Living Hell–How Do You Survive Leaving A Child To Bake In A Car?

August 15, 2008 / 12:34 am • By Dr. Melissa Clouthier

Every year in Houston, children die after being left in hot cars. In the last two days here, two children have died. The child who died today, a three year old, tried to save himself:

As the temperatures rose in his mother’s locked truck on Thursday, authorities said the little boy managed to free himself from his car seat and climb to the front of the vehicle, where he put a key in the ignition.
But the 3-year-old died before he could escape the sweltering heat that soon overtook him in the truck’s cabin, the Harris County Sheriff’s Office said.
Cameron Thomas Boone, who celebrated his third birthday last month, was the second child within less than 24 hours to die in the Houston area after a loved one drove to work, locked the vehicle and forgot about them. The boys were the third and fourth children to die in hot vehicles in Harris County this year.

I don’t know how you live after this. It’s so disturbing. How can you charge a parent with a crime? What kind of penalty can be worse than what they live with? Invariably, a family member is on the way to work and forgot the child.

My biggest fear, in Houston, is accidentally leaving my keys in the car, or something like this happening. It is stressful being distracted and having a bunch of kids to herd. Terrifying.

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  • http://www.carseatmonitor.com Bob Steffen

    Dear Dr. Melissa

    Please help tell people of a new product the Cars-N-kids Car Seat Monitor. This has got to stop and this 35 dollar monitor can help. Please look at http://www.carseatmonitor.com Thanks Bob

  • Mat

    Um yeah,

    How exactly do you “forget” your children in a car? I mean, how stupid is that? Are people that unaware of their surroundings that they forget their own children? Wow, sounds like parenting skills are fantastic these days. Personally, these people should probably be sterilized so they can no longer breed.

  • Allison

    36 kids a year die from being forgotten in cars by their parents and Caregivers. Yes, some idiots are just trying to save time and the hassle of taking the child out of their seat, but the vast majority of these deaths occur when the caregiver (mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, babysitter) just simply forget…..Oh and Yes, Me and my husband have done it too, unloading groceries one day with the car parked in the garage, luckily! We are caring, loving, busy professional parents of 2 boys…Do a search on U-tube “child hyperthermia deaths” and see for yourself. There are about 50 video clips if you take your time and search this problem out… In almost every case it is a caring professional parent that was on the cell phone or late for an appointment or preoccupied with some stupid task that forgot the child was sleeping in their seat. 25 kids have died this year alone from being forgotten. It easy to say that we are all perfect and this will never happen to me. Tell that to the 360 kids that have died in the last 10 years and the thousands of bereaved parents and relatives. How many near misses are there that result in trauma or injury? The Car Seat Monitor by Cars N Kids offers a real chance at reducing deaths of this type and it costs $34.95. I say for $34.95 why wouldn’t I have one of these to avoid this from ever happening to my child, my husband, myself or whoever is watching my child that day…I use one every day and I highly recommend it. If the two kids that died recently in Houston had one of these car seat monitors http://www.carseatmonitor.com on their car seat, they would probably be here today…If you want to gain an understanding of this problem there are a couple of web-sites that follow this type of tragedy. http://ggweather.com/heat/ or http://www.kidsandcars.org

    Concerned Parent!
    Allison S

  • Trish

    I’m sorry, but I can’t imagine how or why anyone would leave a child unattended in a vehicle. And I’m sorry again, but parents who would do this are not suffering at all. They don’t care. If they cared the child would not have been in the car alone. The idea that they are “going through” anything is projection.

    It’s not a matter of being perfect. It’s a matter of being a parent. If you are a parent, the child comes first. Not your job, not your errands, not your cell phone. Such parents are not loving or caring. It is literally impossible for a loving, caring parent to forget a child. Let’s be honest: these people love and care about their professions. They neither love nor care about their children.