Common sense?
March 16th, 2008, at 1:40 PM
How long can you safely leave a child in a closed car? If the car is locked, the alarm is on, you’re within sight, and the whole thing only lasts a minute or two, is that okay? Obviously some say yes and some say no. Some, I’m sure, would want it to be illegal to close a child in a car for even a second, even if the child was in absolutely no danger.
It leaves me wondering whatever happened to common sense. And this black-and-whiting doesn’t seem right. You can’t legislate intelligence, can you?
Tags: common sense
March 16th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
There’s been a similar sort of discussion at the web site of the newspaper where I work:
http://www.t-g.com/story/1315948.html
March 16th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
hmmmm. don’t do it. no matter how short of amount of time you intend to leave the child unattended. not a good idea.
March 16th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
That’s just ridiculous, though. You’re suggesting that just leaving the child in the car from the period between getting out of the car and getting the baby out will somehow harm the child, even.
There is a safe, reasonable, common sense approach here.
March 16th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
The common sense approach is that the child is with you wherever you go. You don’t leave a child in a car. A car can be stolen, a child can choke. A car can be hit by another car.
I was told a long, long, time ago by a country woman that there were things I would never know and she was glad of that, but that people would pay a lot of money for a baby as beautiful as mine. And, that was 30 years ago. Her point being that a baby is a precious commodity.
March 16th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
But we’re not discussing “leaving” a child. In the example given, the child was never out of her mother’s sight for even a second.
March 16th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
Of course, unless something tragic happens you can raise your child however you wish, but the news account said:
“When I saw Ms. Hastings, she was sitting at a manicure table getting her fingernails and toe nails worked on,” Parker wrote in his report as quoted by the Post. “I asked Ms. Hastings why she left her child in the car while she was inside. Ms. Hastings replied that her daughter wanted to watch a movie on the DVD system inside the vehicle and that she could see her daughter from where she was at.”
Parker said he could see the side of Hastings’ vehicle “but could not see the child at all.”
March 17th, 2008 at 8:19 am
Who is Ms. Hastings? The mother’s name is Treffly Coyne.
March 17th, 2008 at 11:38 am
I have left Salem in the car to go to the atm…Ya know parked right there.
If my boys are with me, they can sit with her if i run back inside the house to get something or whatever.
In the past i have run in to stores leaving the boys in the car, on the phone with hubz…
Keeping a 1 year old in the car getting a mani-pedi? oh.hell.no
Keeping a sleeping baby in the car, for a sec to drop a coin in the bucket? Frekken JAIL? It was not hot, she was not smoking crack with her boyfriend in a hotel some where….
Dudes… can we just be reasonable?
March 19th, 2008 at 9:00 am
I have a hard time even leaving my girls ( 3 and 1) in the car to walk the 5-10 steps to put back a grocery cart in the parking lot.
I take them with me.
But….that’s me.
March 19th, 2008 at 9:03 am
I’d have a hard time, too, but more from fear of the police than from fear for the child.
March 19th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Try sitting in a locked, closed-up car yourself for two minutes here in Phoenix when it’s July.
I promise you, you will not last twenty seconds.
Why does it take a childfree person to see that it is NEVER, EVER, EVER okay to leave a child in a vehicle?
p.s. I don’t buy these supposed “accidental” leavings, either. If you are that damned absentminded that you would leave your own progeny in a car, then you shouldn’t be driving in the first place. I used to work in the homicide bureau here in Maricopa County and the cops and prosecutors would tell me…strictly off the record, of course…that they don’t believe in such “accidents,” either, but try prosecuting an affluent, “grieving parent.” Sounds awful? Right. It’s an awful world in which we live. Not every parent is as wonderful and loving as those I see here.
March 19th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
But Laura, we don’t all live in Arizona. It’s a balmy 68 degrees outside here at the moment. You can’t tell me that 20 seconds at 68 degrees would kill anybody.
March 19th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
I tried to add to my comment, and then I screwed it up somehow.
I know that. I understand that. It’s just that laws cannot apply “only sometimes,” and especially when “the kids” are involved. Take any situation that involves little ones, parents, cops, and politicians, and you have to have all or nothing thinking, or nothing at all. It doesn’t work any other way.
Case in point: the “zero tolerance” nonsense we have in our schools. Reactionary garbage, feel-good legislation without a shred of common sense.
Do I think for a second that you would endanger your precious baby? Of course not. Do I think that it should be against the law to leave her in the car, regardless of the circumstances, if you lived here in Arizona. No, but that is what the law needs to be, because we as a society are stupid, reactionary and rash and cannot do things any other way when children are involved.
March 19th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
I still don’t know why we’d need that law in Knoxville to protect babies in Phoenix. I’d hate to put people in jail here for doing something completely harmless and rational.
March 23rd, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Jon, I agree with you 100%. I take my kids more often out of the knowledge that there are people LACKING in common sense who would freak out. For instance, my dry cleaner’s parking lot is literally 3 feet from its front door. The counter where I drop the clothes is literally 4 feet inside the door. The wall is a window. I leave my toddler in the car, doors locked.
If you don’t have kids, you have no idea how hard it is to get them in and out of a car seat. I don’t see how you are fully equipped to judge what a reasonable course of action is. It’s a risk to put a child in a car at all. But frankly, my 2yo is safer when buckled in his car seat in my locked, parked car in a safe parking lot, than he is when walking with me and two armloads of clothes into the dry cleaners. In case you haven’t noticed, 2yos are pretty defiant. Mine doesn’t hold my hand unless I force him. You think he’s safer being able to dash into traffic when my hands are full???
Don’t suggest I send someone else to the cleaners or go without him. I’m a single mom. [Do we have judgments to make about that too??]
You simply CAN’T make blanket rules that would be reasonable for every situation.
The horror stories we read about in the news are people lacking in not only common sense, but in basic parenting skills. OF COURSE you can’t leave a child in a car when it’s hot out. Duh.