-trial diversion program, not a decision not to prosecute.

Really, Dirk, if you are going to fill up the page with your ridiculous posts, at least get the information correct.

@ Donna

You know what? I do want to respond to you Donna about one thing.

You said “You state that you don’t leave your kids in the car so it isn’t personal experience.”

I have left my kids plural in the car. Of course. To pump and pay for gas mostly. Parked right in front of a convenience store to get coffee on a trip. Maybe some similar things. I don’t really know when else this would come up. (The examples provided by another comment-er to when and how long they would leave their kids in the car pretty much matched up. A few minutes at most and within sight all the time.) And in all that time I have never seen anyone act weird about me leaving them in the car for those 120 seconds or so it took. And if they did I would have been within sight to intercede. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone stopped and paused. I would have been there within what…10, 20 , 30 seconds to be like…yeah got my coffee and donut thanks for the concern fellow citizen. I would not get stuck pulling a Brooks.

Honestly. I have multiple kids and the need to leave them for 15 minutes in a car has never come up. A few minutes maybe, and always within sight of them (just like the other comment-er, April). And I, like the 99.999999 percent of the 17,500,000 current parents who have also left their children in the car, have not had any negative experiences. I think part of this is where and when you leave your kids in the car that causes this. None of these stories Lenore uses to frenzy this up are about people buying gas, or stopping at a convenience store, or a donut shop with big glass windows (like the other comment-er mentioned). It is always about someone in a mall, or super market, or box store.

If you are leaving your kid in the car and are consistently getting approached by people about leaving your kid in the car…you are doing it wrong.

I would love to hear Lenore send down reasonable suggestions on doing it right. Let us hear it!

Hey dirk, i was the one that brought up the gas thing bc i actually got in a fight w a woman on fb about it. She was turning in a man for leaving his son in the car while he ran into metro to pay his bill. The man apologized, said his kid refused to come in, said he was having a bad day w him, begged the woman but she still called cps, the police and then blasted what she did proudly on fb. I called her a hypocrite and brought up gas pumping. She told me it was irresponsible and lazy (all in caps btw lol) to not take ur kids out ‘just bc u have to get gas’ and told me her and her husband alternate getting gas to sit w the kids. (I guess her husbands unemployed?). This demonstrates the craziness of some ppl. A cpl weeks ago i loaded my baby after my daughters gymnastics class and started the car and went back in for the other two. (My son was collecting his toys in his backpack and my daughter was getting her goodbye stickers and hi-fives from her teacher so i thought it seemed like good timing to start herding them to the van). My best friend was parked next to me so i told her to hang out while i grabbed my others. This was a private parking lot off a private road. Two women in those 2 minutes approached my car (mind u the air was on max, the movie was on and one door was still open bc i was coming rt back. ) one woman, even after my friend said she was watching my son, continued to look back at my car w a horrified look on her face. My car was like 15 feet from the door. Ppl are getting VERY quick to call the police on ppl about this. I really do believe if my friend hadnt been parked next to me that woman would have called the cops. But like ive said, im much more afraid of parking lots (bc i got hit by a car as a kid) than car thiefs (bc im in a private parking lot and i live in the boonies) and kids overheating (bc im back in under 2 mins and my car is on) so i make my best judgement as a parent. But thats a right that we simply dont have anymore.

“If she didn’t break a law then what the hell was she arrested for?”

She was arrested for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Nothing having to do with laws about kids in cars.

“Again 25% of parents leave their kids in the car and virtually 99.9999999% of them have no issues.”

Again, on what are you basing this percentage? Do you have statistics? Have you done a poll? It is very obvious that you believe that anything that you haven’t personally experienced is not happening in large amounts. You can’t quite comprehend that your experiences are smaller than a speck in your state, let alone the entire country.

Personally, I don’t know how often strangers that I have never met and will never meet in cities and states that I have never visited are being treated negatively about leaving their kids in cars. I can’t possibly guess and I’m not going to pull numbers out of thin air like you. I do know that MANY people here have complained about being harassed about leaving kids in cars. I do know that people are being arrested for it. I do know that this is on an upswing since nobody was being arrested for it 10 years ago. I have witnessed numerous times recently bystanders berating people for leaving dogs in cars under safe conditions and can’t imagine that they would react differently to a child in a car. The fact that I’ve never been harassed may be because it doesn’t happen often or because I have darkly tinted windows so people have never noticed the kid in the car. Who knows.

And we should not have to stop doing something completely safe in order to avoid being harassed!!!!! In no way, shape or form should we have to stay within view of our car just to avoid being arrested. It is either safe to leave a child in the car for 5 minutes or it isn’t.

Oh, the phone place. Right. Yeah, I guess depending on the parking it would be easy enough to leave your kid in the car and pay a bill there.

http://jezebel.com/for-chrissakes-dont-leave-a-kid-under-6-alone-in-a-car-1587279293

This is the best overview of this nonsense I have seen so far…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/14/children-heat-deaths-cars_n_5674641.html

Dirk, I’ve worked in criminal law for over 10 years and also handle CPS cases. While everything will vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, I am well aware of the general trends in prosecution around the country. And much of what we see parents getting arrested for – sitting in cars, playing in parks, staying home alone – would have been startling when I started practicing and now is not surprising at all. That doesn’t mean that it is occurring daily or even monthly, but the climate in criminal law is such that it isn’t surprising (appalling, but not surprising) when it happens. And I am not saying that because I read Lenore’s site. My cohorts, few of whom are parents, agree. It is part of a general trend to criminalize as much of life as possible.

“(read April’s post in this entry here for what is certainly reasonable,”

Hmmm, which part of April’s post am I supposed to find reasonable? The part where she says that her friend called CPS and the police on someone paying a bill at Metro. Or the part where she got dirty looks for leaving her baby in the car UNDER SUPERVISION. I’m not seeing anything reasonable there. I’m only seeing proof that people are completely unreasonable about this.

Even if it could be presumed that your 70% would never call on someone else doing it in a fashion that they don’t agree with (which can’t actually be presumed), that still leaves 30% of parents and all those pesky non-parents out there to report people. That’s a lot of people.

Donna, her first post where she listed all the reasonable times she “left” her kids in the car. But to be honest pumping for gas or going in a donut shop where you are 10 feet from the car and can see it through a giant glass wall isn’t leaving your kid in the car.

But read this, honestly read it, and tell me what you think…

http://jezebel.com/for-chrissakes-dont-leave-a-kid-under-6-alone-in-a-car-1587279293

Dirk, It isn’t a daily or monthly occurrence in MY small town. However, my one small town is not the entire US. Meaning, if it is happening a few times a year in my town, it is likely happening a few times a year in MANY towns and that starts to accumulate into a lot of people. And those are just the ones arrested. Not the ones who have police called but no arrest occurs. Nor the ones who are berated by passersby. Nor the ones whose passersby go on Facebook and rail about the person who left a baby in the car for 5 seconds and how they didn’t do something but wished that they had (and likely next time will). Nor the thousands of commenters on articles who proclaim that people who do things like this should have their children taken away and are likely to call 911 if they ever actually see it.

Further, I was speaking of general criminal trends throughout the entire US. This is based on seminars and criminal law associations, not my own anecdotal experience.

Dirk,

Why do you not answer questions directly? You are worse than an elected official.

Making it law, to never allow anyone under the age of 12 yrs old to remain unsupervised in a vehicle……..will that save any lives? Will we see the rate of deaths decline over the next 5 yrs, or will it remain static?

“Although I guess that since the numbers of kids dying in cars has remained static despite the growth in population might signify that less people are leaving their kids in cars?”

Since almost all kids who die in cars are FORGOTTEN in the car for hours, I would say that it indicates that fewer kids are getting forgotten in cars. Good thing.

What exactly does this have to do with choosing to leave a child in the car?

That should be you CAN’T legislate away accidents.

(This blog needs an edit function).

I don’t know how many people have been arrested, interrogated, or subjected to child protective services investigation because they left kids in the car. My concern is that “kids in the car” danger and the need to call 911 is a media trend getting significant attention, which is increasing the number of people who feel the need to intervene and to change their former habits. I’m especially concerned about lower income moms being targeted for “intervention.”

Here are some examples of leaving a child in the car — outside the parent’s sight unless that parent can see through walls — which I do not believe warrant police/CPS attention:
(1) Sufficiently mature children reading/using an i-pad in the car w/ windows open or in temperate conditions while mom grocery shops or runs another errand that takes fifteen minutes to an hour. There may be younger children or babies under their supervision. — What age the kids should be and how long mom should be gone is open to wide debate and, therefore, rarely should result in call to police. Educate people on the specific dangers of overheating.
(2) Babies and toddlers strapped into carseats while mom goes inside the preschool building to get an older sibling who needs to be signed out.
(3) All those quick trips you deem okay — pizza, gas station, mini mart, etc. — in which mom does not have a view of her children during the transaction or while waiting in line. In poor communities, many people go inside in the gas station to prepay in cash, which can take more than five minutes if there’s a line.

Yeah, I’ve never understood the need to be able to see the kids in the car (and the over-explanation of commenters here in the vein of “the dry cleaner’s is all windows and I watched the car the entire time!”)during an errand. See them do what? In my opinion that’s just more response to the fear-mongering…I can see that the 6-year-old is going to hang himself on the automatic window, I can see him putting the stopped car into gear, I can see the kidnapper approach?

If a parent has assessed the situation and deems that it’s appropriate to leave the kid in the car, why the need to stare at it?

@ Amanda Matthews no one in all the U S of A is going give one damn about a kid of any age being left in a car at a gas station to pump and pay for gas.

Dear Donna, there is no epidemic and you can’t even point to any statistics that there is any uptic at all. Because there isn’t. You can’t find daily articles of arrests or run ins because there aren’t and frankly I would lean towards the notion that the run ins are warranted.

I had to have to tell you this part your idealization of the past is false. And that as more younger and younger parents are arrive the more your feelings will be in the minority.

Lenore would disappoint all of you. Because she wouldn’t agree with you. If you carefully read what she says on the car issue for example, it is clear she means only for a short period and that you need to be close to the vehicle. She doesn’t actually mean leaving a 9, 8, 6 and 1 year old and a 6 month old in a car while you go food shopping is ok… The phrase she uses repeatedly is “a few minutes.” A few minutes. A few minutes. A few minutes. A few minutes. A few minutes.

Yep,Parents do come equipped with brains. And the ones who use them are fine. Those who do not and do such a crappy job they get the attention of the law, cps, old ladies and Lenore are brainless.

Dirk,

Just because an average trip takes x minutes does not mean that every trip takes that many minutes. People do stop in to the grocery store for quick trips too. A parent has the brains to decide whether each individual trip is going to be long enough to justify dragging the kids in.

As for “be sensible and it won’t happen to you,” I’m telling you it did happen to me. You either think I am a liar (because I obviously have nothing better to do than make up cop horror stories), or you do not comprehend what you read.

When there are actual verifiable campaigns out there telling everyone to call 911 if they see a kid in a car (because if they don’t a baby is going to die), you are foolish if you think nobody is going to do that.

Read this.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/06/11/kids_left_alone_in_cars_should_adults_call_the_police_or_mind_their_own.html