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Toddler dies in hot car as mom teaches inside school

JANFU said:
Really upset.
Thousands dying, your opinion is taking an experts knowledge of the brain and extrapolating that to make an invalid point.
My thing here. Not sure what the heck that is?
You equate your 2 times in court where you defended yourself in court to be equivalent to an experts opinion. Who gives a rats ass about your court experience?
You can guess where I lay my money.
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Dude, you are so far off it is astounding. My point is that Appeal to Authority is illogical and fallacious and secondly that being an "expert" does not make a person correct... that was the point of the court analogy. The "expert" lawyers lost to a non-expert non-lawyer (me). Your reasoning is to say that the lawyers would have won simply because they had degrees in law and I do not and you are not taking into account factors such as my intelligence, understanding of such topics, research abilites, etc. and applying that here saying that this psychologist is correct and I am wrong simply because he has a degree in psychology. That is ridiculous and faulty reasoning.

The evidence you provided discusses how the brain works to easily allow "forgetting your child". I am extrapolating nothing. He essetially said it is easy to do. Obviously not as evidenced by the fact that kids are not dying in mass.
 
Bodhisattva said:
No offense to any parent that has forgotten their child somewhere but if you have you have ****ing problems... how one could forget they have their child in the car is absolutely idiotic.
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Wow, thanks for that brilliant insight. Do you think parents whose children have died in hot cars need to be told that?

Bodhisattva said:
That psychobabble bull**** excuse for forgetting a child is pathetic...
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No one has presented any "excuse."

Bodhisattva said:
That is ridiculous... You are probably driving to day care or a sitters house instead of work, different route. You are probably leaving at a different time as well... if it is not your normal drive into work then you remember why because it is an abnormal morning commute... not routine.
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You think these parents are intending to kill their children?

Bodhisattva said:
Because it means that it was not some normal morning as you made it sound where it is easy to just slip into a normal routine...
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Someone asked how a person could forget their child is in the car. I explained how. The child falls asleep, it is rear-facing (not in view of the driver), the parent has made the drive in to work thousands of times, and the parent forgets.

For Christ's sake people, no one is saying this is an okay thing. We all agree how horrifyingly bad it is. One asks "how could a parent possibly forget" and then someone provides an answer and you say "bull****!" What is it you want to hear? Just enjoy berating parents who will never forgive themselves or stop mourning? Does that serve some sort of purpose for you?

Have you ever forgotten something? How? How did you actually go about forgetting? What was the process that was involved in forgetting? There is no answer to this question. One just forgets. In the case of this topic, the consequence is the worst imaginable.

Anything left to say?
 
Neomalthusian said:
Wow, thanks for that brilliant insight.
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Just simple common sense... nothing brilliant abo... oh, I get it. You are being a jerk.

Do you think parents whose children have died in hot cars need to be told that?
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That message is not intended for parents that left their child to die in a car... I thought that was pretty obvious.

No one has presented any "excuse."
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JANFU did in this post: http://www.debatepolitics.com/break...m-teaches-inside-school-9.html#post1064696516

You think these parents are intending to kill their children?
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Did I seem to imply that somewhere? No, I did not.

Someone asked how a person could forget their child is in the car. I explained how. The child falls asleep, it is rear-facing (not in view of the driver), the parent has made the drive in to work thousands of times, and the parent forgets.
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Yeah, I understand that you are answering a question. Got it. :roll:

I made a counter point to your scenario but you declined to debate that instead opting this 3rd grade explanation of how a conversation works. Thank you but no I won't trade my apple for your brussel sprouts either.

For Christ's sake people, no one is saying this is an okay thing. We all agree how horrifyingly bad it is. One asks "how could a parent possibly forget" and then someone provides an answer and you say "bull****!" What is it you want to hear? Just enjoy berating parents who will never forgive themselves or stop mourning? Does that serve some sort of purpose for you?
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FOR CHIST'S SAKE DUDE... Nobody is implyin that anybody is saying that it is OK.

Have you ever forgotten something? How? How did you actually go about forgetting? What was the process that was involved in forgetting? There is no answer to this question. One just forgets. In the case of this topic, the consequence is the worst imaginable.
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Forgetting to put the cap back on the toothpaste and forgetting your child that dies in a sweltering car is hardly analogous... either is forgetting to put money in the bank to pay a bill or office reports or picking somebody up from the airport or any other normal thing we might forget.

Anything left to say?
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Yes.
 
Bodhisattva said:
I could care less what his qualifications are... a parent in a dead sleep will wake at the slightest odd sound from a baby. Parents brains are wired for their baby.

Again, that psychobabble bull**** excuse for forgetting a child is pathetic...
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Most parents, not all. And that is very different than being in a car. That involves our unconscious mind, which is much more sensitive to our children than our conscious mind and memory.
 
vesper said:
Have you ever had to get a child ready for day care? It requires getting them up before maybe they are not ready to wake up. They need to be fed breakfast which isn't exactly an easy feat either because if they are cranking no choices will suffice. Then they need to be dressed. Another feat. They fight you on what you want to dress them in. The backpack needs to be packed with all the essentials whether it be gym day or art day. Their blankie for nap time needs to be cleaned regulary and that needs packed also. They are encouraged to bring something to share with others which can take a good amount of time to choose. Then there is the shoe you can not find because they have taken off God knows where so you have a scavenger hunt to locate the needed shoe. Teeth brushed, face washed, hair combed.... By the time you get through all of that BEFORE you strap them into their car seat, it would take someone out to lunch, not to remember their child was in the backseat needing dropped off at day care.
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Maybe the parent dropping the child off didn't get the child ready. I've woken up right before walking my children to school, with them being completely dressed, fed, and ready because we have my brother as a nanny.

And it isn't all that hard to forget you've just done something, even strapped a child into the car seat, especially if the seat is in the car empty at other times (which is something that parents shouldn't do, but might anyway to save time) or not in a position where you can see it any time you look in the back.
 
Bodhisattva said:
Do you have a valid point? Refuse to learn seems to be your thing here.

Wrong about the Judge and wrong that his opinion is not an opinion...

His opinion is also his opinion because if it were a fact the evidence would be that thousands upon thousands of children a year would be dying in cars and that is not happening. As such, his opinion is psychobabble masquerading as expert. In the end if you want to accept his opinion as a fact that is fine with me but it certainly does not come close to proving a valid argument and yes, when certain lines of questioning occur Judges do in fact ask, if the lawyer has not made it clear, what the witnesses qualifications and expertise are.
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No there would not need to be thousands upon thousands of children dying each year in this way for the psychologist's "opinion" to be considered correct. People think differently. That is a fact. Their brains are not wired the same way. And our memories operate in strange ways sometimes, picking up on subconscious cues to remind us of things, rather than sending reliable alerts like a cell phone would. Without many of the right cues getting to that individual, people can forget even important things, like their children.
 
roguenuke said:
Maybe the parent dropping the child off didn't get the child ready. I've woken up right before walking my children to school, with them being completely dressed, fed, and ready because we have my brother as a nanny.

And it isn't all that hard to forget you've just done something, even strapped a child into the car seat, especially if the seat is in the car empty at other times (which is something that parents shouldn't do, but might anyway to save time) or not in a position where you can see it any time you look in the back.
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I guess it is beyond my comprehension that a parent could completely forget about their child strapped in a car seat for 9 hours. I can't wrap my head around someone being so pre-occupied with everything else and not with what is most important. As parents when we have our children in the car with us, we tend to be even more cautious/defensive drivers behind the wheel to insure their safety. This mother's absentmindedness had grave consequences which she will pay for the rest of her life in more ways than one
 
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Yes, she will. Every day, and she will have to find a way, somehow, to go on. Living with the loss of a child is almost unbearable, but to live with the knowledge that your carelessness caused this is unimaginable suffering.
 
nota bene said:
That's true; he or she is just as dead.

And the child's parents will suffer for the rest of their lives. How do you live every day of the rest of your life with the knowledge that you were responsible for the death of your child?

Earlier in the thread, I posted a link to a very thoughtful Washington Post article that details a few cases and will provide it again despite my cynical expectation that it won't be read: Fatal Distraction: Forgetting a Child in the Backseat of a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime? - The Washington Post

Most people, thank heavens, have no first-hand knowledge of living with the death of a child. This is such a "but for the grace of God" blessing. Whether that child died of natural causes or by his own hand or by misadventure, people are so eager to pass judgment. I'm glad that juries aren't so eager to punish.
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Nota - you aren't seriously trying to draw a comparison between a child dying of natural causes and a child who died due to its parent's actions?
 
It scares the living **** out of me to see so many people in this thread justifying this and chalking it up to brain wiring and memory and forgetfulness. Un****ingbelievable.
 
tres borrachos said:
Nota - you aren't seriously trying to draw a comparison between a child dying of natural causes and a child who died due to its parent's actions?
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No, of course not. I was stating a fact, the fact that however a child dies, others are too eager to pass judgment. That’s what I said, and that’s what I meant.

You surely don’t think that parents who lose children to disease or to suicide aren’t judged for what they did or did not do. They are even judged for the funerals they plan or whether they dispose of the child’s belongings or choose to keep them. Or whether they cry at all or too much or for too long.
 
Wow, this is absolutely bizarre to me. I can't even fathom driving to work, with my kid, and then going in to work and forgetting that they were in the car! Let alone working for hours and not remembering. How does a person like that even function?

You're telling me, besides forgetting that the child is in the car, it never even crosses their mind all day that they have a child and don't know where the child is???

There is something terribly wrong here, and it's not forgetfulness.
 
nota bene said:
No, of course not. I was stating a fact, the fact that however a child dies, others are too eager to pass judgment. That’s what I said, and that’s what I meant.

You surely don’t think that parents who lose children to disease or to suicide aren’t judged for what they did or did not do. They are even judged for the funerals they plan or whether they dispose of the child’s belongings or choose to keep them. Or whether they cry at all or too much or for too long.
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Who would pass judgment on a parent whose child died of natural causes? Anyone who dared do that around me watching 2 of my friends bury their children - one because of leukemia, and one because of meningitis - would get a much deserved punch in the face for criticizing my friends.

What my friends who lost their children went through makes me cry while I'm typing this. They did everything they could to keep their children alive, every minute of their days for months and years on end. To compare them to some stupid moron who "forgot" about her child's existence for 8 hours is insulting.
 
tres borrachos said:
Who would pass judgment on a parent whose child died of natural causes? Anyone who dared do that around me watching 2 of my friends bury their children - one because of leukemia, and one because of meningitis - would get a much deserved punch in the face for criticizing my friends.

What my friends who lost their children went through makes me cry while I'm typing this. They did everything they could to keep their children alive, every minute of their days for months and years on end. To compare them to some stupid moron who "forgot" about her child's existence for 8 hours is insulting.
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Your punching somebody’s face wouldn’t erase the pain of the criticism. But I invite you sometime to attend a Compassionate Friends meeting and just sit and listen. What you won’t hear is anybody sitting in judgment of any bereaved parent, particularly the “stupid moron” ones. People who have experienced the loss of a child themselves are probably the most appalled and also perhaps the most empathetic toward these people and their unimaginable guilt, pain, and suffering.
 
nota bene said:
Your punching somebody’s face wouldn’t erase the pain of the criticism. But I invite you sometime to attend a Compassionate Friends meeting and just sit and listen. What you won’t hear is anybody sitting in judgment of any bereaved parent, particularly the “stupid moron” ones. People who have experienced the loss of a child themselves are probably the most appalled and also perhaps the most empathetic toward these people and their unimaginable guilt, pain, and suffering.
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No, we had a party on Saturday for the Belmont and one of the couples is the one who lost their 9 year old to leukemia. I talked to the wife and she is anything but empathetic to that woman. In fact, it's the opposite. She's disgusted and appalled.

And if there are groups that sit around patting the backs of people whose irresponsible actions resulted in the deaths of their innocent children, I'll pass. If I was ever ignorant enough to let one of my kids roast to death in a car because I "forgot" he was in there, I'd kill myself because I wouldn't be able to live with myself. I wouldn't expect people who walked to their ends of the earth to save their children to be empathetic to me.
 
roguenuke said:
No there would not need to be thousands upon thousands of children dying each year in this way for the psychologist's "opinion" to be considered correct. People think differently. That is a fact. Their brains are not wired the same way. And our memories operate in strange ways sometimes, picking up on subconscious cues to remind us of things, rather than sending reliable alerts like a cell phone would. Without many of the right cues getting to that individual, people can forget even important things, like their children.
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You aren't following the conversation. JANFU used this guys "expert knowledge" to claim that forgetting your child to die in a car is common because of the way the brain works. The evidence for this being true would be tones of dead children. No way around it because otherwise the kids are not being forgotten. Simple.
 
tres borrachos said:
It scares the living **** out of me to see so many people in this thread justifying this and chalking it up to brain wiring and memory and forgetfulness. Un****ingbelievable.
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I know. WTF?
 
DA60 said:
Scatterbrained? What a load of crap. Lousy parents is more like it.

Great parents put their children above all else and NEVER forget them in a car unattended...for ANY length of time. My mother never left me in a car (or any of my siblings). I lived with a woman who had children and she would never forget her children, no matter how busy she was. Never. Heck, I never forgot about them and they were not even my children.

The only people who forget about their children left unattended in a car are lousy parents...period.

And level of 'busyness' is no excuse whatsoever. Your children - especially if they are pre-school - should always be the most important thing in your lives and nothing should be able to make you 'scatterbrained' about them. Not your job, your friends, your health...nothing.
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Actually, if you disrupt standard routine, it's quite easy for the brain to work on automatic and this leads to many times people having forgotten their kids in cars. It's not "lousy parents" as much as it is how the brain allocates resources.

Often times in the cases of kids left in cars, the common thread has been that their normal routine patterns had been disrupted.
 
Bodhisattva said:
Dude, you are so far off it is astounding. My point is that Appeal to Authority is illogical and fallacious and secondly that being an "expert" does not make a person correct... that was the point of the court analogy. The "expert" lawyers lost to a non-expert non-lawyer (me).
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Nope- You won based upon researching the law, case law and past precedents, that is what I am assuming. Happy for ya.
Far off the mark, nope.

Your reasoning is to say that the lawyers would have won simply because they had degrees in law and I do not and you are not taking into account factors such as my intelligence, understanding of such topics, research abilites, etc. and applying that here saying that this psychologist is correct and I am wrong simply because he has a degree in psychology. That is ridiculous and faulty reasoning.
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No, you have not shown any studies to counter the point. You are using yourself, your experience to bolster your claim.

The evidence you provided discusses how the brain works to easily allow "forgetting your child". I am extrapolating nothing. He essetially said it is easy to do. Obviously not as evidenced by the fact that kids are not dying in mass.
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Nope again, he did not state that.
He stated due to certain clear circumstances it can happen. Reason why we do not have mass deaths from incidents such as this, they meet clearly defined circumstances, with defined parameters. You clearly missed that. And jump to the mass deaths should be occurring. Read it again.

This is what he stated
Fatal Distraction: Forgetting a Child in the Backseat of a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime? - The Washington Post
What he’s found is that under some circumstances, the most sophisticated part of our thought-processing center can be held hostage to a competing memory system, a primitive portion of the brain that is -- by a design as old as the dinosaur’s -- inattentive, pigheaded, nonanalytical, stupid.
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Fatal Distraction: Forgetting a Child in the Backseat of a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime? - The Washington Post

“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.”
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Bodhisattva said:
I could care less what his qualifications are... a parent in a dead sleep will wake at the slightest odd sound from a baby. Parents brains are wired for their baby.

Again, that psychobabble bull**** excuse for forgetting a child is pathetic...
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You know this how. Your opinion, right, your personal experience, right.
Lastly- the court analogy does not equate to how a brain operates.
Not even close enough to get a ceegar.
 
vesper said:
I guess it is beyond my comprehension that a parent could completely forget about their child strapped in a car seat for 9 hours. I can't wrap my head around someone being so pre-occupied with everything else and not with what is most important. As parents when we have our children in the car with us, we tend to be even more cautious/defensive drivers behind the wheel to insure their safety. This mother's absentmindedness had grave consequences which she will pay for the rest of her life in more ways than one
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In their mind, their child is almost certainly where they are every day, in day care, with the other parent, wherever they normally would be because there is no "clue" that there is a difference. In fact, that is how at least some of the people do remember, they get that "clue" that tells them that they made the terrible mistake of forgetting their child. We don't think about our kids on a regular basis is we normally trust that they are somewhere safe.

And the fact that this mother will live with this every day, this horrible mistake, is why I don't feel that she or those like her, who simply forget, should face criminal charges. That is their punishment, and it is far worse than going to prison or having a criminal record (now, this doesn't go for those who did it on purpose, either leaving their child in the car on purpose or actually trying to kill the child this way, as is suspected the one father was). Some of these parents try to kill themselves, face major depression, relationship problems, and just so many things because of their guilt.
 
tres borrachos said:
No, we had a party on Saturday for the Belmont and one of the couples is the one who lost their 9 year old to leukemia. I talked to the wife and she is anything but empathetic to that woman. In fact, it's the opposite. She's disgusted and appalled.

And if there are groups that sit around patting the backs of people whose irresponsible actions resulted in the deaths of their innocent children, I'll pass. If I was ever ignorant enough to let one of my kids roast to death in a car because I "forgot" he was in there, I'd kill myself because I wouldn't be able to live with myself. I wouldn't expect people who walked to their ends of the earth to save their children to be empathetic to me.
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You can be disgusted and appalled and also horrified...and yet still have compassion.
 
roguenuke said:
In their mind, their child is almost certainly where they are every day, in day care, with the other parent, wherever they normally would be because there is no "clue" that there is a difference. In fact, that is how at least some of the people do remember, they get that "clue" that tells them that they made the terrible mistake of forgetting their child. We don't think about our kids on a regular basis is we normally trust that they are somewhere safe.

And the fact that this mother will live with this every day, this horrible mistake, is why I don't feel that she or those like her, who simply forget, should face criminal charges. That is their punishment, and it is far worse than going to prison or having a criminal record (now, this doesn't go for those who did it on purpose, either leaving their child in the car on purpose or actually trying to kill the child this way, as is suspected the one father was). Some of these parents try to kill themselves, face major depression, relationship problems, and just so many things because of their guilt.
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Yes the burden this mother carries with her due to her negligence is great. But we are also a land of laws. The person behind the wheel of a car and in his carelessness hits another vehicle that results in the death of another, do they not face manslaughter charges? They didn't set out to kill anyone but because of their recklessness, their absent mindlessness, their poor judgment has consequences.

You see there are real consequences for our actions, some by law others by the prison of guilt this mother will live with the rest of her life.

It is a damn sad situation. An absolute tragedy.
 
vesper said:
Yes the burden this mother carries with her due to her negligence is great. But we are also a land of laws. The person behind the wheel of a car and in his carelessness hits another vehicle that results in the death of another, do they not face manslaughter charges? They didn't set out to kill anyone but because of their recklessness, their absent mindlessness, their poor judgment has consequences.

You see there are real consequences for our actions, some by law others by the prison of guilt this mother will live with the rest of her life.

It is a damn sad situation. An absolute tragedy.
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Actually, whether the person is charged with the death of the other person depends on whether the driver was doing something that could be considered reckless. For example, no one was charged in the death of Dale Earnhardt, who was killed while driving a race car in a race, and another driver bumped him, which broke his neck. Usually it requires mitigating factors, such as drugs, alcohol, wreckless driving, or speeding, to result in manslaughter charges from having someone die in a car accident.

Driving Deaths and Manslaughter

The circumstances of the situation are taken into account for most such situations. In pretty much all cases of vehicular manslaughter though, you would have to be breaking another law pertaining to rules of the road to qualify for that charge. And in some states or areas, the person doesn't get charged even if they were breaking a minor road law.
 
nota bene said:
It's the lack of empathy that bothers me. I remember writing a letter to the editor over 20 years ago complaining about a reporter's article about a local tragedy--young parents holding the baby on a lap in the front seat, wreck, baby thrown out and killed. The reporter took the parents to task about not restraining the baby. The reporter's job wasn't to editorialize and sit in judgment.

What I said in my letter I'll say to you: You don't think the parents know they screwed up? You don't think they're suffering? You don't think that the greatest challenge of the rest of their lives will be learning to live with the consequences of their carelessness?

Have a little compassion here and be grateful that cannot imagine what it's like to lose your own child, much less by your own fault.
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In all honesty, any sympathy I might have for the parent gets summarily cut off when I picture what it must have been like for the baby.
 
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