The Day I Left My Son in the Car

[Pollyanna]

Just to be clear, I am not making a judgement about the mother. I am pointing out that her decision was unnecessary, potentially dangerous, and in her city illegal. Those are statements of fact not judgement.

[BonBon]

Just to be clear, I am not making a judgement about the mother. I am pointing out that her decision was unnecessary, potentially dangerous, and in her city illegal. Those are statements of fact not judgement.

I wasn't referring to comments in this thread...just thinking of my experiences with the world at large, as mentioned about lack of hats and shoes getting me in hot water with judgy people.

[Pollyanna]

I wasn't referring to comments in this thread...just thinking of my experiences with the world at large, as mentioned about lack of hats and shoes getting me in hot water with judgy people.

Gotcha!

[Vishenka69]

I'm totally with BonBon on this. I want my kids to learn responsible independence. I've also left them strapped in a parked car but also make sure not to do it in a public place, so as not to end up in the situation discussed here.

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[peggyfromwastate]

The Day I Left My Son in the Car

I follow the guidelines of when it's ok to leave kids at home unattended. I need to look into if this is the same for the car though. I never let anyone stay in the car in an area I don't know, but I will let my 12 year olds and of course 18 year old stay in the car. I don't leave the keys, though. I lock them in and the alarm will sound if they open the door. Also my ds10 can stay home alone, so I'll let him stay in the car alone. I will let dd5 stay in the car only with dd18, and then dd18 has the keys. I have left dd5 in the car with dd12 or ds12 before too, but not usually. They are old enough to babysit her for short periods of time at home. I've been comfortable with that from the age of "legal babysitter" status. I have never left a kid under age 11 in the car alone unsupervised-- if a 9 year old is in there it's only with older siblings.

Certainly leaving a 4 year old strapped in while you run into best buy is totally unacceptable. I was just in this situation a week ago. I needed a charger for my iPhone and we were on a trip. I was parked in the best buy parking lot. Dd12 and dd5 were in the car, and dd12 was watching her. That's ok with me, bc dd12 is old enough to babysit. Ds12 and ds 9 came into the store with me because they wanted to. I guess I could be arrested? But I know my kids and my comfort level with the situation, and I set the alarm on the car and dd12 knows what to do.

Another time I was at Costco loading groceries into my car. Sometimes I kept dd3(when she was a toddler) in the shopping cart seat and sometimes I let her into the car while I was unloading. I happened to have let her into the car, where she liked to play with her brother's car seat. While I was unloading groceries, a lady backed into my shopping cart and completely dented it right at the child seat area. The force was so great that it caused a large dent in the suburbans bumper and we needed the bumper replaced and some other repairs. I was just so thankful that I had dd inside my car and not in my plain view-- in the shopping cart seat. I never left her in the cart again-- straight into the car then I deal with groceries.

[OrionGrad]

As far as a risk assessment, I think it's safer to strap a child into the car seat while you go back and put away the shopping cart than to be pushing the kid in the cart around the parking lot any more than necessary. BUT, even with that said, I still worry about someone seeing DS in his car seat while I'm putting the cart away and mistakenly thinking I've left him in there. It's a no win situation.

[spotty_dog]

It's interesting that the bystander's motive seems to have been to "get" the mother rather than to help the child. (If the person who took the video feared that the child was going to overheat, get kidnapped, or put the car into gear, they could simply have stayed close and supervised. Shooting an iPhone video in the child's face and then ghosting away to call the cops when the parent returned feels like vengeance and not like caring.)

I grabbed a new Alfie Kohn book off the library shelf called "The Myth of the Spoiled Child". From the flap: "Somehow, a set of deeply conservative assumptions about children -- what they're like and how they should be raised -- have congealed into the conventional wisdom in our society. Parents are accused of being both permissive and overprotective, unwilling to set limits and afraid to let their kids fail. Young people, meanwhile, are routinely described as entitled and narcissistic. . . among other unflattering adjectives." I wonder if he talks at all about the relationship between helicopter parenting and free range parenting, between actionable inattentiveness and obnoxious vicarious living.

Clearly this person did make a mistake. She seems to own that, and her own best friend has very seriously leveled with her about her bad choice. But is it honestly a screw with your whole life for multiple years of court dates and uncertainty about the custody of your children kind of mistake? With the kind of child abuse that is out there?

If you'd been on that plane with the kid who was raised and trained to have his iDevice to entertain him during periods when physical activity wasn't appropriate, and he was deprived of the device, do you think you might have been judging the parent who let her hooligan run wild in the aisles? The two hours before boarding a plane flight solo with a preschooler and toddler don't seem like they should be held up as the time frame in which a parent makes her most level considered decisions! So I don't feel like I can judge her for taking extra risk in order to "just" get her kid his earphones...it probably felt pretty darned urgent at the time.

So much gray area.

[Ladybug]

And to make things easier I would have bought the earphones at the airport electronic stand and paid double price just to avoid the extra errand and time before a family flight. That makes her a bit amature

[Pollyanna]

And to make things easier I would have bought the earphones at the airport electronic stand and paid double price just to avoid the extra errand and time before a family flight. That makes her a bit amature

Lol, I thought the same thing! Think of the money she could have saved in attorney fees