Parental Instinct vs Stupidity vs Lack of Common Sense

Hi Everyone:

I have read about these stories for years, but it seems that parents continue to do this no matter how much publicity these stories get. I just don't get it! What I am talking about are parents who leave small children strapped in their car seats in a locked car. Doing this in the winter time is wrong and bad enough, but doing it in the summer time is twice as dangerous and can become lethal in a very short period of time.

Last month on a mid afternoon Sunday, a Bedford Hills, New York couple, yes I said a couple (mother and father), left their 1 year old twins in their car seats in a locked car. The police were called by someone who witnessed the twins in the locked car. Luckily, the police arrived quickly and the children were removed from the car. The twins were not injuired but both parents were arrested and charged with acting in a manner injurious to a child, which is a misdemeanor. The police also called CPS, (Child Protective Services) to look into the situation. There was no more information.

I have read a lot of the "reasons" that the parent(s) have stated as their reasoning for leaving a child(ren) in a locked car i.e.: forgot that they were in the car, the child was asleep and the parent didn't want to wake them up and they were just running into a store and would've been right back. I too am a parent (2 kids) and I never ever left any of my kids in a locked car for any reason. Obviously the reasons that the parent(s) gave were nothing short of excuses albeit poor ones for their mistake. In my opinion, there is absolutely no reason to leave a child alone in a locked car.

When I read about these incidents, my first thought is where is/are the parent(s) parental instinct? My second thought is that unfortunately there are some people who just don't have that instinct. My third thought is their stupidity in locking their child in the car. Finally I think that if they just had one ounce of common sense those parents would never have done that. They would have realized the inherent dangers of leaving a child in a locked car especially in the summer. I believe that it takes only a few minutes for the inside temperature to reach 90 degrees and then a few more minutes and the temperature will climb into the 105+ degrees. At such high temperatures, in a short period of time, serious medical consequences can and will happen to the child including death. I do not believe that the parents in these incidents willfully want to injure their child but what were they thinking?

In these cases presuming that the parents are of average intelligence but somehow lack basic parental instinct, common sense would then dictate to not do it. But if one doesn't even have a little bit of common sense as a last resort to help one make an appropriate decision, then these kind of incidents will sadly continue to occur.

Maybe common sense courses taught in high school and college is not such a weird or far out idea. It seems that the time has come to implement some kind of common sense courses. I do truly believe that if common sense was used more often in making any kind of decision, the world would be a better and safer place to live.

Til next week.