A 6-month-old boy died after being left for hours in a hot car in Louisiana, authorities said.

The baby was found dead in the backseat by his parent at about 5:46 p.m. Tuesday, according to the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office.

When the parent went to pick up the baby from day care after work, they realized they forgot to drop him off at day care that morning, the sheriff’s office said.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    When the parent went to pick up the baby from day care after work, they realized they forgot to drop him off at day care that morning

    I do not buy it, but if it is true, that poor baby was going to die from neglect and soon even if it didn’t happen then.

    When my daughter was a baby, I was constantly checking on her while we were driving (at stoplights, don’t get all het up) and I was very aware when she was in the car with me.

    Some people should not be allowed to be parents.

    • Thrillhouse@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      There’s actually a great article on this. Warning, it’s a TOUGH read.

      Archive link

      What kind of person forgets a baby? The wealthy do, it turns out. And the poor, and the middle class. Parents of all ages and ethnicities do it. Mothers are just as likely to do it as fathers. It happens to the chronically absent-minded and to the fanatically organized, to the college-educated and to the marginally literate[…]

      Last year it happened three times in one day, the worst day so far in the worst year so far in a phenomenon that gives no sign of abating.

      The facts in each case differ a little, but always there is the terrible moment when the parent realizes what he or she has done, often through a phone call from a spouse or caregiver. This is followed by a frantic sprint to the car. What awaits there is the worst thing in the world.

      It’s a shockingly common occurrence and actually not due to neglect a lot of the time. The article posits that a large reason is because car seats were mandated to be moved to the back seat.

      • tiramichu@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        It’s such a painful thing, and the scary truth is that it can happen to anyone.

        I’m sure we’ve all experienced instances of this, in some smaller and insignificant way.

        You take a packed lunch to work. Every day for five years you’ve taken a lunch to work, without fail. Its part of your routine, you don’t even have to think about it. Get your wallet, get your keys, lunch out the fridge and into your bag, out the door.

        Then one day you open your bag at lunch-time, and it’s not there. Why isn’t it there, you think? You remember putting it there like always, but then the memories of different days are all the same as each other, and it just blurs into one.

        And then you remember. Just as you picked up your wallet and keys, your phone rang. And it’s your Dad, who says he just had someone call to say he needs to transfer money to keep it safe, and you’re telling him no no no Dad it’s just a scam, don’t transfer anything! And you have to go or you’ll miss the bus, and did I get my lunch, yes yes I put it in my bag like always.

        But you didn’t put it in your bag. Its still sitting in the fridge at home.

        And obviously a lunch is not a baby. But the principle is the same. That frightening realisation that your own brain didn’t merely forget, but actually lied to you about what really happened that morning is the same.

        And it could have been a baby instead.

        Scary.

    • ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net
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      5 months ago

      Ouch. I typically agree with all the comments you make around Lemmy.

      But this one hurts.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Is that really what you think this is about? I mean I said something that was wrong, but do you really think that’s why I said it?

            • Amanduh@lemm.ee
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              5 months ago

              No because I see you all over lemmy being a jerk and talking down to people lol

                • Amanduh@lemm.ee
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                  5 months ago

                  My guy I’ve seen you goad people into arguments on subs you moderate and then you mute/ban them for something silly (multiple times)

                  Idk if you’re lying to yourself about your conduct or what but no I am not going to spend any time combing through your post history to provide you proof.

                  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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                    5 months ago

                    Again, can you please give a couple of examples?

                    Also, it seems like you’re the one trying to goad me into an argument here.

    • palordrolap@kbin.run
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      5 months ago

      It only needs to happen once. One bad day. One day when the brain isn’t operating at full capacity, but absolutely has to. One day out of a couple of thousand at a deeply critical time. And something gives.

      Are you the sort of person who falls asleep in front of the TV? There are millions of people like that. There might even be a billion. Sure, some will think “I’ll just close my eyes a sec”, but there are others who don’t make a conscious choice about anything and find themselves waking up, unaware of when they fell asleep.

      Forgetting something - even a baby - is a lapse like that. That’s all it is. Just one tiny little lapse. We are not 100% in control of what goes on in our own heads.

      “It won’t happen to me” / “It couldn’t possibly have happened to me.” is the height of hubris.

      As for making decisions like “Some people should not be allowed to be parents.”, who’s doing the allowing there? Because that’s a horribly slippery slope. And frankly if Darwinism hasn’t got it out of the gene pool at this point, it might well be all of us with the same fatal flaw… which I think is the point I was making earlier.

    • Nefara@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Not everyone handles sleep deprivation the same. Not every baby sleeps the same amount or at regular intervals. Some babies just never seem to sleep or have weird needs that require exhausting accommodations. It’s terrible, but new babies are so vulnerable and there are so many chances for failure at the same time parents are at their most compromised. I have sympathy for the stupid, addled, forgetful mistakes anyone could make under constant, chronic exhaustion.

      We were never meant to do it alone, the nuclear family is a myth.

    • MerchantsOfMisery@lemmy.ml
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      5 months ago

      Seems like an insane reach to say if this baby didn’t die from that incident, they’d die from another neglect related issue.

      Personally, I have a hard time judging parents in this position and I can’t say I’m a fan of them being charged. All the system cares about is the illusion of justice served in the form of traumatic retribution via prison.

    • waddle_dee@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I’m in the same boat as you. I was more understanding before I had a child. I thought, you can forget your phone, autopilot, all other excuses. But after having two, there’s no fucking way I’d ever forget them. They’re always on my mind and the first thing I think of whenever I’m doing anything. I check on my children while driving too

      Edit: I understand how easy it is to get into autopilot, and having understood that I do everything I can to change my routine. We take different routes, we stop and do something on the way, etc. But I realize that I’m speaking from a place of privilege where I can do these things and not everyone can. I recognize that it can happen to me, and I pray it doesn’t. I truly am sorry for this families loss. No one should ever outlive their child.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Looks like a bunch of people (I’m guessing non-parents) disagree.

        The whole idea of forgetting a baby is in the car is insane. Like I said, even if it is true, this person is not fit to take care of a baby and that baby had a good chance of dying some other way.

        • snooggums@midwest.social
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          5 months ago

          Looks like a bunch of people (I’m guessing non-parents) disagree.

          I am a parent and disagree. Surprised myself at least twice by arriving at work and seeing her still in the seat while grabbing the sun shade. Could have sworn that she had been dropped off both times.

          People aren’t perfect, and something being important doesn’t mean people suddenly become perfect. The fact that it is as rare as it is now is a sign that people take it seriously, but people make mistakes no matter how important the thing is.

        • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          Not insane at all. Child seats should be rear facing for quite a while and if the kid is asleep, they are not making any sounds. A big deviation from your routine can seriously fuck up remembering basic things. I personally have a mirror strapped to the rear headrest to avoid anything like that since I can see her every time I check my rear view mirror. But I’ve had people warn me how dangerous those are because it is an extra thing to break off in an accident. I’d rather take that risk than accidentally leave my child in a hot car.

        • Thrillhouse@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          From the Pulitzer article (please read it):

          Diamond is a professor of molecular physiology at the University of South Florida and a consultant to the veterans hospital in Tampa.[…]

          “Memory is a machine,” he says, “and it is not flawless. Our conscious mind prioritizes things by importance, but on a cellular level, our memory does not. If you’re capable of forgetting your cellphone, you are potentially capable of forgetting your child.”

          “The quality of prior parental care seems to be irrelevant,” he said. “The important factors that keep showing up involve a combination of stress, emotion, lack of sleep and change in routine, where the basal ganglia is trying to do what it’s supposed to do, and the conscious mind is too weakened to resist. What happens is that the memory circuits in a vulnerable hippocampus literally get overwritten, like with a computer program. Unless the memory circuit is rebooted – such as if the child cries, or, you know, if the wife mentions the child in the back – it can entirely disappear.”

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            You posted the article after I posed the above comment. I have read it.

            Edit: to the downvoters: should I have not read it? Because I get you downvoting the previous comments but I’m not sure what your problem is with this one.

            • Thrillhouse@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              Hickling is a clinical psychologist from Albany, N.Y., who has studied the effects of fatal auto accidents on the drivers who survive them. He says these people are often judged with disproportionate harshness by the public, even when it was clearly an accident, and even when it was indisputably not their fault.

              Humans, Hickling said, have a fundamental need to create and maintain a narrative for their lives in which the universe is not implacable and heartless, that terrible things do not happen at random, and that catastrophe can be avoided if you are vigilant and responsible.

              In hyperthermia cases, he believes, the parents are demonized for much the same reasons. “We are vulnerable, but we don’t want to be reminded of that. We want to believe that the world is understandable and controllable and unthreatening, that if we follow the rules, we’ll be okay. So, when this kind of thing happens to other people, we need to put them in a different category from us. We don’t want to resemble them, and the fact that we might is too terrifying to deal with. So, they have to be monsters.”

              • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                Yes, again, I read it. You showed I was wrong. I’m not sure what you or anyone else wants from me.

                • AwesomeLowlander@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  5 months ago

                  Just came along. Presumably most people read your 1st comment (which is horrifyingly unempathethic, TBH) and didn’t really follow the rest of the discussion

                  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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                    5 months ago

                    Maybe, but people even seem to be unhappy with me admitting I’m wrong in multiple replies. Like the one you responded to.

                    Like I said, I don’t know what they want from me. I can’t unwrite the post. I don’t have a time machine.

                • TheFonz@lemmy.world
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                  5 months ago

                  It’s Ok. I think it’s easy to dismiss obvious situations such as these, but as a tired parent I can tell you the mind will play tricks on you. I always triple check everything because I know I’m already exhausted. I can’t fault another parent for a mistake though.

                • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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                  5 months ago

                  We want you to go back on time and stop your former self from making the initial comment obviously. /s 🙂

                • TheHarpyEagle@lemmy.world
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                  5 months ago

                  Perhaps you could edit your first comment, otherwise people won’t know that you see things differently now.

                  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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                    5 months ago

                    I think that would be dishonest of me. I’d rather people see that I said something incorrect, especially when it’s something people commonly get wrong according to the provided article.