The problem with this, is that most people who defend forgetting your kid in the car will say that in his mind the child was in daycare. He could have thought of the child all day and even have spoken to his wife about him but if he thought he was in daycare it wouldn't have registered.
I'm intrigued by the lengths to which people will go to in order to defend this guy in this case. It's very telling to me that even with an arrest for murder people just don't want to hold him responsible. And the reason they don't is because of all the cases that happened before where the others were not arrested. When you only have a 50% conviction rate and you have men averaging 3 years in prison for doing this, then you are setting up a situation that is very dangerous to children.
This is why I believe that in every case the parent should be charged for negligence. Not murder but negligence. Yes people forget. We all forget things as parents, we all make mistakes as parents. Every single parent on this thread has some very bad and dangerous thing they did at one point with their child, either via laziness or desperation that could have resulted in the death of their child.
I remember one time leaving my children home alone when they were very little, during a severely cold snow storm and running up the street to pick up milk and cereal and diapers. I had left them for about 10 minutes and ran the entire way. They were both sitting in front of the television and I figured, 'it's safer to leave them here in this cozy warm apartment instead of dragging them out into the cold." They were watching morning cartoons and sitting on the couch. When I got back my 3 year old was in the bathroom with a can of shaving cream, a face full of shaving cream and a razor getting ready to go shave.
lease:
lease: I'd like to say I never did it again, but I did do it again throughout the winter. I just put them both in their cribs before I left again. I was a single mom and had absolutely no baby sitting help and sometimes I took risks that I shouldn't have. I understand how it can happen.
However, it is negligence to do such things. It just is, and forgetting is not something that should ever be excused with a baby. When we start seeing an increase of parents "forgetting" their children in situations that will prove FATAL to the child, we don't sit back in sympathy and say "Oh well ship happens!!" We step up and say this cannot happen, it's too dangerous.
We need to raise the bar in safety, not lower it in sympathy. So parents who have small children should do things to make sure they don't forget their child. Even just writing on the side window of the car in grease paint, BABY!!! is one tiny thing that parents can do. And we shouldn't need car manufacturers and other people to solve that problem for parents. Parents need to be diligent about not ever putting their child in this type of situation. It's their responsiblity.
:twocents::twocents:
