Lilibet
Southern Oregon
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Some children are knowingly and negligently left inside hot vehicles while their parents do errands. Other kids climb inside their parents’ parked cars and become trapped. But most, like Juan Parks, are victims of adults’ disastrous lapses in memory. “Given the right scenario, I would say this can happen to anyone,” says Diamond. “It has nothing to do with how much parents love their kids. It is, to me, a tragic way of learning how the brain works.”
Each of us has dueling memory systems, Diamond explains. The first — in the primitive, “reptilian” part of the brain — directs our habits. It’s the system that lets you drive home from work without thinking consciously about every turn. The second system — located in more advanced brain regions — is responsible for short-term plans, such as “Buy milk on the way home.” And as anyone who has ever forgotten that milk knows, the primitive “habit system” is much more powerful. “It’s very difficult to keep in your mind that you want to override your habit system,” Diamond says. “And it can take over almost immediately.”
Of course, forgetting a child is far different from forgetting a gallon of 2%. But not to the reptilian brain. Imagine that your plan is “Drop kid at babysitter’s on the way to work.” If you’re tired or distracted by worries, or — worse — if you’re not the person who usually takes the kid to the sitter’s, your habit system can erase that plan with appalling ease. Like Mary Parks, you go straight to work on auto-pilot, spacing out on the fact that your child is with you in the backseat. You even develop false memories of dropping him off. “The brain is very good at filling in gaps, so you will remember what you assume you did,” Diamond says.
Tragedy in the Backseat: Hot-Car Deaths - Parenting
Heartbreaking stories of hot-car deaths — and how you can avoid them Each year about 37 babies and toddlers die when they are accidentally left strapped in car safety seats or become trapped in vehicles that rapidly heat up. If you think this senseless tragedy couldn’t happen to you, think...www.parenting.com
Excellent article @imstilla.grandma. I was glad to see David Diamond explaining the brain and memory so clearly. Some of the same parents were mentioned in this article as in the WaPo excerpts I posted the other day. I think one of the biggest takeaways for the case we’re following is the tip to never assume someone else has removed the child from the car. Parents and grandparents need to embed in their thinking that it can happen to them and to take the precautions needed and not rely on the faulty memory we can all have in certain circumstances. We don’t want to think it could happen to us, but denial can be fatal. So get those memory aids in place in the car. Our new car signals if we leave anything on the back seat, and I’m glad it does even though we don’t drive with littles. The inconvenience is a small price to pay so those with kids will have this safety feature.
JMO
Putting my purse in the back would work better for me. But the point is, come up with what works for you and do it!
