how to avoid forgetting your child in a hot car
kid’s bodies are not good at regulating temperature: fatal heat stroke can come on in as little as 15 minutes.
jul 4 2022
2 minute read
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in this episode of everything should be better, tristin hopper explains how easy it is for this horrific situation to happen, and some ways you can make sure it doesn’t. watch the video or read the transcript below.
here’s something awful that happens all the time: a parent forgets their child in a hot car and the child dies.
as tragedies go, it’s particularly easy to dismiss these ones as something that would never, ever happen to you. after all, what kind of monster forgets their own kid in the car?
but here’s how these tragedies usually happen: you’ve got two working parents who alternate daycare drop-offs of their kid. some days it’s mom. some days it’s dad.
now, throw in a sleepless night. maybe the kid had a nightmare. maybe they wet the bed. but the result is that the whole family is super tired the next day.
so a groggy mom straps in the kid and drives to work, forgetting to stop by the daycare. after all, she’s late … and it’s not like she does the drop-off every day. and the kid? they fall asleep.
mom parks and hops out of the car, completely unaware of the silent, sleeping child in the backseat. she might remember at some point during the work day or, as is typical, the full horror of the situation won’t kick in until she returns to the parking lot to drive home.
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there are exceptions: in the u.s., a quarter of hot car deaths are because a child crawled into a parked car and got stuck.
and on a hot enough day, you can kill your child with as little as a quick trip to the grocery store. kid’s bodies are not good at regulating temperature and a cracked window does almost nothing: fatal heat stroke can come on in as little as 15 minutes.
but the majority of child deaths in hot cars are due to that scenario i described. a sleeping child and a missed daycare drop off.
is there any way to ensure that a forgetful day doesn’t turn into a deadly tragedy for your child?
here’s a few things you can do: tell your daycare provider to call you if your child is unexpectedly not dropped off. every single time you hop into the car, whether you have your kid or not, take something important – like your wallet, purse or cell phone, and toss it into the backseat.
now, every time you exit your vehicle, you’re going to have to reach into the back, where you’ll be able to see if there just happens to be a sleeping kid in that car seat.
and for the rest of you, if it’s summer and you see an unattended kid inside a car, i’m afraid that’s just one of those things you’re going to have to deal with. fortunately, it’s pretty easy to break a car window, or at least call 911.
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