Just some thoughts on a sad topic...

Less than twenty minutes is all that it may take. Twenty minutes for you to lose you child or pet to hyperthermia. Twenty minutes for your previously air-conditioned car to become an oven.
This is an incredibly sad topic and almost completely preventable. All that need be done to prevent this nightmare is to use memory devices when the baby is in the car. Strong communication skills between parents and daycares go a long way to preventing this tragedy also. Car doors should always be locked and keys kept out of reach. Children have died by getting themselves stuck in a car or truck of car. Don’t allow children to play in vehicles. If your child is missing, check your car and trunk first.
I see on a daily basis how hectic mornings are and how much is involved in getting the family ready to start the day and out the door. There are times I’m in awe of today’s parents’ organizational abilities and energy. They have a tremendous amount of tasks that they must juggle daily. They have already put in hours of work before they even walk out the door to get to their jobs. The “Stay at Home” moms that I know are also extremely busy, volunteering in the classrooms, on class trips, organizing meals and schedules to assist sick friends or families, helping others…. They have many balls in the air to juggle too.
David Diamond is a professor of molecular physiology, and memory expert, at the University of South Florida. He says that “Memory is a machine 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 cell phone, you are potentially capable of forgetting your child.”
I remember quite clearly my first experience of hearing about a Dad accidently leaving his child in a hot car all day while he worked. It got a lot of media attention, probably because it rarely happened in that particular city where a normal summer day would hover around 65 degrees, and the locals would complain of the heat! This was a city where air conditioning in homes or cars was rare – unnecessary because there was only about a 2 week period when it genuinely got hot each summer, which is when the incident happened.
The dad reportedly had worked a ton of overtime in the weeks preceding this tragic event. The nightmare began, as it does in so many of these cases, with a frantic phone call from the baby’s mother, when she went to pick up the child from daycare and discovered the child was not there.
There was a great deal of sympathy for the father in this case, which is not always the norm according to my research. I do believe that although it was a tragic accident and the father was devastated and inconsolable, he did face criminal charges. I don’t remember his exact judicial punishment except that it was mild. However, I remember thinking how cruel it was to pursue any further punishment than the life time sentence of pain that had already been doled out.
Richmond had two cases of hyperthermia in the news last summer. One was the case of Robin Starr, the CEO of the Richmond Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, who accidently left her beloved dog "Louie" in the car when she went to work. She often took her dogs to work with her, but on this day, Starr's husband, Ed, said that he had loaded the dog in her car as she got ready for work. He assumed she would see the dog in her car. She did not.
Even though Starr is an animal lover and outspoken advocate for animal welfare, when this tragic accident happened to her, there was tremendous community outrage and even calls for her resignation. People were outraged that she “allowed” this to happen. The anger that people felt, instead of compassion and sorrow, was hard to understand. The Richmond SPCA used this incident as a good teaching device showing that this accident can happen to anyone, including the most devoted of animal lovers.
In the other Richmond case last summer, a child died while at daycare. I was appalled at the decisions to dismiss the felony child-neglect case against a licensed day-care owner, and the slap on the wrist her son received for his role in the death of a child in their care. The son, an employee with a history of carelessness, was the driver of the facilities’ transport van that left a 13 month old child strapped in his car seat 8 long hours on a hot July day. For this, he received only a 6 month home confinement sentence at his trial.
Testimony in the case showed that although it was required by the state to keep a log book to check off each child entering and exiting the van, this was not done. When an employee questioned why the child’s diaper bag was inside the facility, yet the child was not, they decided that the bag must have been left on another day. Nobody bothered to call the parents to question the child’s absence or to check the van, both routine safety measures taken by other childcare providers.
What ever parent should learn from this death is that if your child’s daycare provides transportation, they are required to keep a log book inside the van, checking off each child getting on and off the van. Ask to see this log. If this log has not been updated twice a day, every day, do not use this transportation or daycare. Report this to the state. This is one of the crucial steps missed in this local case last summer, leading to the child’s death.
And please do not leave your pets in a car either, even with the windows open, it may take less than 20 minutes….

Safety Devices
There are devices on the market that can alert parents if the child has been left behind. One such device is Cars-N-Kids Car Seat Monitor, which turns on upon sensing a child's weight and sounds a lullaby when the car has stopped; it retails for about $40 and is available online. Check out these websites for more info or to order safety devices:
Kids and Cars website: KidsAndCars.org – an advocacy and lobbing group with
mission to increase car safety for children

Sisters of Invention http://www.sistersofinvention.com/child_products/readch.html -