Parenthood

Kids Left in Hot Cars — It Happened to Us

We never thought it was possible until that day

It’s only been the past 10 years or so that there are stories reported weekly about children dying from heat exhaustion after being left in a car or truck on a hot day. I didn’t know how that was possible until it happened to us.

As a young mother, I never worried about my children being left in a hot car. Why? Because those types of things never happened growing up, or at least we never heard of them.

When I first saw how many incidents there were suddenly, it made me think, “How can a person forget they have a child with them?” Then it happened right under our noses, fortunately with a favorable ending that could have gone so differently.

How can this happen?

My daughter-in-law, Paula, had taken her two girls shopping on a warm day in June. It wasn’t 95 degrees outside, but I remember it being fairly warm. Upon returning home, she told the girls to clean the floor of their large SUV, front and back, as it had been cluttered with candy wrappers, toys, leftover food, and items that did not need to be in there.

The younger of the two, Lena, went straight into the house, announcing she was going up to her room to take a nap, while the older one, Debbie, stayed in the truck to start cleaning.

At some point, Lena must have remembered she was supposed to help clean out the truck, left her bedroom to go downstairs, saw the truck door was open as her sister was in the front picking up garbage, and climbed into the back to start cleaning.

At some point, Debbie, not realizing that her younger sister had crawled into the truck with her, shut the door and went back into the house with her bag of garbage.

About half an hour went by, and I mentioned to Paula that Lena was taking a long nap, and she’d never sleep at night if we didn’t wake her up soon. She thought so too and walked up the stairs to Lena’s room to find her not there.

From where I was downstairs, I could hear her yelling for her daughter, thinking she may be in another part of the house, but there was no answer. Frantically, Paula came running down the stairs, calling through the rooms, and letting me know that no one was upstairs sleeping and to help her look.

Still unable to find her, Paula ran down to the basement, but Lena was nowhere to be found.

I don’t know what made me look out the front door, but there was my 6-year-old granddaughter in the truck, banging on the window with both fists. I screamed that I had located her as I ran out the front door.

Stuck in the hot vehicle

The door on the truck wasn’t locked, at least from the outside, but was too heavy for a little girl to open by herself.

She was red in the face, overheated, out of breath from screaming, hysterical, and traumatized, but she was going to be okay. We brought her inside, gave her water and a cool towel for her head, and did our best to calm her down.

Paula and I broke down in tears as we hugged and consoled the two girls. Debbie felt terrible and kept repeating that she didn’t realize Lena had slipped into the back seat of the truck or she wouldn’t have closed the door on her, but she remained inconsolable despite her mom telling her it wasn’t her fault.

I would never have believed something like that could happen to anyone, much less right under my normally watchful eye.

What went wrong? I rolled it over in my mind again and again because I felt so inadequate for letting it happen.

A possible answer

For one thing, Paula’s truck had doors that were particularly heavy and difficult for a young child to open, and more than likely, the inside of the truck became very warm after the door was shut. This probably made it even more challenging for Lena to gather up the strength needed to open the door.

We also think the child-proof lock was on the back door, which would have prevented her from pushing it open even if she had the strength to. She may have started panicking when she could not get out and used up any energy she had left.

Lack of communication

When Lena said she was taking a nap and then changed her mind, she neglected to tell her mother or me that she was going back out to the truck. When she did go out there, she never told her sister she had climbed into the back seat, where she could not be seen by anyone. She was a child — we should have known her whereabouts.

Should Paula have made sure both girls stayed outside together to clean the truck and then came back in together? Sure, but she got sidetracked with other chores.

Should I, as the grandmother, have asked sooner why she was sleeping so long or gone out to the truck to check on them myself? Sure, but I didn’t; I was preoccupied too, helping to start dinner.

But that’s the thing. It’s that easy to let our minds become cluttered with chores that need doing! Unfortunately, it only takes one moment of forgetfulness or distraction for a tragedy to occur.

That day, her mother and I felt like the worst caregivers in the world.

It was beyond terrifying to think about what could have happened. With the impact of that incident fresh in our minds, we have another 5-year-old in the house now and are taking extra measures to ensure her safety. We remind her regularly to never leave the house alone or go out to the driveway by herself.

It sounds simple, but children forget, too.

A safer future for children

Keeping kids safe is a full-time job. Forgetting where a child is for one minute could put them in danger, not only from hot cars but from drowning, falling down stairs or out of a window, running out into the road, and the list goes on.

I have a much better understanding now of how easy it is for a child to get trapped in a truck or car with possibly unthinkable consequences, and how horrible a parent would feel to have to live with the fact that they put their child at risk.

With all the new advancements in medicine and technology, how can we lose a child this way?

What kinds of reminders, buzzers, and beepers can we use to be sure our little ones are not left in or crawl into a hot car or truck?

It’s heartbreaking to hear about these preventable deaths, and I can only hope that somehow, some way, we figure it out so no more children die helplessly this way.

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