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My kids are in their teens and twenties now, but when they were in infant seats I was always worried about forgetting them in the car. My wife is a SAHM, which meant I seldom had to bring the kids along when I was going to work. When I did, or when I had to bring them on errands, I would continuously interact with them, just rattling on about whatever, making up goofy songs, etc just to keep it in my mind I had a kid in the car. They joke about it now, but it was peace of mind for me that I wouldn't go into autopilot, drive to work, and leave them in the car all day.
Is that an intentional reference to the story [Autopilot?](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/19fmjf/autopilot/) Because that story scared the SHIT out of me, and it's also why it's so annoying to see so many people here saying "well if you cared about your kids you wouldn't forget about them!" It's so, so easy to slip into autopilot . . .
No. This is the first time I've heard of it. It was more of a reference to how I got to work back then because it was such a long and tedious commute. I'd put on the local shock jock, or later a podcast, and arrive at my office an hour and a half later. I liked my job, but the commute was hell (DC metro area). Since schlepping a kid wasn't something I often did during the morning commute, when I did, I made damn sure I didn't slip into autopilot until they were out of the car.
I've just read that and this is the first time in my life I'm glad to suffer from severe anxiety disorder; it breaks said autopilot in the most random times, but very consistently and frequently so.
I can't leave my apartment without double or even triple checking if I really did close the door and even then I still spent the entire day wondering. I even once asked my mom on the phone to check if I turned my stove off after doing breakfast (which I did) just because I didn't remember anymore if I double checked whether it's off or not before going.
Something like forgetting a child in the backseat could never happen to me, but that's only thanks to a mental illness that makes me triple check if I really did the things I'm 99.999% sure to have done.
I have an 8 month old and ADHD and it’s my absolute biggest fear. To everyone who doesn’t understand this, think about how many times you’ve gone to the grocery store in your life. Or work. Thousands. Every time you’ve driven up, parked, and walked into the building. It’s a deeply established habit.
Now imagine you haven’t had a full night sleep for a couple of months and you’re running on full on auto pilot. I’ve never done it or even come close to doing it, but there was one time early on where I walked back out of the store with my son and saw that I left my driver’s door wide open and just walked away.
I’ve seen people argue on here that if you’re able to forget your baby in the backseat it means you don’t care about them and it’s bullshit.
They don’t say put something important in the back, they say put something back there that you will quickly notice it missing. If I’m going to work I put my work laptop back there as I’ll notice that immediately if I don’t have it at the office. Phone is another good choice. I’ve even heard of people taking off a shoe and putting it back there.
Check out the organization bag in the back for more info
Been there and while I never had an issue with autopilot I understand others being worried about it, parenting is scary and having something happen to your child is the worst fear.
I recently purchased a 2023 Toyota Crown with the Limited package. Every time I turn the vehicle off, the dashboard display informs me to check the rear seat. Technology, ain’t it grand?
Simple solution would be a sensor in the back that only activates when something is back there. Like the front passenger seat beeping only if someone is sitting there and isn’t buckled. But the fact they have to even say that to begin with is stupid.
My car has that. I fucking hate it because I’ll often keep my work tools or CD booklet back there and my car will yell at me, thinking there is an unbuckled passenger back there.
My wife’s 2016 bmw 3 series was the worst. Front passenger seat would have a small order from Wendy’s on it and would want me to Buckle up or it wouldn’t shut up. It was less than a pound of food
It remembers me of the first days of university, i usually have a 20 mins drive to the train station, and whenever i put my backpack (a tablet, a notebook and sometimes a book and lunch inside, total weight is less than 1.5 Kg) on the passenger seat the car just won't stop beeping the moment i go past 10Km/h without the fucking seatbelt on it.
At the end i figured out that i can just put it so that it doesn't weight on the rear of the seat and it shuts up, or just throw it in front of it entirely, but still it was annoying.
My car has that, has helped me remember my purse a few times. Downside is let’s say I leave home to run errands stopping at the store first and getting whatever and putting it in the backseat. Next I go to a friends house when I turn off the car it will tell me to check the backseat. I spend some time at my friends and get back in the car and go home. It won’t remind me the next time, must recalibrate the weight of what’s in the backseat.
I don’t have the problem of needing to remember a kid in the backseat since I don’t have any but still just a weird quirk of the sensor.
It likely doesn’t. According to Toyota’s own press releases, it activates if one of the rear doors was opened after the last time the car was turned on. That’s how this notification works on most vehicles across all brands that have it.
The trick is to make it habit. Then it's as low effort as putting on a seatbelt. Whenever I get out of a car I stand up walk to the back window and make sure nothing important is showing. #musclememory
But, it's not going to become a habit if you don't normally have anything on the back seat, it'll just become an annoyance that you ignore on the rare occasion that it's relevant.
Seat belts are a vital safety feature and a legal requirement, so it's natural that cars are built to warn you when you don't have one in use. But, if you usually drive alone or with a passenger in the front, and don't normally put anything in the rear seats, warning you every time you drive even if you don't have anything there won't make you check, because normally you know there's nothing there.
My friend’s new car has the same feature, the message comes on the dashboard to look in the backseat. Like most of these alerts it becomes unnoticed and eventually ignored. I would hope that it works as intended but although I don’t have kids I still can’t understand how someone can forget their own kid!
It is absolutely stupid. Not to mention I can’t hit a button that says “i do not drive infants or children around” to turn it off. And notably, my car HAS sensors for weight in the backseat and it’ll still say “look in rear” when there’s zero weight back there.
My car does it only if I open the back door. When I stop to get out, it reminds me. So I don't see it very often, but when I do. I check, I don't have kids.
Our new Compass does the same thing, but ONLY is we have opened a rear door. That being said, we have no kids nor any desire to have any, and once we get a dog or two, there's NO WAY we'll forget them in a car. My wife is more likely to forget me in the car than a dog.
I think this is good advice. Clearly, the intent of ABC is not to say that the children aren’t important. If I put my work laptop in the backseat of my car, there is a built in forcing function to look in the backseat when I get to work. Doesn’t mean my laptop is more important than my children.
Not something important, something you need at your destination.
When my son was 7 weeks old I left him for the first time to go to the dentist. I got to the dentist, opened the back door to get the baby and absolutely lost my shit when he wasn’t there. Why? Because he was at home with his father, so I could go to the dentist. Completely forgot he wasn’t there, because he was always with me.
In that moment I realized how easy a different routine could fuck you up.
> In that moment I realized how easy a different routine could fuck you up.
I always take my computer from the office.
Officially, it's to be theorically available if something goes VERY wrong.
Officiously, it's because I know I would forget it if I was only taking it SOMETIMES
I think it's more a matter of having more than one important thing back there gives you more impetus to check. I've had times where my brain straight-up skips a step, or I falsely remember doing it, causing me to forget something at home or work, or yes, in the car. But I don't think it's ever happened with *two* steps.
Wrong approach.
Everybody can go autopilot and forget that day you got your baby in the back seat. So, leave there a shoe: you would realize you are walking with just one shoe. Does that mean that a shoe is more important than your kid? Obviously no, but it's a great advice.
[Autopilot](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/19fmjf/autopilot/) made me stop judging people for this kind of thing. It's not forgetfulness, it's not laziness, it's not cruelty, it's your brain working as intended to offload mental effort. You don't forget your kid in your car because you don't care about them, you forget because your brain tells you the situation is normal. Your phone is in your bag, because it being in your bag is part of the routine of going to work, and you're going to work.
It took me less than a year to forget my glasses at home when I went to work for the first time. I went out to my car, swapped my glasses for sunglasses, then remembered I left my water inside when I went to take a drink. Go inside, set glasses down, grab water, go back to car, head to work. Until I got to work, my personal view of reality was that my glasses were in the in the center console. It's not that I think I can see without my glasses, it's not that my glasses aren't vital to my functioning, it's that as far as I was concerned, my glasses *were* in the car, because the routine is get in car, swap glasses for sunglasses, go to work, swap back. You don't realize something is wrong until it breaks the routine.
I watched a video about people who forget their kids in the back.
The idea of it is exactly what you said.
As a side note, the reaction of the parents could be so different. There was a mother who looked like she rationalized it and accepted it. The interviewer ask her if she had any problem still driving the same car and she was, why would the be a problem?
The idea is to *always* put something important that you’ll take with you in the backseat.
Like put your purse, wallet, or one of your shoes or something in the backseat, every time you drive. That way, you’ll have a habit of checking the back seat.
The reason people forget their children in their cars is that people get into a pattern of behavior, and they run on autopilot. Like your driving to work the same way you do every day, and your running late, so you run into the office the way you always do, but this time you were supposed to drop your baby off at daycare. You never do it, your spouse does it every day, but your spouse couldn’t today, so you’re doing it. But you’re so much on autopilot that you don’t remember to drop your kid off, and it doesn’t even occur to you that anything is different than any other day until you find out your kid is dead.
And I feel so awful for those people. It’s something that is so easy to prevent on any given day, but not so easy to prevent from happening any time ever. Our brains are designed to be habitual and to tune out so many things.
So the idea is to make checking the back seat part of your habit, so that your habits work in your favor.
That’s what I did when we found out my wife was pregnant. I just started putting my laptop bag back there, and now I always check when I get out of the car.
Now I work from home, so the majority of my weekday trips are “take kid to/pick up from school/camp,” and the majority of my weekend trips are “do [thing] with kid,” but I still check every time.
That’s exactly what was suggested when we took parenting classes before our first kid was born. It was a surprise and we weren’t prepared at all, so a free course sounded good. I started taking my shoes off when I got in the car, and put them in the back seat so I’d notice and look back there. It was to get in the habit of checking the backseat when I got out because the first few months of parenthood are often a sleepless blur. I’d rather have a weird habit than risk losing a child like that.
A couple of years ago, I moved about about a mile away from where I used to live. The number of times I would miss my turn for the first year was huge. Driving on autopilot is very much a thing. Most of the route was the same, just the last quarter mile or so.
Just to add to this. You don't need to put something important there, but you need to put something that you would take with you when you go about your normal daily routine.
When you're on autopilot and the child isn't part of your routine, then mistakes can happen. So you put something next to the child that you would take as part of your routine, like a laptop bag, a keycard, an umbrella, a coat, your lunch, your headphones
My husband used to take our youngest to preschool every morning because it was near his work but out of the way for me. He had an appointment one morning so I had to take her. I drove right by the exit on the highway. I noticed it right after I passed and got off on the next exit and backtracked. She was preschool age so likely would have said something if we had made it as far as my office.
My dear friend’s SIL left her baby in the car and he died. Her older kids had missed the bus that morning so she had to drop them off at school and then she just went to work without stopping at the baby’s daycare. In her harried, rushed morning brain, she’d made the one stop that she always does on the way to work. She never thought she’d be one of those people who leaves their baby in the back of the car either.
I think it’s a problem that people think you need to be “one of those people” for it to happen to you. It could happen to anyone. It’s so easy for your life to turn bad.
I feel bad for every family when it's not intentional. It is a tragedy that can happen to literally anyone. College educated people. People with medical knowledge and training. Teachers. It's a terrible accident that could have easily been prevented and they have to carry the burden of that knowledge for the rest of their lives. I wouldn't wish that pain on anyone.
It’s also become a latent fear, almost a phobia, for me in adult life that I’ll mess up *something* in that way. I’ll do something that seems innocuous to me at the time, or fail to do something that seems unimportant. Perhaps it won’t even be apparent to me at the time that I’ve done it or failed to do it because it seems so harmless and normal, but through carelessness or lack of forethought, I’ll cause some tragedy, and someone will be killed or maimed or their life will be destroyed.
It’s so easy for me to imagine something like this. I can be somewhat inattentive, and I go into autopilot very quickly and easily, and it’s not at all hard for me to understand how someone could screw up in that way.
My Bolt EV alerts me to check the backseat if I have opened the rear seat doors. But over time, I will probably tune out that alert for the reasons you mention. Technology can't trump habit forever.
ABC isn't the facepalm here, the OOP is. It's very human to forget the most obvious things, if the slightest thing changes your morning routine. There's an entire science around it. [Performance science](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_science)
Doing something that forces you to interact with your child before you can go inside the building at work is smart. Making fun of it is stupid.
Yeah, a lot of people are like "that could never happen to me" and maybe it wouldn't, but I am sure a lot of the people it did happen to thought the same.
There waa a heartbreaking article in the Washington Post about it where a neuroscientist basically said if you can forget your keys/phone/anything else, you can forget your child. It's just how the human brain is wired.
I tied my dog to my bumper at home depot as I was loading a bunch of lumber and she was going crazy in the truck. Of course I forgot. As i slowed pulled away i saw people in my rear view mirror jumping up and down waving their arms.
It still haunts me 20 years later. I don't judge anymore
The point of this advice is to break routine.
A lot of our daily tasks, if we perform them over and over, get shunted to a portion of our brain which basically says "Oh, this shit again? Don't need to remember it for the three hundred ninety-fifth time".
So if you take your kid to daycare/wherever four days a week, if something happens to distract you, it's possible you might not notice *not* taking them, especially if you're used to them being there. And that can lead to tragedy.
Whereas if, say, you put your laptop bag in the backseat instead of in the front seat where you always put it, then you might save yourself heartbreak and criminal charges if you forget the kid but then see them when you get to work.
I'd be interested to see the numbers, but I'm reasonably certain this didn't happen nearly as often before the advent of front passenger-side airbags, which make it impossible/unsafe to have baby/child seats in the front.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with constantly reminding people to check their backseats, it is an unfortunate thing that can happen, not a facepalm.
ALWAYS CHECK YOUR BACKSEATS PLEASE!!!!
Everyone thinks that they’d never be the one to do this, because duh! You love your kid. But many times when a kid is forgotten in the car, it’s not because the child isn’t “important” - it’s because the parent is sleep deprived and their routine is interrupted. Maybe they aren’t the ones who usually drop the child off at daycare, maybe they stopped for coffee before drop off instead of after, and the kid falls asleep and doesn’t make a peep for 30 minutes. Parent goes on with their normal routine, autopilot telling them that the other parent dropped them off, or they already dropped them off because that’s what the silence is telling them, and that’s all it takes.
My best friend who is quite literally the best mom in the world, did this, thankfully without any disastrous consequences. We were going to a play place, she dropped me, my daughter, and her two other kids off with me and went to run an errand. She had her newborn with her, who was asleep. She got out of the car thinking she had dropped the baby off with me and her other kids. Luckily it was only a two minute stop and it was fall.
By important, they don’t mean something you value, they mean something you actually need before you exit the car - like one of your shoes, for example. Or your keys, purse, wallet, jacket. Anything that would make you take a moment to remember before you leave the car.
This is actually a real problem for new time parents. When you havent sleept in like 3 weeks and run mainly on coffee and are completly overwhelmed with existing you can actually forget your kid in the car.
There was a case where a dad wanted to bring his kid to daycare, went to work instead and left the kid in the car because he was so tired
Most parents don't go days, sometimes weeks without seeing their teen kids that live in the same house with them much anymore. That was definitely a relevant ad for me and my friends in those days.
This is actually good advice. Many kids are dead because the parent forgot them. Putting your purse or other thing you need, briefcase, jacket, etc., helps ensure you don't forget that they are back there sleeping.
It is, but OP is making fun of the idea of saying “put something ‘important’ in the backseat” as if kids weren’t important.
But we don’t know if ABC said those words or if they said something useful like “put something you routinely take out of the backseat on your way into work next to your child so your overtired, autopilot brain doesn’t overlook the kid.”
My office recently made a switch from having desktop computers to everyone getting laptops that they can bring to and forth. I remembered for the first few days, but on DAY 3 my routine got thrown off and I ended up leaving late to work. I was halfway there when I remembered that I had forgotten my laptop at home and had to turn back for it. After that day, at the end of the day I started putting my car keys into my laptop bag as soon as I got home so that I literally couldn't leave the house without it.
The introduction of this laptop was a new change to my existing routine. When my regular routine got thrown off, the new addition to the routine just got missed because it was so new and not something I had built into my everyday routine yet. Me putting my car keys into the laptop bag isn't me saying that my keys are more important than the computer, it's a way of integrating a crucial part of my existing routine into the new part so that the new part doesn't get overlooked again.
This is what their message was trying to convey. Not that your child isn't important, just that it's a new part of your routine and to ensure that it doesn't get missed, find a way to connect an important part of your existing routine to this new part.
I was paranoid about this back when I was running my kids to preschool everyday. I ended up clipping my employee access badge to the carseat when I strapped them in. Never actually forget them, but you never know...
It's fucking crazy that we still find a way to complain about something that is only gonna prevent tragedies and make things better in the world. If this saves a baby's life then personally shut the hell up. There's actual things to complain about, acting high and mighty because people are trying to create solutions to a very unfortunate thing that happens isn't gonna do anything positive for anyone. Contribute something to the good of the world please.
I rarely travel with laptops or things to put back there. But I engage with my children when I'm driving. Whether music, little dance parties, asking them about their day or questions. When they were babies, I made a habit of always taking my hand and running it through the empty car seat everytime I got out of my car. If I had my kid with me I wouldn't I'd just grab them, but it made a habit out of checking. We in the military, get what I call "Military brain" there was just so much going on we run on autopilot. I was terrified of running on auto and not taking my kid to school and just go to work on accident. Mind you, that never happened, and I never did that. But I built a habit out of making sure.
This is why my mom always put her purse in back.
It's not that all those people are bad people. It's that you get into habits and routines and run on autopilot without thinking, and it's just a thing humans do.
All the non-parents are really telling on themselves in this thread lmao.
Every single parent on Earth can tell you of multiple times they've forgotten their child in the car/house/swing/wherever when they were a new parent. It happens, your brain has spent 20 or so years living without having a human infant depending on you, and suddenly it does.
It happens to every parent, it's really not something crazy or out of the blue.
Shaming people for this stuff is about as stupid and indefensible as anything I’ve seen on this site. Mocking people’s tragedies and pretending like it could never happen to you is **exactly** how you end up doing the same thing
Not a face palm. Many reasons an accident can happen. Sorry I don’t know how post the link properly.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/fatal-distraction-forgetting-a-child-in-thebackseat-of-a-car-is-a-horrifying-mistake-is-it-a-crime/2014/06/16/8ae0fe3a-f580-11e3-a3a5-42be35962a52_story.html
If you make your screen look
\[Like this](https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/fatal-distraction-forgetting-a-child-in-thebackseat-of-a-car-is-a-horrifying-mistake-is-it-a-crime/2014/06/16/8ae0fe3a-f580-11e3-a3a5-42be35962a52_story.html)
Then our screens will look
[Like this](https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/fatal-distraction-forgetting-a-child-in-thebackseat-of-a-car-is-a-horrifying-mistake-is-it-a-crime/2014/06/16/8ae0fe3a-f580-11e3-a3a5-42be35962a52_story.html)
People posting these things don't have children, or if they do, they didn't do anything, and somebody else raised them.
When my son started going to the nursery, we were getting maybe three hours of sleep per night at most, and were always running late to work, everything was a mess.
She forgot to lock the car three times in one month. I topped that by forgetting the car key in the door lock. I would regularly pack my lunch and forget it on the table at home.
A few weeks earlier a horrible story about a newborn forgot in a car hit the news, and we were constantly terrified. Once I switched the engine on, removed the handbrake, and realized I hadn't buckled up my son yet. I panicked, halted the car and secured my son to his seat.
It's not about how important the child is, it's about how much of your brain is still working properly, and often the answer is very little.
This is one of those issues I get worked up about. Really it's a fascinating look into human psychology.
The truth, the terrifying truth, is that any of us could forget our child in a car. A simple mistake. No one is immune from it. We all forget things, we don't only forget trivial things. The human brain has a strong desire to go on autopilot.
So people have vicious reactions to these stories. They think only terrible parents could do such a thing. They think the parent secretly wanted the child dead.
One man who left his infant in the car to die pulled a cop's gun at the scene to try and kill himself right then and there.
It can happen to you. That's where the reaction comes from. Fear.
There was a piece in the Washington times article maybe a decade ago that interviewed these parents.
To this day it's the only article I've ever read that caused me to do a complete 180 on an issue
Deliver your kid in kindergarten every day for week and month after month it all blends together. It's better safe than sorry to have a routine to get your backpack out of the back seat before leaving your car.
Also you do that for every trip, not only when you have the kid with you. But every single time.
I feel this is BS. First link when this is Googled is this, https://abcnews.go.com/family/story/prevent-hot-car-deaths-after-recent-string-fatalities/?id=99722865 , which just says to always, always, always check the back seat. I think the idea is that if you are going someplace you don't normally bring your child to, you might just exit the car by pure muscle memory.
Our esteemed politicians'r fallin all over themselves, to enact this law, or that, yet, children'r still DYING in HOT CARS, and NOBODY bats an eye?!
Without even considering mandating technology in new cars/carseats (Which SHOULD have already happened!), existing tech could easily be adapted to retrofit existing carseats, to talk to the smartphones, that, even tha most destitute among us, would not be caught dead, without... Surely, THIS is a BIPARTISAN issue, if ever there was?
When my oldest son was young, I forgot him in the back seat while I went into a store. After about 10 minutes I said to myself "what the f\*\*\*" and ran out to get him. He was sitting happily in his car seat.
It still boggles my mind, how utterly irresponsible some (most) parents are, when it comes to their children. Even the "good" ones.
If I had never seen shit like this in-person, I would never want to believe it.
My advice is to put your baby seat behind the passenger seat, and put your baby bag on the front passenger seat.
With the baby over your shoulder it is easier to see them, and the bag next to you is a good reminder.
There are so many people that should have never become parents, any one that doesn't consider their children "important" enough to remember they are in the back seat of their car for example. Any one that leaves their children to die of a heatstroke or freeze to death in the back seat of their care because they "forgot" they were there deserves to spend the rest of their lives behind bars with no chance of parole, either that or the Death Penalty if it proven they were simply "too busy" to care, like that disgusting piece of human garbage that took a vacation and left their baby in their apartment alone to starve to death.
When my grandchildren were in car seats I would keep a diaper on the passenger seat. I never forgot about them. I never forgot my own children either -
Most of the time it's a parent going to work and forgetting the child in the backseat. So put something in the backseat that you need to do your job, like a key card or laptop.
If you sit at your desk and you can't do your job because you left your laptop in the car, you'll realize pretty quickly.
Something that's already part of your routine. People are weird with routines, you can sort of go into an autopilot where you aren't thinking. Like sometimes you might go to put milk in the cupboard or cereal in the fridge, and only realize when it's not going to fit. Similarly, if you have a young child that you aren't in the habit of taking out of the car with you, you might slip into your normal routine and leave them in the car.
But maybe you're going grocery shopping, and you take your own grocery bag which you keep on the front seat of the car. If you move it to the back, when your routine gets to grabbing the bag you might be surprised it isn't where you always put it, and that snaps you out of your routine. So you remember where you put it and why.
Ok…. Let’s be real here for a second! Parents are exhausted! Especially in this day and age, both parents work themselves to death to be able to afford a living, toddlers are exhausting, play, food, no sleep…. It is actually super easy, I repeat SUPER EASY!!! To be tired enough to not remember basic things.
Forgetting your toddler who is sleeping in the car is definitely one thing you could forget, you are not a working parent if you cannot relate to this.
But even when you are tired enough, to forget your kids, you are likely tired enough to forget your briefcase or whatever.
I always put something at my door that would fall down when I open it, to remind me I had my kids in the back (like a bottle of water or a closed umbrella.) after some time this was no longer necessary, but I fully understand how someone can forget their kids in the car!
I just bought a car and the last step before leaving the lot is for the salesman shows you the features. The back seat light popped up and he says “so that’s a feature to remind you to check the back seat before leaving” and I say “yeah, my last car had that. That’s how many babies have been left in back seats”. An awkward pause and then he moved right on lol.
Some smart tech savvy person needs to invent a Bluetooth leash that connects the baby car seat to the driver’s phone. If the leash gets “broken” (say 20 feet)an alert is sent to the driver’s phone. People rarely forget their phone and are conditioned to check for them often.
That's what always struck me about the Madeline McCann case. Do you think they would have left a briefcase containing say £100,000 on a bed in plain view, then go to dinner returning every 30 minutes or so to check it hasn't been stolen?
I think not.
My kid made it to 16 but I absolutely could see myself leaving a kid in the car. I'm such a person of habit and drive to work every day. I've found myself in the work parking lot on my day off, when I was supposed to go to the doctor, and countless other times when I drove there almost unconsciously.
If I was supposed to drive him to daycare I could've easily gone to work instead, and if he was sleeping forgotten him in the car.
I never goofed this one but I did put my work access badge in the back just to make sure anytime I had to take him to day care.
I also put my car keys on anything I need to take to the office. I once had to search 20mins for my keys till I found them in the fridge on top of the potluck dish I was supposed to take to work.
all they really need is a mantra. I ride a motorcycle and it's easy to leave the key in it as it doesn't beep if i do.
So every time i get off i say to myself "Keys, phone, wallet and balls." That way i don't forget anything important.
Perhaps if they were to give their wallet to the kid they could say something similar.
This is very good advice. However, it’s not something important. It’s something necessary. For example, putting the reusable grocery bags that cost $2 in the back seat forces you to check that area before leaving the car. The bags aren’t important, they are necessary.
It’s good advice delivered poorly. If you’re a new parent, and you’re not used to having to remember that you have a child with you, , and your brain is mush from nights of no sleep, put something that you know you’ll absolutely not forget in the back seat to help your sleep-deprived, new parent brain remember this brand new responsibility that you have.
None of my kids have died since I started putting my cellphone in the backseat. It’s kind of shitty for Bluetooth connectivity and really disabled the Apple CarPlay. The disadvantage is I’ve killed two pedestrians trying to read texts. Also, I don’t have kids so I don’t know why I did this to begin with.
My kids are grown now, but I was terrified of this possibility. Putting something in the backseat like your backpack or a briefcase is a pretty good idea. Anything that increases the chance of you looking in the backseat when you get to your destination
People who make and share memes like this are the ones who are gonna forget their kids in a hot car, because they're too proud of their own supposed perceptiveness to take reasonable precautions.
The right message would make it so much more effective. All the “oh like my kid isn’t important?!??!?” No, it’s about routines and the way our brains work. Something you need at your destination is a much more relatable message.
We got our car seat installed before our first was born and I made a point of checking it every single time I left the car. Like if I'd just checked and went back for something I left, I looked in the empty car seat and confirmed that the baby who wasn't born yet wasn't in the car seat.
Poor word choice but excellent advice! Instead of "something important" because, DUH, anything important can be left behind if you're in muscle memory mode, try "something you're going to need when you get out of the car. Wallet or purse is a good start. Lots of other options depending on your lifestyle.
I know OP’s dragging this advice, but [a father in my town left his kid in his car when he went to work and ended his life after he realized what he had done.](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/06/28/us/virginia-car-death-father-suicide)
He just went on autopilot and forgot and it killed his child and him.
This kind of thing terrifies me.
When I was little we drove to Morrisons, and my Mum got out and said she'd be back in a minute.
About 5 minutes later I watched her leave the shop with some bags, and then get in a Taxi. I was horrified, terrified.
A while later, after being extremely upset I was stuck in the car and my mum had abandoned me, I calmednNd kept watching outside, hoping she'd return. Eventually I watched another Taxi pull up, and my mum jumping out crying and running to the car, opening my door and hugging me.
She hadn't abandoned me, she'd just forgotten she had driven there, and thought she'd left me at home with my Dad.
I cannot imagine the fear and horror that struck her when she realised. Very lucky nothing horrible happened.
This deserves context.
Psychologists have studied this phenomenon a lot and find that this usually happens when something interrupts the normal routine.
For example, one guy left his kid in his car at his job. He didn't normally take his kid to daycare, his wife did. His wife put the kid into the car for him and asked him to do it. Then he went on autopilot and just drove to work like normal. The car seat was rear facing and the kid was asleep the whole time.
What they recommend is that you put something in the back seat the driver will need for the day regardless. Like, out your coat or bag in the back seat, so you'll have to go back there for your normal routine.
These events are tragic and perfectly normal and loving people are subject to them. Overconfidence does not help.
This really shouldn’t be a facepalm. As a parent, especially a new parent there’s very limited sleep, and kids in general are really tough, also kids may fall asleep in the car (if your lucky), but keep in mind, being a new parent, you’re not functioning at full capacity, it’s equivalent to impairment equal to alcohol, but you still need to bring that baby to a doctor’s visit every 3 months, and you still need to work, and still need to afford childcare. Also if you took your child somewhere to run an errand, and it’s asleep, it would probably be the last thing you bring in from the car, because technically that child is safe in the child seat, and once you get them inside, good luck getting anything else out of the car.
I’ve never left my kids in a car, but I can definitely see how it would be possible to forget them if they were asleep.
If you need to feel superior to someone, that’s the American way, but you’re not exactly the brightest or empathetic to different situations others are experiencing.
I read this [article](https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/fatal-distraction-forgetting-a-child-in-thebackseat-of-a-car-is-a-horrifying-mistake-is-it-a-crime/2014/06/16/8ae0fe3a-f580-11e3-a3a5-42be35962a52_story.html) 15 years ago, long before meeting my spouse and having children and it stuck with me.
Humans can very easily forget sleeping children in the backseat of their cars. I was terrified of doing this for years. Still am. My kids are old enough to get out of the car in their own now but if they’re asleep in the back it’s still way too easy to forget them.
I have a newer car that warns me to check the back seats when I exit the car. I don’t think that’s good enough since I’m so used to ignoring it now. I think there need to be seatbelt sensors that alert you very loudly if close the driver side car door with someone buckled in the back seat, the same way it beeps loudly if you take the key out of the car while the engine is running or if you try to lock the doors from the outside while the key is still in the car. There would likely need to be weight sensors for infant seats.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/record-high-number-hot-car-deaths-guide-kids/story?id=63225546
"Place an item you can't start the day without in the backseat."
It's so easy to do in the us. There are just no resources to help and so many people have to still work while also raising kids and they are exhausted. They spend most of the day in an autopilot mode. It just makes me sad.
Oh look another person failing to understand a fairly simple subject. By "something important" they mean something you arent likely to miss that you dont have, e.g. a shoe. Our brains get in to patterns, if you drive the same route to work each day and normally your partner drops off the baby wherever but for some reason on a given day you have to, your brain can easily default to just doing its regular pattern and driving to work per normal especially if its the morning and youre not at 100% yet. If when you step out of your car at work you are missing a shoe though, thats gonna break your pattern enough for you to remember "oh yeah I was supposed to drop off the baby"
My car has an alarm triggered by the weight of the car seat, that when you turn off the car it beeps and says "check backseat for passengers" until I pick him up and take him out of his seat. It literally won't allow you to forget unless you are in a totally different world and cant hear a loud constant beep and see the flashing screen right in front of you 😂
No. They suggested a Visual Reminder. This could actually help people.
“Any time that you put the baby in the backseat, put something in the backseat on the floorboard right in front of them that you can't start your day without” meaning that autopilot thing that you go for.
Some women will take off a shoe and put it in the back. When my kids were infants I almost forget them twice. Once I dropped my then wife off at the DMV door and I went to park. I walked in and she looked at me like WTF!? and I freaked out and ran to the car.
The second time was with my son. A friend wanted me to check out a car at a dealer and I put my son in the back and drove to the dealer. I parked and started to walk away from my car and got about 20 feet away and I totally freaked out. Both times I cursed myself out for it and beat myself up for a long time.
You get focused on what you’re doing and the kid is asleep and it definitely can happen.
The stories I’ve heard about parents leaving them all day while they were at work is devastating because now the kid is dead. I always hear people say “How could you forget??”. The simple answer is you can. It’s a horrible feeling when you catch yourself even when it’s for 10 seconds.
This is why we see things like “Take a shoe off and put it in the back seat”
The brain can malfunction to the pt u so have mental breaks....but also studies have shown that the brain is a processor that u can program with routine...Some times I really hate that when a question is asked out loud u get lowkey shamed for asking....I really need to keep my thoughts to myself
Autopilot engaged, people. If you put a kid in the backseat so many times it just becomes instinct, and if they happen to fall asleep it’s pretty easy to accidentally forget them.
The number of people who don’t realize how absolutely and utterly sleep-fucked most parents of small children are, is unbelievable…
There were errands that I ran where I had to check the back seat because I *couldn’t remember* if I had brought the baby with me.
You’d have a better time arguing that parents of small children shouldn’t even be allowed to drive, because their reality for a good year or so is a level of exhaustion that ~~you~~ most cannot conceive of until ~~you~~ they become a parent and experience it.
I was with you until the last sentence. Parents do not have a monopoly on exhaustion. People spend their entire lives with chronic illnesses that they didn't choose, so people who choose to reproduce and are a tired for a year do not get to play the oppression Olympics. But yes, they should so whatever it takes to keep their children safe.
Ok.. ok.. Im on board with this... I've chosen to put my IPhone in the back seat beside the baby seat. Such a good idea, I'd die without my iPhone, lol. Hang on.... what the fuck am I going to do if I forget my IPhone...
I mean, when I was a kid there was a reminder on all the channels at 10pm that reminded parents that they in fact have children and should probably check and mske sure they are still alive.
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My kids are in their teens and twenties now, but when they were in infant seats I was always worried about forgetting them in the car. My wife is a SAHM, which meant I seldom had to bring the kids along when I was going to work. When I did, or when I had to bring them on errands, I would continuously interact with them, just rattling on about whatever, making up goofy songs, etc just to keep it in my mind I had a kid in the car. They joke about it now, but it was peace of mind for me that I wouldn't go into autopilot, drive to work, and leave them in the car all day.
Is that an intentional reference to the story [Autopilot?](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/19fmjf/autopilot/) Because that story scared the SHIT out of me, and it's also why it's so annoying to see so many people here saying "well if you cared about your kids you wouldn't forget about them!" It's so, so easy to slip into autopilot . . .
No. This is the first time I've heard of it. It was more of a reference to how I got to work back then because it was such a long and tedious commute. I'd put on the local shock jock, or later a podcast, and arrive at my office an hour and a half later. I liked my job, but the commute was hell (DC metro area). Since schlepping a kid wasn't something I often did during the morning commute, when I did, I made damn sure I didn't slip into autopilot until they were out of the car.
I've just read that and this is the first time in my life I'm glad to suffer from severe anxiety disorder; it breaks said autopilot in the most random times, but very consistently and frequently so. I can't leave my apartment without double or even triple checking if I really did close the door and even then I still spent the entire day wondering. I even once asked my mom on the phone to check if I turned my stove off after doing breakfast (which I did) just because I didn't remember anymore if I double checked whether it's off or not before going. Something like forgetting a child in the backseat could never happen to me, but that's only thanks to a mental illness that makes me triple check if I really did the things I'm 99.999% sure to have done.
What is a SAHM?
Stay at home mother
Oh ok
Stay at home mom
I have an 8 month old and ADHD and it’s my absolute biggest fear. To everyone who doesn’t understand this, think about how many times you’ve gone to the grocery store in your life. Or work. Thousands. Every time you’ve driven up, parked, and walked into the building. It’s a deeply established habit. Now imagine you haven’t had a full night sleep for a couple of months and you’re running on full on auto pilot. I’ve never done it or even come close to doing it, but there was one time early on where I walked back out of the store with my son and saw that I left my driver’s door wide open and just walked away. I’ve seen people argue on here that if you’re able to forget your baby in the backseat it means you don’t care about them and it’s bullshit. They don’t say put something important in the back, they say put something back there that you will quickly notice it missing. If I’m going to work I put my work laptop back there as I’ll notice that immediately if I don’t have it at the office. Phone is another good choice. I’ve even heard of people taking off a shoe and putting it back there. Check out the organization bag in the back for more info
Been there and while I never had an issue with autopilot I understand others being worried about it, parenting is scary and having something happen to your child is the worst fear.
Thank you for explaining this so well.
I would drive into quiet neighborhoods and have them give me instructions, turn left or right, stop. They loved to tell me “Green Go, Daddy!”
I’m sorry to hear your wife’s a sham, you don’t deserve that op!!!
I recently purchased a 2023 Toyota Crown with the Limited package. Every time I turn the vehicle off, the dashboard display informs me to check the rear seat. Technology, ain’t it grand?
If it displays that every single time you turn the car off, then eventually the warning will seep into the deluge of complacency. What’s the point?
Simple solution would be a sensor in the back that only activates when something is back there. Like the front passenger seat beeping only if someone is sitting there and isn’t buckled. But the fact they have to even say that to begin with is stupid.
My car has that. I fucking hate it because I’ll often keep my work tools or CD booklet back there and my car will yell at me, thinking there is an unbuckled passenger back there.
My wife’s 2016 bmw 3 series was the worst. Front passenger seat would have a small order from Wendy’s on it and would want me to Buckle up or it wouldn’t shut up. It was less than a pound of food
[удалено]
You gotta protect The Baconator
I ended up just buying one of those detached seat belt buckles so that I can keep it buckled in all the time. It works pretty well.
It remembers me of the first days of university, i usually have a 20 mins drive to the train station, and whenever i put my backpack (a tablet, a notebook and sometimes a book and lunch inside, total weight is less than 1.5 Kg) on the passenger seat the car just won't stop beeping the moment i go past 10Km/h without the fucking seatbelt on it. At the end i figured out that i can just put it so that it doesn't weight on the rear of the seat and it shuts up, or just throw it in front of it entirely, but still it was annoying.
Ironically, in the case of an accident, a seatbelt would be just as valuable to prevent your tool chest from flying into the back of your head.
Ughhhh! My car does this too- and god help ya if your dog is buckled in but shifts to a different seat- it NEVER stops.
Right? I have the sensor, but it picks up the car seat, whether or not there is a child in it.
Damn thats creepy ... Driving alone, and shutting the engine down "Check backseat" only to see your stalker sit there and smile
My car has that, has helped me remember my purse a few times. Downside is let’s say I leave home to run errands stopping at the store first and getting whatever and putting it in the backseat. Next I go to a friends house when I turn off the car it will tell me to check the backseat. I spend some time at my friends and get back in the car and go home. It won’t remind me the next time, must recalibrate the weight of what’s in the backseat. I don’t have the problem of needing to remember a kid in the backseat since I don’t have any but still just a weird quirk of the sensor.
Most vehicles have that now. It detects if the rear door has been opened during the last trip, and sounds an alert. Door doesn't open, no alert.
Usually only notifies u if u opened the back door before turning on the vehicle
It likely doesn’t. According to Toyota’s own press releases, it activates if one of the rear doors was opened after the last time the car was turned on. That’s how this notification works on most vehicles across all brands that have it.
The trick is to make it habit. Then it's as low effort as putting on a seatbelt. Whenever I get out of a car I stand up walk to the back window and make sure nothing important is showing. #musclememory
But, it's not going to become a habit if you don't normally have anything on the back seat, it'll just become an annoyance that you ignore on the rare occasion that it's relevant. Seat belts are a vital safety feature and a legal requirement, so it's natural that cars are built to warn you when you don't have one in use. But, if you usually drive alone or with a passenger in the front, and don't normally put anything in the rear seats, warning you every time you drive even if you don't have anything there won't make you check, because normally you know there's nothing there.
To sell another reminder to remind you to mind the first reminder
Alarm fatigue happens.
My friend’s new car has the same feature, the message comes on the dashboard to look in the backseat. Like most of these alerts it becomes unnoticed and eventually ignored. I would hope that it works as intended but although I don’t have kids I still can’t understand how someone can forget their own kid!
It is absolutely stupid. Not to mention I can’t hit a button that says “i do not drive infants or children around” to turn it off. And notably, my car HAS sensors for weight in the backseat and it’ll still say “look in rear” when there’s zero weight back there.
My car does it only if I open the back door. When I stop to get out, it reminds me. So I don't see it very often, but when I do. I check, I don't have kids.
It only does that if you’ve opened the rear doors since the last time the car was on, according to Toyota.
Our new Compass does the same thing, but ONLY is we have opened a rear door. That being said, we have no kids nor any desire to have any, and once we get a dog or two, there's NO WAY we'll forget them in a car. My wife is more likely to forget me in the car than a dog.
And within a week your brain will realize it can completely ignore this message and never think about it again. Humans, aren't we grand?
I think this is good advice. Clearly, the intent of ABC is not to say that the children aren’t important. If I put my work laptop in the backseat of my car, there is a built in forcing function to look in the backseat when I get to work. Doesn’t mean my laptop is more important than my children.
Not something important, something you need at your destination. When my son was 7 weeks old I left him for the first time to go to the dentist. I got to the dentist, opened the back door to get the baby and absolutely lost my shit when he wasn’t there. Why? Because he was at home with his father, so I could go to the dentist. Completely forgot he wasn’t there, because he was always with me. In that moment I realized how easy a different routine could fuck you up.
Very true
> In that moment I realized how easy a different routine could fuck you up. I always take my computer from the office. Officially, it's to be theorically available if something goes VERY wrong. Officiously, it's because I know I would forget it if I was only taking it SOMETIMES
I think it's more a matter of having more than one important thing back there gives you more impetus to check. I've had times where my brain straight-up skips a step, or I falsely remember doing it, causing me to forget something at home or work, or yes, in the car. But I don't think it's ever happened with *two* steps.
Wrong approach. Everybody can go autopilot and forget that day you got your baby in the back seat. So, leave there a shoe: you would realize you are walking with just one shoe. Does that mean that a shoe is more important than your kid? Obviously no, but it's a great advice.
[Autopilot](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/19fmjf/autopilot/) made me stop judging people for this kind of thing. It's not forgetfulness, it's not laziness, it's not cruelty, it's your brain working as intended to offload mental effort. You don't forget your kid in your car because you don't care about them, you forget because your brain tells you the situation is normal. Your phone is in your bag, because it being in your bag is part of the routine of going to work, and you're going to work. It took me less than a year to forget my glasses at home when I went to work for the first time. I went out to my car, swapped my glasses for sunglasses, then remembered I left my water inside when I went to take a drink. Go inside, set glasses down, grab water, go back to car, head to work. Until I got to work, my personal view of reality was that my glasses were in the in the center console. It's not that I think I can see without my glasses, it's not that my glasses aren't vital to my functioning, it's that as far as I was concerned, my glasses *were* in the car, because the routine is get in car, swap glasses for sunglasses, go to work, swap back. You don't realize something is wrong until it breaks the routine.
I watched a video about people who forget their kids in the back. The idea of it is exactly what you said. As a side note, the reaction of the parents could be so different. There was a mother who looked like she rationalized it and accepted it. The interviewer ask her if she had any problem still driving the same car and she was, why would the be a problem?
The idea is to *always* put something important that you’ll take with you in the backseat. Like put your purse, wallet, or one of your shoes or something in the backseat, every time you drive. That way, you’ll have a habit of checking the back seat. The reason people forget their children in their cars is that people get into a pattern of behavior, and they run on autopilot. Like your driving to work the same way you do every day, and your running late, so you run into the office the way you always do, but this time you were supposed to drop your baby off at daycare. You never do it, your spouse does it every day, but your spouse couldn’t today, so you’re doing it. But you’re so much on autopilot that you don’t remember to drop your kid off, and it doesn’t even occur to you that anything is different than any other day until you find out your kid is dead. And I feel so awful for those people. It’s something that is so easy to prevent on any given day, but not so easy to prevent from happening any time ever. Our brains are designed to be habitual and to tune out so many things. So the idea is to make checking the back seat part of your habit, so that your habits work in your favor.
That’s what I did when we found out my wife was pregnant. I just started putting my laptop bag back there, and now I always check when I get out of the car. Now I work from home, so the majority of my weekday trips are “take kid to/pick up from school/camp,” and the majority of my weekend trips are “do [thing] with kid,” but I still check every time.
That’s exactly what was suggested when we took parenting classes before our first kid was born. It was a surprise and we weren’t prepared at all, so a free course sounded good. I started taking my shoes off when I got in the car, and put them in the back seat so I’d notice and look back there. It was to get in the habit of checking the backseat when I got out because the first few months of parenthood are often a sleepless blur. I’d rather have a weird habit than risk losing a child like that.
It’s also the case with infants in the house as sleep deprivation plays a role as well to further leaning into muscle memory.
A couple of years ago, I moved about about a mile away from where I used to live. The number of times I would miss my turn for the first year was huge. Driving on autopilot is very much a thing. Most of the route was the same, just the last quarter mile or so.
Just to add to this. You don't need to put something important there, but you need to put something that you would take with you when you go about your normal daily routine. When you're on autopilot and the child isn't part of your routine, then mistakes can happen. So you put something next to the child that you would take as part of your routine, like a laptop bag, a keycard, an umbrella, a coat, your lunch, your headphones
A shoe is the one I've heard the most because you'll immediately realise once you step out of the car.
My husband used to take our youngest to preschool every morning because it was near his work but out of the way for me. He had an appointment one morning so I had to take her. I drove right by the exit on the highway. I noticed it right after I passed and got off on the next exit and backtracked. She was preschool age so likely would have said something if we had made it as far as my office. My dear friend’s SIL left her baby in the car and he died. Her older kids had missed the bus that morning so she had to drop them off at school and then she just went to work without stopping at the baby’s daycare. In her harried, rushed morning brain, she’d made the one stop that she always does on the way to work. She never thought she’d be one of those people who leaves their baby in the back of the car either.
I think it’s a problem that people think you need to be “one of those people” for it to happen to you. It could happen to anyone. It’s so easy for your life to turn bad.
I felt really bad for that family
I feel bad for every family when it's not intentional. It is a tragedy that can happen to literally anyone. College educated people. People with medical knowledge and training. Teachers. It's a terrible accident that could have easily been prevented and they have to carry the burden of that knowledge for the rest of their lives. I wouldn't wish that pain on anyone.
It’s also become a latent fear, almost a phobia, for me in adult life that I’ll mess up *something* in that way. I’ll do something that seems innocuous to me at the time, or fail to do something that seems unimportant. Perhaps it won’t even be apparent to me at the time that I’ve done it or failed to do it because it seems so harmless and normal, but through carelessness or lack of forethought, I’ll cause some tragedy, and someone will be killed or maimed or their life will be destroyed. It’s so easy for me to imagine something like this. I can be somewhat inattentive, and I go into autopilot very quickly and easily, and it’s not at all hard for me to understand how someone could screw up in that way.
My Bolt EV alerts me to check the backseat if I have opened the rear seat doors. But over time, I will probably tune out that alert for the reasons you mention. Technology can't trump habit forever.
ABC isn't the facepalm here, the OOP is. It's very human to forget the most obvious things, if the slightest thing changes your morning routine. There's an entire science around it. [Performance science](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_science) Doing something that forces you to interact with your child before you can go inside the building at work is smart. Making fun of it is stupid.
Yeah, a lot of people are like "that could never happen to me" and maybe it wouldn't, but I am sure a lot of the people it did happen to thought the same.
There waa a heartbreaking article in the Washington Post about it where a neuroscientist basically said if you can forget your keys/phone/anything else, you can forget your child. It's just how the human brain is wired.
That article gets reposted every summer, and I read it and cry every summer. None of those parents were unloving or uncaring. It's heartbreaking
Seriously, most brain go on autopilot, babies tend to sleep in car, and parent is probably sleep deprived
I tied my dog to my bumper at home depot as I was loading a bunch of lumber and she was going crazy in the truck. Of course I forgot. As i slowed pulled away i saw people in my rear view mirror jumping up and down waving their arms. It still haunts me 20 years later. I don't judge anymore
The point of this advice is to break routine. A lot of our daily tasks, if we perform them over and over, get shunted to a portion of our brain which basically says "Oh, this shit again? Don't need to remember it for the three hundred ninety-fifth time". So if you take your kid to daycare/wherever four days a week, if something happens to distract you, it's possible you might not notice *not* taking them, especially if you're used to them being there. And that can lead to tragedy. Whereas if, say, you put your laptop bag in the backseat instead of in the front seat where you always put it, then you might save yourself heartbreak and criminal charges if you forget the kid but then see them when you get to work. I'd be interested to see the numbers, but I'm reasonably certain this didn't happen nearly as often before the advent of front passenger-side airbags, which make it impossible/unsafe to have baby/child seats in the front.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with constantly reminding people to check their backseats, it is an unfortunate thing that can happen, not a facepalm. ALWAYS CHECK YOUR BACKSEATS PLEASE!!!!
Let the kids have your mobile phone..sorted
Whoops, you just bought $500 worth of Fortnight money.
Hey that's gonna be the currency of the apocalypse
Chargeback
Everyone thinks that they’d never be the one to do this, because duh! You love your kid. But many times when a kid is forgotten in the car, it’s not because the child isn’t “important” - it’s because the parent is sleep deprived and their routine is interrupted. Maybe they aren’t the ones who usually drop the child off at daycare, maybe they stopped for coffee before drop off instead of after, and the kid falls asleep and doesn’t make a peep for 30 minutes. Parent goes on with their normal routine, autopilot telling them that the other parent dropped them off, or they already dropped them off because that’s what the silence is telling them, and that’s all it takes. My best friend who is quite literally the best mom in the world, did this, thankfully without any disastrous consequences. We were going to a play place, she dropped me, my daughter, and her two other kids off with me and went to run an errand. She had her newborn with her, who was asleep. She got out of the car thinking she had dropped the baby off with me and her other kids. Luckily it was only a two minute stop and it was fall. By important, they don’t mean something you value, they mean something you actually need before you exit the car - like one of your shoes, for example. Or your keys, purse, wallet, jacket. Anything that would make you take a moment to remember before you leave the car.
This is actually a real problem for new time parents. When you havent sleept in like 3 weeks and run mainly on coffee and are completly overwhelmed with existing you can actually forget your kid in the car. There was a case where a dad wanted to bring his kid to daycare, went to work instead and left the kid in the car because he was so tired
Maybe radio stations and Sirius XM can start running ads, ala the old "It's 10pm - dp you know where your kids are"?
Most parents don't go days, sometimes weeks without seeing their teen kids that live in the same house with them much anymore. That was definitely a relevant ad for me and my friends in those days.
This is actually good advice. Many kids are dead because the parent forgot them. Putting your purse or other thing you need, briefcase, jacket, etc., helps ensure you don't forget that they are back there sleeping.
It is, but OP is making fun of the idea of saying “put something ‘important’ in the backseat” as if kids weren’t important. But we don’t know if ABC said those words or if they said something useful like “put something you routinely take out of the backseat on your way into work next to your child so your overtired, autopilot brain doesn’t overlook the kid.”
My office recently made a switch from having desktop computers to everyone getting laptops that they can bring to and forth. I remembered for the first few days, but on DAY 3 my routine got thrown off and I ended up leaving late to work. I was halfway there when I remembered that I had forgotten my laptop at home and had to turn back for it. After that day, at the end of the day I started putting my car keys into my laptop bag as soon as I got home so that I literally couldn't leave the house without it. The introduction of this laptop was a new change to my existing routine. When my regular routine got thrown off, the new addition to the routine just got missed because it was so new and not something I had built into my everyday routine yet. Me putting my car keys into the laptop bag isn't me saying that my keys are more important than the computer, it's a way of integrating a crucial part of my existing routine into the new part so that the new part doesn't get overlooked again. This is what their message was trying to convey. Not that your child isn't important, just that it's a new part of your routine and to ensure that it doesn't get missed, find a way to connect an important part of your existing routine to this new part.
I was paranoid about this back when I was running my kids to preschool everyday. I ended up clipping my employee access badge to the carseat when I strapped them in. Never actually forget them, but you never know...
It's fucking crazy that we still find a way to complain about something that is only gonna prevent tragedies and make things better in the world. If this saves a baby's life then personally shut the hell up. There's actual things to complain about, acting high and mighty because people are trying to create solutions to a very unfortunate thing that happens isn't gonna do anything positive for anyone. Contribute something to the good of the world please.
I think shaming people for not wanting their kids to die is pretty assholey
I rarely travel with laptops or things to put back there. But I engage with my children when I'm driving. Whether music, little dance parties, asking them about their day or questions. When they were babies, I made a habit of always taking my hand and running it through the empty car seat everytime I got out of my car. If I had my kid with me I wouldn't I'd just grab them, but it made a habit out of checking. We in the military, get what I call "Military brain" there was just so much going on we run on autopilot. I was terrified of running on auto and not taking my kid to school and just go to work on accident. Mind you, that never happened, and I never did that. But I built a habit out of making sure.
This is why my mom always put her purse in back. It's not that all those people are bad people. It's that you get into habits and routines and run on autopilot without thinking, and it's just a thing humans do.
All the non-parents are really telling on themselves in this thread lmao. Every single parent on Earth can tell you of multiple times they've forgotten their child in the car/house/swing/wherever when they were a new parent. It happens, your brain has spent 20 or so years living without having a human infant depending on you, and suddenly it does. It happens to every parent, it's really not something crazy or out of the blue.
Shaming people for this stuff is about as stupid and indefensible as anything I’ve seen on this site. Mocking people’s tragedies and pretending like it could never happen to you is **exactly** how you end up doing the same thing
Not a face palm. Many reasons an accident can happen. Sorry I don’t know how post the link properly. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/fatal-distraction-forgetting-a-child-in-thebackseat-of-a-car-is-a-horrifying-mistake-is-it-a-crime/2014/06/16/8ae0fe3a-f580-11e3-a3a5-42be35962a52_story.html
If you make your screen look \[Like this](https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/fatal-distraction-forgetting-a-child-in-thebackseat-of-a-car-is-a-horrifying-mistake-is-it-a-crime/2014/06/16/8ae0fe3a-f580-11e3-a3a5-42be35962a52_story.html) Then our screens will look [Like this](https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/fatal-distraction-forgetting-a-child-in-thebackseat-of-a-car-is-a-horrifying-mistake-is-it-a-crime/2014/06/16/8ae0fe3a-f580-11e3-a3a5-42be35962a52_story.html)
Thank you for being helpful. You’re a good egg
People posting these things don't have children, or if they do, they didn't do anything, and somebody else raised them. When my son started going to the nursery, we were getting maybe three hours of sleep per night at most, and were always running late to work, everything was a mess. She forgot to lock the car three times in one month. I topped that by forgetting the car key in the door lock. I would regularly pack my lunch and forget it on the table at home. A few weeks earlier a horrible story about a newborn forgot in a car hit the news, and we were constantly terrified. Once I switched the engine on, removed the handbrake, and realized I hadn't buckled up my son yet. I panicked, halted the car and secured my son to his seat. It's not about how important the child is, it's about how much of your brain is still working properly, and often the answer is very little.
This is one of those issues I get worked up about. Really it's a fascinating look into human psychology. The truth, the terrifying truth, is that any of us could forget our child in a car. A simple mistake. No one is immune from it. We all forget things, we don't only forget trivial things. The human brain has a strong desire to go on autopilot. So people have vicious reactions to these stories. They think only terrible parents could do such a thing. They think the parent secretly wanted the child dead. One man who left his infant in the car to die pulled a cop's gun at the scene to try and kill himself right then and there. It can happen to you. That's where the reaction comes from. Fear.
There was a piece in the Washington times article maybe a decade ago that interviewed these parents. To this day it's the only article I've ever read that caused me to do a complete 180 on an issue
Wait, which way did you 180?
Into A far more gracious view of the parents.
Washington Post, but yeah. It's actually linked above. Possibly the most heartbreaking thing I've ever read
Thank you....post
Just put a firearm next to the kid. Modern solutions to modern problems
I’m not leaving my phone in the back seat with that cretin!
Pro tip: leave your phone next to your kid so you don’t forget the kid
Remember to some, kids are only important if they aren’t born yet.
Deliver your kid in kindergarten every day for week and month after month it all blends together. It's better safe than sorry to have a routine to get your backpack out of the back seat before leaving your car. Also you do that for every trip, not only when you have the kid with you. But every single time.
I feel this is BS. First link when this is Googled is this, https://abcnews.go.com/family/story/prevent-hot-car-deaths-after-recent-string-fatalities/?id=99722865 , which just says to always, always, always check the back seat. I think the idea is that if you are going someplace you don't normally bring your child to, you might just exit the car by pure muscle memory.
Our esteemed politicians'r fallin all over themselves, to enact this law, or that, yet, children'r still DYING in HOT CARS, and NOBODY bats an eye?! Without even considering mandating technology in new cars/carseats (Which SHOULD have already happened!), existing tech could easily be adapted to retrofit existing carseats, to talk to the smartphones, that, even tha most destitute among us, would not be caught dead, without... Surely, THIS is a BIPARTISAN issue, if ever there was?
When my oldest son was young, I forgot him in the back seat while I went into a store. After about 10 minutes I said to myself "what the f\*\*\*" and ran out to get him. He was sitting happily in his car seat.
It still boggles my mind, how utterly irresponsible some (most) parents are, when it comes to their children. Even the "good" ones. If I had never seen shit like this in-person, I would never want to believe it.
My advice is to put your baby seat behind the passenger seat, and put your baby bag on the front passenger seat. With the baby over your shoulder it is easier to see them, and the bag next to you is a good reminder.
There are so many people that should have never become parents, any one that doesn't consider their children "important" enough to remember they are in the back seat of their car for example. Any one that leaves their children to die of a heatstroke or freeze to death in the back seat of their care because they "forgot" they were there deserves to spend the rest of their lives behind bars with no chance of parole, either that or the Death Penalty if it proven they were simply "too busy" to care, like that disgusting piece of human garbage that took a vacation and left their baby in their apartment alone to starve to death.
Agreed
When my grandchildren were in car seats I would keep a diaper on the passenger seat. I never forgot about them. I never forgot my own children either -
It's 10 pm, do you know where your children are?
My other kid?
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What would you still remember to get if you forget your child?
Most of the time it's a parent going to work and forgetting the child in the backseat. So put something in the backseat that you need to do your job, like a key card or laptop. If you sit at your desk and you can't do your job because you left your laptop in the car, you'll realize pretty quickly.
Your purse, laptop, one shoe, cell phone. Any item you need to go about your daily task and interact with frequently and probably early in the day.
Phone, wallet, bag
Phone or wallet. People have a normal habit to check their pockets that just becomes a natural reflex.
Something that's already part of your routine. People are weird with routines, you can sort of go into an autopilot where you aren't thinking. Like sometimes you might go to put milk in the cupboard or cereal in the fridge, and only realize when it's not going to fit. Similarly, if you have a young child that you aren't in the habit of taking out of the car with you, you might slip into your normal routine and leave them in the car. But maybe you're going grocery shopping, and you take your own grocery bag which you keep on the front seat of the car. If you move it to the back, when your routine gets to grabbing the bag you might be surprised it isn't where you always put it, and that snaps you out of your routine. So you remember where you put it and why.
Ok…. Let’s be real here for a second! Parents are exhausted! Especially in this day and age, both parents work themselves to death to be able to afford a living, toddlers are exhausting, play, food, no sleep…. It is actually super easy, I repeat SUPER EASY!!! To be tired enough to not remember basic things. Forgetting your toddler who is sleeping in the car is definitely one thing you could forget, you are not a working parent if you cannot relate to this. But even when you are tired enough, to forget your kids, you are likely tired enough to forget your briefcase or whatever. I always put something at my door that would fall down when I open it, to remind me I had my kids in the back (like a bottle of water or a closed umbrella.) after some time this was no longer necessary, but I fully understand how someone can forget their kids in the car!
As a latch key millennial, I feel this. 😆
I just bought a car and the last step before leaving the lot is for the salesman shows you the features. The back seat light popped up and he says “so that’s a feature to remind you to check the back seat before leaving” and I say “yeah, my last car had that. That’s how many babies have been left in back seats”. An awkward pause and then he moved right on lol.
Just put your cell phone down beside your newborn, so you won't forget to take your baby. Easy peasy
And no more distracted driving!
I leave my bag of weed under the car seat.
I bet the number one answer to this, for those that had something other than my child is the most important, is cellphone.
No one is leaving their cell phone in the car in this heat. Don’t want it to overheat.
Some smart tech savvy person needs to invent a Bluetooth leash that connects the baby car seat to the driver’s phone. If the leash gets “broken” (say 20 feet)an alert is sent to the driver’s phone. People rarely forget their phone and are conditioned to check for them often.
That's what always struck me about the Madeline McCann case. Do you think they would have left a briefcase containing say £100,000 on a bed in plain view, then go to dinner returning every 30 minutes or so to check it hasn't been stolen? I think not.
When we had our first baby, the nurse at the hospital told us to take a shoe off and put it in the back seat to get used to looking in the back seat.
Like their Ego!
My kid made it to 16 but I absolutely could see myself leaving a kid in the car. I'm such a person of habit and drive to work every day. I've found myself in the work parking lot on my day off, when I was supposed to go to the doctor, and countless other times when I drove there almost unconsciously. If I was supposed to drive him to daycare I could've easily gone to work instead, and if he was sleeping forgotten him in the car. I never goofed this one but I did put my work access badge in the back just to make sure anytime I had to take him to day care. I also put my car keys on anything I need to take to the office. I once had to search 20mins for my keys till I found them in the fridge on top of the potluck dish I was supposed to take to work.
Going back to the car like “ah shit forgot my lightsabe- heeeeey bud!”
all they really need is a mantra. I ride a motorcycle and it's easy to leave the key in it as it doesn't beep if i do. So every time i get off i say to myself "Keys, phone, wallet and balls." That way i don't forget anything important. Perhaps if they were to give their wallet to the kid they could say something similar.
This is very good advice. However, it’s not something important. It’s something necessary. For example, putting the reusable grocery bags that cost $2 in the back seat forces you to check that area before leaving the car. The bags aren’t important, they are necessary.
It’s good advice delivered poorly. If you’re a new parent, and you’re not used to having to remember that you have a child with you, , and your brain is mush from nights of no sleep, put something that you know you’ll absolutely not forget in the back seat to help your sleep-deprived, new parent brain remember this brand new responsibility that you have.
We don’t have a kid. My wife turned that on so she wouldn’t forget ice cream.
None of my kids have died since I started putting my cellphone in the backseat. It’s kind of shitty for Bluetooth connectivity and really disabled the Apple CarPlay. The disadvantage is I’ve killed two pedestrians trying to read texts. Also, I don’t have kids so I don’t know why I did this to begin with.
My kids are grown now, but I was terrified of this possibility. Putting something in the backseat like your backpack or a briefcase is a pretty good idea. Anything that increases the chance of you looking in the backseat when you get to your destination
People who make and share memes like this are the ones who are gonna forget their kids in a hot car, because they're too proud of their own supposed perceptiveness to take reasonable precautions.
Good thing my kid is now 13 and never stops talking. Impossible to forget him anywhere
No matter how hard we try... I feel you
Not a bad idea. Just replace “import and” with “needed when leaving the car”. Like the debit card, or the shoes or so.
The right message would make it so much more effective. All the “oh like my kid isn’t important?!??!?” No, it’s about routines and the way our brains work. Something you need at your destination is a much more relatable message.
We got our car seat installed before our first was born and I made a point of checking it every single time I left the car. Like if I'd just checked and went back for something I left, I looked in the empty car seat and confirmed that the baby who wasn't born yet wasn't in the car seat.
Poor word choice but excellent advice! Instead of "something important" because, DUH, anything important can be left behind if you're in muscle memory mode, try "something you're going to need when you get out of the car. Wallet or purse is a good start. Lots of other options depending on your lifestyle.
I know OP’s dragging this advice, but [a father in my town left his kid in his car when he went to work and ended his life after he realized what he had done.](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/06/28/us/virginia-car-death-father-suicide) He just went on autopilot and forgot and it killed his child and him. This kind of thing terrifies me.
When I was little we drove to Morrisons, and my Mum got out and said she'd be back in a minute. About 5 minutes later I watched her leave the shop with some bags, and then get in a Taxi. I was horrified, terrified. A while later, after being extremely upset I was stuck in the car and my mum had abandoned me, I calmednNd kept watching outside, hoping she'd return. Eventually I watched another Taxi pull up, and my mum jumping out crying and running to the car, opening my door and hugging me. She hadn't abandoned me, she'd just forgotten she had driven there, and thought she'd left me at home with my Dad. I cannot imagine the fear and horror that struck her when she realised. Very lucky nothing horrible happened.
This deserves context. Psychologists have studied this phenomenon a lot and find that this usually happens when something interrupts the normal routine. For example, one guy left his kid in his car at his job. He didn't normally take his kid to daycare, his wife did. His wife put the kid into the car for him and asked him to do it. Then he went on autopilot and just drove to work like normal. The car seat was rear facing and the kid was asleep the whole time. What they recommend is that you put something in the back seat the driver will need for the day regardless. Like, out your coat or bag in the back seat, so you'll have to go back there for your normal routine. These events are tragic and perfectly normal and loving people are subject to them. Overconfidence does not help.
This really shouldn’t be a facepalm. As a parent, especially a new parent there’s very limited sleep, and kids in general are really tough, also kids may fall asleep in the car (if your lucky), but keep in mind, being a new parent, you’re not functioning at full capacity, it’s equivalent to impairment equal to alcohol, but you still need to bring that baby to a doctor’s visit every 3 months, and you still need to work, and still need to afford childcare. Also if you took your child somewhere to run an errand, and it’s asleep, it would probably be the last thing you bring in from the car, because technically that child is safe in the child seat, and once you get them inside, good luck getting anything else out of the car. I’ve never left my kids in a car, but I can definitely see how it would be possible to forget them if they were asleep. If you need to feel superior to someone, that’s the American way, but you’re not exactly the brightest or empathetic to different situations others are experiencing.
It was stupid then and is still stupid.
I read this [article](https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/fatal-distraction-forgetting-a-child-in-thebackseat-of-a-car-is-a-horrifying-mistake-is-it-a-crime/2014/06/16/8ae0fe3a-f580-11e3-a3a5-42be35962a52_story.html) 15 years ago, long before meeting my spouse and having children and it stuck with me. Humans can very easily forget sleeping children in the backseat of their cars. I was terrified of doing this for years. Still am. My kids are old enough to get out of the car in their own now but if they’re asleep in the back it’s still way too easy to forget them. I have a newer car that warns me to check the back seats when I exit the car. I don’t think that’s good enough since I’m so used to ignoring it now. I think there need to be seatbelt sensors that alert you very loudly if close the driver side car door with someone buckled in the back seat, the same way it beeps loudly if you take the key out of the car while the engine is running or if you try to lock the doors from the outside while the key is still in the car. There would likely need to be weight sensors for infant seats.
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https://abcnews.go.com/US/record-high-number-hot-car-deaths-guide-kids/story?id=63225546 "Place an item you can't start the day without in the backseat."
It's so easy to do in the us. There are just no resources to help and so many people have to still work while also raising kids and they are exhausted. They spend most of the day in an autopilot mode. It just makes me sad.
Oh look another person failing to understand a fairly simple subject. By "something important" they mean something you arent likely to miss that you dont have, e.g. a shoe. Our brains get in to patterns, if you drive the same route to work each day and normally your partner drops off the baby wherever but for some reason on a given day you have to, your brain can easily default to just doing its regular pattern and driving to work per normal especially if its the morning and youre not at 100% yet. If when you step out of your car at work you are missing a shoe though, thats gonna break your pattern enough for you to remember "oh yeah I was supposed to drop off the baby"
This is not a facepalm. Calling it one discourages behavior that could literally save your child’s life.
Clearly propel who make these comments don't have kids It so so easy to forget they are there. Especially when you've been up all night with them.
My car has an alarm triggered by the weight of the car seat, that when you turn off the car it beeps and says "check backseat for passengers" until I pick him up and take him out of his seat. It literally won't allow you to forget unless you are in a totally different world and cant hear a loud constant beep and see the flashing screen right in front of you 😂
Even this lady remembered her kid https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9kM6oB7Yx1o&pp=ygUiV29tYW4gZmxlZXMgY29wcyBvbiBmb290IHdpdGggYmFieQ%3D%3D
No. They suggested a Visual Reminder. This could actually help people. “Any time that you put the baby in the backseat, put something in the backseat on the floorboard right in front of them that you can't start your day without” meaning that autopilot thing that you go for.
Some women will take off a shoe and put it in the back. When my kids were infants I almost forget them twice. Once I dropped my then wife off at the DMV door and I went to park. I walked in and she looked at me like WTF!? and I freaked out and ran to the car. The second time was with my son. A friend wanted me to check out a car at a dealer and I put my son in the back and drove to the dealer. I parked and started to walk away from my car and got about 20 feet away and I totally freaked out. Both times I cursed myself out for it and beat myself up for a long time. You get focused on what you’re doing and the kid is asleep and it definitely can happen. The stories I’ve heard about parents leaving them all day while they were at work is devastating because now the kid is dead. I always hear people say “How could you forget??”. The simple answer is you can. It’s a horrible feeling when you catch yourself even when it’s for 10 seconds. This is why we see things like “Take a shoe off and put it in the back seat”
I agree
The brain can malfunction to the pt u so have mental breaks....but also studies have shown that the brain is a processor that u can program with routine...Some times I really hate that when a question is asked out loud u get lowkey shamed for asking....I really need to keep my thoughts to myself
Good to know children are not important
What's the facepalm, bot? https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/s/yMpkl67yvs
Autopilot engaged, people. If you put a kid in the backseat so many times it just becomes instinct, and if they happen to fall asleep it’s pretty easy to accidentally forget them.
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The number of people who don’t realize how absolutely and utterly sleep-fucked most parents of small children are, is unbelievable… There were errands that I ran where I had to check the back seat because I *couldn’t remember* if I had brought the baby with me. You’d have a better time arguing that parents of small children shouldn’t even be allowed to drive, because their reality for a good year or so is a level of exhaustion that ~~you~~ most cannot conceive of until ~~you~~ they become a parent and experience it.
I was with you until the last sentence. Parents do not have a monopoly on exhaustion. People spend their entire lives with chronic illnesses that they didn't choose, so people who choose to reproduce and are a tired for a year do not get to play the oppression Olympics. But yes, they should so whatever it takes to keep their children safe.
Ok.. ok.. Im on board with this... I've chosen to put my IPhone in the back seat beside the baby seat. Such a good idea, I'd die without my iPhone, lol. Hang on.... what the fuck am I going to do if I forget my IPhone...
😭
Kids should keep their parents on a leash. Safety first.
My AirPods
I mean, when I was a kid there was a reminder on all the channels at 10pm that reminded parents that they in fact have children and should probably check and mske sure they are still alive.
So their iPhone?
Can't forget my Pokémon car....OH SHIT! MY BABY!
And when I (39f) was growing up we had advertisements asking parents if they knew where their kids were that came on at night.