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[Baconsammy]

to all of you high and mighty people.

what she did is fucking easy to do.

No, it isn't easy to do. There's never been a moment when I didn't know my daughter was in the back seat. No matter how tired or stressed I've been, I've never lost track of her. It's not easy to do.

 

[ScientificNinja]

Assuming all things being equal, I have to think a single parent has a lot more focus on the kid than two equal parents sharing the responsibility. You can lean on your partner and rely on them. It takes the pressure off more but at the same time can lead to mix ups or moments of a lapse. It's totally different to think I always pick up the kid to sometimes I pick up the kid.

Give your wife the gift of a day off with her friends and offer to look after your child for the full day.

 

[TheSeks]

No, it isn't easy to do. There's never been a moment when I didn't know my daughter was in the back seat. No matter how tired or stressed I've been, I've never lost track of her. It's not easy to do.

Yes, it is. Replace "baby" in your situation with whatever you forget at times. Names, plans, directions to a place you've never been before. Same shit here, just in her case her brain didn't scream "YOUR KID IS IN THE CAR, DAMN IT!" until it was too late.

Spoiler

And no, I'm not comparing a babies life with trivial shit. I'm saying it's the same damn thing. Her brain's "important" meter jumped over the baby and forgot him.

 

[Marty Chinn]

Give your wife the gift of a day off with her friends and offer to look after your child for the full day.

I have; in fact I've taken the girl on full days more than she has. Not sure how tha relates to the point. When you're a single parent, there is probably a highly more likely chance that your normal routine is day in and day out about that kid where as with two parents, you split the responsibility every day.

The amount of time is important. I do feel sorry for her, I don't think she should be in jail, but she is grossly negligent. There is absolutely no fucking way I would have ever forgotten (or imagined) that I took care of my children for hours on end.

This was not a couple of minutes. It was over a couple of hours. How many times have you lapsed for 6 hours?

The amount of time isn't that important. It's the point of having a lapse from being on auto pilot. It wasn't even a couple minutes for me, it was a matter of seconds and that really is all it takes. For the mother, she thought the kid was in daycare. When I'm at work, I can go long stretches not thinking about my kid because I'm working and assume they are safe in daycare. This is even factoring in my daycare has cameras and I have on one of my monitors the feed up all the time. I'm not so paranoid to be constantly worrying about my kid at daycare.

 

[ScientificNinja]

No, it isn't easy to do. There's never been a moment when I didn't know my daughter was in the back seat. No matter how tired or stressed I've been, I've never lost track of her. It's not easy to do.

Then you are blessed. May you never lose it. Because if you do, I don't know if I'll be able to handle the awkwardness of you having to hang around with the rest of us heathens.

 

[bomma_man]

I can't imagine how horrible this would be, made me feel sick reading it.

So did this thread, but for different reasons.

 

[ScientificNinja]

I have; in fact I've taken the girl on full days more than she has. Not sure how tha relates to the point.

Just wanted to illustrate that the concerns, routines, pressures and decision-making processes of a parent are the same whether you're single or not.

 

[Marty Chinn]

Just wanted to illustrate that the concerns, routines, pressures and decision-making processes of a parent are the same whether you're single or not.

I don't think that's true though. Granted I've never been a single parent, but I can't see how a single parent who has to do everything day in and day out is the same as two parents who can share the responsibility every day.

 

[ScientificNinja]

I don't think that's true though. Granted I've never been a single parent, but I can't see how a single parent who has to do everything day in and day out is the same as two parents who can share the responsibility every day.

Child care centers.

Grandparents.

Friends.

Nannies and other hired help.

You'd end up relying on these as a matter of necessity. At least, that's what I'd imagine if I were to maintain some kind of decent career.

 

[DR2K]

A brain fart? She was busy with getting to work? She dropped her other kid off and didn't think of her other kid because she was stressed and forgetful due to the brains ability to make you forget shit when you're stressed (don't tell me this doesn't happen to you DR2K, because you and I know that's bullshit). It happens.

It sucks her kids dead, but she wasn't "neglectent" because she forgot the kid. It was an accident. A terrible and horrible accident but an accident just the same.

Oh I've forgotten small things and have had brain farts and the like, but another human being in my care I have never forgotten for even less than a minute.

Neglects definition doesn't change because the intention was different.

 

[PantherLotus]

I have a 2-year old and a 4-month old. I truly understand how this could happen, and this story has kept me awake at night since I heard about it. I live a few miles from this lady's house, btw, so I hear a lot about it. I've been in a waking nightmare about it since I heard. The WaPo article doesn't make it easier to scrub the image from my brain.

No excuse will ever be good enough. Nothing will bring that poor little helpless baby back. And nothing will save that woman's life from herself. I'm in tears just thinking about the complete despair that an accident like this would cause.

I would kill myself if I was still sane enough to do so.



p.s. thanks to whomever posted the links to the safety devices. I forwarded it to my wife so we can pick a couple out tomorrow.

 

[Monocle]

I read a very sad, long form article about this a while back. It happens occasionally and the parents' lives are generally wrecked, sometimes with legal penalties.


Edit: Here it is
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/27/AR2009022701549.html



Just awful. No legal penalty is as bad as the guilt.

Thanks for posting this piece. Really insightful, well worth the read. You might expect reckless irresponsibility to be common in cases where infants die forgotten in their parents' vehicles, but the article suggests otherwise. I see now how even a loving and highly capable mother or father could make such an awful mistake. Sometimes one little oversight slides the last segment into a line of factors that pours disaster into your world.

I see no good reason to criminalize innocent mistakes. Instead we should acknowledge our human fallibility, learn more about it by looking at how and where we go wrong, and do all we can to compensate for its effects. In the case at hand, a good start would be to use some of the measures the article mentions, like leaving an important item near your kid's carseat so you'll see him or her when you retrieve it, and pressuring car manufacturers to include alarm systems in their vehicles that activate when you turn off the engine and forget to take your child with you.

An excerpt that stood out to me:

"This is a case of pure evil negligence of the worse kind . . . He deserves the death sentence."

"I wonder if this was his way of telling his wife that he didn't really want a kid."

"He was too busy chasing after real estate commissions. This shows how morally corrupt people in real estate-related professions are."

These were readers' online comments to The Washington Post news article of July 10, 2008, reporting the circumstances of the death of Miles Harrison's son. These comments were typical of many others, and they are typical of what happens again and again, year after year in community after community, when these cases arise. A substantial proportion of the public reacts not merely with anger, but with frothing vitriol.

Ed Hickling believes he knows why. Hickling is a clinical psychologist from Albany, N.Y., who has studied the effects of fatal auto accidents on the drivers who survive them. He says these people are often judged with disproportionate harshness by the public, even when it was clearly an accident, and even when it was indisputably not their fault.

Humans, Hickling said, have a fundamental need to create and maintain a narrative for their lives in which the universe is not implacable and heartless, that terrible things do not happen at random, and that catastrophe can be avoided if you are vigilant and responsible.

In hyperthermia cases, he believes, the parents are demonized for much the same reasons. "We are vulnerable, but we don't want to be reminded of that. We want to believe that the world is understandable and controllable and unthreatening, that if we follow the rules, we'll be okay. So, when this kind of thing happens to other people, we need to put them in a different category from us. We don't want to resemble them, and the fact that we might is too terrifying to deal with. So, they have to be monsters."

That's one of the strongest bits, but way the pain of the guilt-stricken parents lances out from so many of the other passages is the most effective aspect of the article. Quality journalism there.

 

[C4Lukins]

So are there any parents in this thread who think she should be prosecuted?

 

[Marty Chinn]

Child care centers.

Grandparents.

Friends.

Nannies and other hired help.

You'd end up relying on these as a matter of necessity. At least, that's what I'd imagine if I were to maintain some kind of decent career.

That's assuming you have all those resources available and the same resources can be applied to a couple too. I just don't think it's safe to assume you apply all that to a single parent. Like I said before, all things being equal, there is a difference no matter how you slice it when you daily drop off and pick up your kid versus splitting the responsibility. I just can't equate being a single parent as being the same experience raising a kid as it is with a couple. It devalues what it takes to be a single parent in my opinion.

 

[PantherLotus]

So are there any parents in this thread who think she should be prosecuted?

I don't think she should be prosecuted.

 

[ScientificNinja]

So are there any parents in this thread who think she should be prosecuted?

I would take no pleasure in it, but yes. At the end of the day, it is a form of negligence that has resulted in the death of a person. But equally I think some compassion must be shown in the kind of punishment that is meted out. The point of the criminal justice system is not only to punish, but also to rehabilitate.

 

[Bombadil]

No, it isn't easy to do. There's never been a moment when I didn't know my daughter was in the back seat. No matter how tired or stressed I've been, I've never lost track of her. It's not easy to do.

"People shouldn't make that mistake because I've never made that mistake."

"People shouldn't behave that way because I don't behave that way."

"People shouldn't laugh at that joke because I didn't laugh at that joke."

 

[Ferrio]

I would take no pleasure in it, but yes. At the end of the day, it is a form of negligence that has resulted in the death of a person. But equally I think some compassion must be shown in the kind of punishment that is meted out. The point of the criminal justice system is not only to punish, but also to rehabilitate.

Rehabilitate what? She made a mistake. A horrible life altering non-conscious mistake. How do you rehabilitate that? If anything she needs therapy cause she's never going to be the same again.

 

[DR2K]

So are there any parents in this thread who think she should be prosecuted?

Legally I don't see why she shouldn't. If she's actually being honest though, there is no worse punishment than the death of a child.

 

[Monocle]

I would take no pleasure in it, but yes. At the end of the day, it is a form of negligence that has resulted in the death of a person. But equally I think some compassion must be shown in the kind of punishment that is meted out. The point of the criminal justice system is not only to punish, but also to rehabilitate.

You would prosecute someone for making a mistake that fear of punishment not only would not but could not hinder? A mistake that involves no prior intent to do harm? What part of "involuntary" are you having trouble understanding?

 

[Costcosaurus]

How the hell do you leave a baby in the car if you drive the same car to work? Did the mother leave the baby in the car while she was at work?

 

[ScientificNinja]

That's assuming you have all those resources available and the same resources can be applied to a couple too. I just don't think it's safe to assume you apply all that to a single parent. Like I said before, all things being equal, there is a difference no matter how you slice it when you daily drop off and pick up your kid versus splitting the responsibility. I just can't equate being a single parent as being the same experience raising a kid as it is with a couple. It devalues what it takes to be a single parent in my opinion.

Devalues it? No it doesn't. If anything, there's much more work involved in being a single parent. But as I understand it, you'd have me believe that a single parent is less likely to make an oversight with their child because their daily involvement with the child is much greater.

I disagree. If anything, the greater amount of work - and thus fatigue - would make the likelihood of a mistake correspondingly greater.

But that's not something I necessarily buy into either. You can't conveniently say "all things being equal" and assume that everyone is going to spend on the same services with the same income.

When you're a single parent, there are things you have to do because, depending on what you want to achieve (having a career, maintaining a roof over one's head, etc), there is no choice. When you're sharing the duties, there is much greater choice; and I think it's safe to say that a lot of those options are simply not pursued.

 

[Marty Chinn]

How the hell do you leave a baby in the car if you drive the same car to work? Did the mother leave the baby in the car while she was at work?

Yes.

 

[PantherLotus]

I would take no pleasure in it, but yes. At the end of the day, it is a form of negligence that has resulted in the death of a person. But equally I think some compassion must be shown in the kind of punishment that is meted out. The point of the criminal justice system is not only to punish, but also to rehabilitate.

Your last statement is patently false. The point of the justice system is to protect citizens from each other and to resolve disputes between two parties. This is a tough enough subject without this nonsense.

 

[ScientificNinja]

You would prosecute someone for making a mistake that fear of punishment not only will not but cannot hinder? A mistake that involves no prior intent to do harm?

Sorry, there's a third purpose to the criminal justice system I failed to mention: deterrence. The wider public needs to know that this kind of conduct/behavior/whatever isn't acceptable.

The last thing you want is to send out a message that effectively gives parents a "get out of jail free" card for a screw-up of this magnitude.

 

[Monocle]

Sorry, there's a third purpose to the criminal justice system I failed to mention: deterrence. The wider public needs to know that this kind of conduct/behavior/whatever isn't acceptable.

The last thing you want is to send out a message that effectively gives parents a "get out of jail free" card for a screw-up of this magnitude.

As I tried to convey in the first sentence of my other post, there's nothing to deter. How can you get people not to do something they have no conscious control over?

 

[Ferrio]

Sorry, there's a third purpose to the criminal justice system I failed to mention: deterrence. The wider public needs to know that this kind of conduct/behavior/whatever isn't acceptable.

The last thing you want is to send out a message that effectively gives parents a "get out of jail free" card for a screw-up of this magnitude.

But it doesn't deter against anything. How do you deter against something that someone completely forgot? It's not like some light would of gone off her head "Oh ya that mother in XXX got 10 years in jail because she forgot her baby". No, she thought her child was safetly at a day care center, there was no reason to think like that.


And second, it's not a get outta jail free card. All of these cases should be explored for foul play. Which this one still currently is.

 

[Marty Chinn]

Devalues it? No it doesn't. If anything, there's much more work involved in being a single parent. But as I understand it, you'd have me believe that a single parent is less likely to make an oversight with their child because their daily involvement with the child is much greater.

I disagree. If anything, the greater amount of work - and thus fatigue - would make the likelihood of a mistake correspondingly greater.

But that's not something I necessarily buy into either. You can't conveniently say "all things being equal" and assume that everyone is going to spend on the same services with the same income.

When you're a single parent, there are things you have to do because, depending on what you want to achieve (having a career, maintaining a roof over one's head, etc), there is no choice. When you're sharing the duties, there is much greater choice; and I think it's safe to say that a lot of those options are simply not pursued.

What I'm saying is that as a single parent, you are likely to have more focus on your child because you're the only parent. As a couple, I have faith and rely on my wife for also being there. It lessens the burden and by default I can rest easier and not constantly have to worry about my child because I share the responsibility. Being less focused also can IMO lead more of a likely chance to have a momentary lapse in memory about your child.

 

[Costcosaurus]

Yes.

That's extremely careless on her part then. As soon as she puts the baby in the car, her mind should have been set on dropping off the baby at day care. How can anyone be this dumb?

 

[ScientificNinja]

Your last statement is patently false.

Okay... I guess we should just execute all the people who are declared not guilty for reason of insanity or some other mental or psychological encumbrance?

 

[Ferrio]

That's extremely careless on her part then. As soon as she puts the baby in the car, her mind should have been set on dropping off the baby at day care. How can anyone be this dumb?

You've never had a day blend together with another day? Ever? When something becomes routine it's really easy to think you've done something cause you've done it so often before. Never had the "Oh I swore I turned off XX", but that was actually from another night? Yes this has MUCH bigger consequences, but both are the same mistake.

 

[PantherLotus]

Okay... I guess we should just execute all the people who are declared not guilty for reason of insanity or some other mental or psychological encumbrance?

What? Are you interested in having a fair conversation here?

 

[saunderez]

You've never had a day blend together with another day? Ever? When something becomes routine it's really easy to think you've done something cause you've done it so often before. Never had the "Oh I swore I turned off XX", but that was actually from another night?

Happens to me every now and then. Luckily for me it's inconsequential. I'll be looking for my car keys and have this really strong feeling they are in a certain place. They won't be there of course, I'll find them somewhere completely different and then realise the place I first looked was where I found them yesterday.

 

[Hamplin]

So are there any parents in this thread who think she should be prosecuted?

Yes. I would want myself to get prosecuted if i did this to my child.

 

[Marty Chinn]

That's extremely careless on her part then. As soon as she puts the baby in the car, her mind should have been set on dropping off the baby at day care. How can anyone be this dumb?

Because she went on auto pilot and for some reason or another thought the kid was at daycare. Have you never been on auto pilot or forgot something important? Who knows what her situation was. What if she normally picks up the baby but that morning she had to take the baby in so it was a break up in her normal routine? Maybe something happened that morning to cause her to rush or fell behind? Babies can be unpredictable and can cause things to happen. I take it you don't have kids.

 

[ScientificNinja]

Being less focused also can IMO lead more of a likely chance to have a momentary lapse in memory about your child.

I think this is where you and I disagree, then. I see the distinction you're drawing, and I think you're splitting hairs. Whether you're a single parent or sharing the duties with another, there's still enough work and distractions to deal with in either case for a momentary lapse in judgement of this kind to occur.

 

[Monocle]

That's extremely careless on her part then. As soon as she puts the baby in the car, her mind should have been set on dropping off the baby at day care. How can anyone be this dumb?

From the article that Guevara posted:

David Diamond is picking at his breakfast at a Washington hotel, trying to explain.

"Memory is a machine," he says, "and it is not flawless. Our conscious mind prioritizes things by importance, but on a cellular level, our memory does not. If you're capable of forgetting your cellphone, you are potentially capable of forgetting your child."

Diamond is a professor of molecular physiology at the University of South Florida and a consultant to the veterans hospital in Tampa. He's here for a national science conference to give a speech about his research, which involves the intersection of emotion, stress and memory. What he's found is that under some circumstances, the most sophisticated part of our thought-processing center can be held hostage to a competing memory system, a primitive portion of the brain that is -- by a design as old as the dinosaur's -- inattentive, pigheaded, nonanalytical, stupid.

Diamond is the memory expert with a lousy memory, the one who recently realized, while driving to the mall, that his infant granddaughter was asleep in the back of the car. He remembered only because his wife, sitting beside him, mentioned the baby. He understands what could have happened had he been alone with the child. Almost worse, he understands exactly why.

The human brain, he says, is a magnificent but jury-rigged device in which newer and more sophisticated structures sit atop a junk heap of prototype brains still used by lower species. At the top of the device are the smartest and most nimble parts: the prefrontal cortex, which thinks and analyzes, and the hippocampus, which makes and holds on to our immediate memories. At the bottom is the basal ganglia, nearly identical to the brains of lizards, controlling voluntary but barely conscious actions.

Diamond says that in situations involving familiar, routine motor skills, the human animal presses the basal ganglia into service as a sort of auxiliary autopilot. When our prefrontal cortex and hippocampus are planning our day on the way to work, the ignorant but efficient basal ganglia is operating the car; that's why you'll sometimes find yourself having driven from point A to point B without a clear recollection of the route you took, the turns you made or the scenery you saw.

Ordinarily, says Diamond, this delegation of duty "works beautifully, like a symphony. But sometimes, it turns into the '1812 Overture.' The cannons take over and overwhelm."

By experimentally exposing rats to the presence of cats, and then recording electrochemical changes in the rodents' brains, Diamond has found that stress -- either sudden or chronic -- can weaken the brain's higher-functioning centers, making them more susceptible to bullying from the basal ganglia. He's seen the same sort of thing play out in cases he's followed involving infant deaths in cars.

"The quality of prior parental care seems to be irrelevant," he said. "The important factors that keep showing up involve a combination of stress, emotion, lack of sleep and change in routine, where the basal ganglia is trying to do what it's supposed to do, and the conscious mind is too weakened to resist. What happens is that the memory circuits in a vulnerable hippocampus literally get overwritten, like with a computer program. Unless the memory circuit is rebooted -- such as if the child cries, or, you know, if the wife mentions the child in the back -- it can entirely disappear."

 

[ScientificNinja]

What? Are you interested in having a fair conversation here?

Hey, you told me that my last statement - that the criminal justice system blah blah blah rehabilitation - is "patently false". So I'm simply testing the logic of that statement.

 

[PantherLotus]

And I'm out. Thanks GAF.

 

[ScientificNinja]

The point of the justice system is to protect citizens from each other and to resolve disputes between two parties.

I might also add: you're describing the civil system.

 

[panty]

If you don't charge her, it sets an example to other people that you can just leave your child in your car if you want to get away with murder. (Yes there are a few people who do this). But I do understand this is the worst time in the mothers life and is likely punishment enough. Hard to say what to do.

What?

Hell no.

 

[Ferrio]

Also for the people who want punishment.

This woman through her actions led to her child's death. She'll have to live with that fact for the rest of her life. Thinking about her child alone in that car for 8 hours, and knowing that it was through her mistake her child had to go through that. It might replay in her head every night. Her marriage might fail, she might lose custody of her remaining kid. She might even break down mentality for the rest of her life.

What fucking punishment are you going to heap on her that's going to be worse than that?

 

[saunderez]

I might also add: you're describing the civil system.

Not really. The criminal justice system aims at protecting citizens from other dangerous citizens and resolves disputes between the police and the person being prosecuted.

 

[Stasis]

Pretty outrageous they aren't charging the mom.

Wow.

The only thing outrageous is how that's your first, automatic thought. I'm sure you've changed your tune by now, but it's still troubling that it was the first thing to pop up.

Not everything is black and white. In fact, most things aren't.

 

[noah111]

This is what I get to see when I wake up and check the news on GAF.... FUCK.

 

[Keikaku]

From the article that Guevara posted:

I've given up on this thread. I posted this exact segment of the articlea couple of pages back but there are some posters who seem to think that every parent should be a flawless machine that never makes mistakes.

People make mistakes. Sometimes, as in cases like these, those mistakes have fatal consequences. That doesn't mean that it was anything more than a mistake. It doesn't mean that you had the intent to harm your child. It doesn't mean that you're a bad person. Your mind literally fucked you and you couldn't do a damn thing about it.

 

[LightofRohan]

I have nightmares about shit like this happening with my kids. Why? Because I'm probably one of the most shamelessly anally retentive people I know, and even I know what it's like to just be so physically and mentally exhausted that it's *possible* to do such things.

And, honestly, if you've never succumbed to anything like that, good for you. You're a better man than me. Have a fucking cookie while I empathize with the poor mother.

I agree there needs to be some form of legal recognition that what the parent has done is wrong. Prison mightn't be the answer; perhaps probation or a suspended sentence, provided the appropriate level of contrition is shown.

Lolol. Hey parents! Don't kill your kids, or you could be put on probation! How about, hey parents! Don't kill your kids or you will have dead kids?

And the people that think she should get prison time, like going to prison would really stop a lot of moms that are fed up w/ their babies to the point of killing it... it's not like, "Man, I'm really tired of feeding this kid... oh wait, they don't give sentences to parents that leave there baby in the car!? THAT'LL WORK!... Hunny I'm going to the mall all day!".

 

[Salacious Crumb]

There aren't many things I would consider being worse punishment than knowing you're responsible for the death of your own child.

 

[EYEL1NER]

Wow.

The only thing outrageous is how that's your first, automatic thought. I'm sure you've changed your tune by now, but it's still troubling that it was the first thing to pop up.

Not everything is black and white. In fact, most things aren't.

If you are saying 'wow' at that post, wait until you get to the one comparing what she did to the Holocaust.

 

[-Stranger-]

How the fuck could you be so absent minded to leave your toddler in a car?

I have a nearly 2 year old daughter and i don't understand it.