Can I leave my infant in the car alone to...,

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:op I would. But this happened to me last week. Both kids had a high fever and we were out of groceries and needed to go to the doctors. So I take them to the grocery store for 5 min,pick up a fresh lasagnia both kids are un the grocery cart. I open my trunk and put my wallet and keys and phone down. Unload groceries. Close trunk. Just like that im locked out. My dh works an hour away. Its Friday at 3. Rush hour is a bitch. But imagine if i put my kids in the car first. They would've died from the heat. And they're too young to open locks. I felt so relieved my kids were in the cart. I walked them to the doctors office and we waited for dh. It was a hell day. But imagine if they were inside.

I doubt you would have let them die rather than smash a window.

[Anonymous]

You're a freaking idiot.

[Anonymous]

This is another example of why you CANNOT leave your kids in a car (idling or not). A dad left his kid in a car in Arlington on 6PM on a Sunday and the car was stolen with the kid in it. Thankfully they got the kid back.

https://patch.com/virginia/arlington-va/car-stolen-arlington-child-inside-found-dc-police

[Anonymous]

I do not when I go to ATM as I either go through drive-through or get money at store (and really few take cash anymore). I absolutely leave her in car when I put cart back at supermarket or pay at parking meter. The odds of her running into street or parking lot are higher than being car-jacked.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is another example of why you CANNOT leave your kids in a car (idling or not). A dad left his kid in a car in Arlington on 6PM on a Sunday and the car was stolen with the kid in it. Thankfully they got the kid back.

https://patch.com/virginia/arlington-va/car-stolen-arlington-child-inside-found-dc-police

Why did you resurrect an 8 year old thread to post this?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To run to an outdoor ATM in the city if I have the car parked just a few spots down? I could leave the door slightly ajar ? I don't have to do this today, but in the past I would either take her and put her in the carrier or lug the heavy car seat around- either waking her, upsetting her, or making my errand take ten times longer.... Just curious

No, no, no, no, no, no. Leave the car door open, NO!!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can I leave my infant in the car alone to...,

No.

Let me be clear...No.

+1000 Don't leave your baby in the car, for lots of reasons. If getting to a drive thru ATM isn't convenient, get cash back when you are at the grocery store or Target or somewhere else that lets you get cash back at the register.

[Anonymous]

I know it’s a pain but, leaving them in the car is a bad idea. Especially at an ATM

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Someone needs to post the Salon.com story where the mother left her child in the car and some random person videotaped it and called 911. Even though the mother was long gone by the time the police arrived, they still prosecuted her.

+1 My husband didn't understand why he couldn't raise our kids in the carefree way he was raised in the 70's. This article helped change his mind and get with the program. It doesn't matter what you want to do, but society has outlawed leaving kids alone in the car for a reason!

[Anonymous]

I have a sibling who has to go to homicide scenes as part of their job. They said the very very worst one they ever went to was an infant left in a hot car.

[Anonymous]

So actually yea, in most states as long as you have a clear line of vision to the car and aren’t further than X feet away it’s not illegal. Ignore the paranoid people on here. My only fear would be someone calling the police on me because my baby is in my car 15 feet away from me for 3 minutes , not that anything would happen. (And I’d leave the car locked, not unlocked with a door ajar, because you don’t want someone stealing your car in a moment of opportunity if you’re in the city)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Someone needs to post the Salon.com story where the mother left her child in the car and some random person videotaped it and called 911. Even though the mother was long gone by the time the police arrived, they still prosecuted her.

These stories were about a mom who left her kids for an extended period to go tanning or to a job interview - not to an ATM 15 feet from the car.

Sometimes I leave the baby in the car while I unload groceries at my house or when I am returning the shopping cart at Safeway.

You are all overreacting - anything can happen at anyone at any time but you cant live your life in fear.

Actually, no. A woman left her kids in the car for five minutes, to pick up dry cleaning or something like that, and someone videotaped the entire thing and then turned her in, even though the kids were fine and she really was only gone for five minutes.

That said, I just get cash when I buy groceries or go to the drugstore, so I don't have to go to the ATM.

Was she in line of sight of her car, in Maryland? If so she did zero illegal things.

[Anonymous]

Responding as if this was new in case a new parent is struggling to get things done and considering this option.


No. You can’t do this.


It’s a PIA to move a baby for a small task…Like when the gas pump asks you to come inside (I literally will drive to another station), post office, picking up one thing at a shop, whatever. But you have to take baby or run errands later solo if there is another parent.

Too many things can go wrong that are unfixable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, you *should* be able to, but there are whack jobs all over the place that will take it upon themselves to call the police and rain down hell on you for this. If people were so concerned about helping out other people, they would say, "Hey, I can watch your baby for the 2 minutes it will take you to use the ATM machine" instead of whipping out their iPhones and making a video and calling 911. But no.

The OP asked if she parked 3-4 cars away from the ATM on a city street if that would be okay. In 90 degree weather like we've had this week, the interior of a car will be 109 in 10 minutes, 119 in 20 minutes, 124 in 30 minutes. Infants are less tolerant of extreme temperatures and in 90 degree weather, an infant die of deyhdration and heat within 15 minutes. Typical parallel parking spaces are about 20 feet long so 3-4 cars if 60-80 feet away. That's pretty far for someone to try and figure out if anyone is with the child on a city street. If you have no idea how long the child has been in the car, seconds may matter. Even spending 2-4 minutes trying to ask around the people in the street if they are the guardian of the child in the car may be enough for that child to die, so some will call 911 and try to get into the car before trying to ask around. A few seconds or a few minutes may make the difference between life and death in these situations.

The number of children who die in hot vehicles per year: 2014 (12 and counting), 2013 (44), 2012 (34), 2011 (33), 2010 (49), 2009 (33), 2008 (43).
People are concerned and want to prevent those accidents. So, people who are concerned that you aren't just in the line of people waiting for the ATM up the block but that you might have accidentally forgotten your child while running errands, are whack jobs. People trying to save your child from a horrible death are whack jobs. People who want to see that number go down as close to zero annually are whack jobs. People who don't want you to go through what the parents in Gene Weingarten's Pulitzer Prize winning article, "Fatal Distraction" are whack jobs. Got it.

How many of those kids died while the parent was parked for a minute and getting cash at the ATM? I would venture to guess zero.

The woman in Arlington safely buckled her baby into a car seat and then turned around and got hit by a dump truck. That hardly ever happens though, so totally okay to leave your kid in a hot car, because chances are nothing will go wrong. You be you.

So now women can’t even buckle their kids in their car seats and then walk to the drivers side to enter the drivers seat? They should like, crawl from the backseat to the front, so there is no one nanosecond of time that the child is in the car and they personally are not? Do you guys hear yourselves?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Responding as if this was new in case a new parent is struggling to get things done and considering this option.


No. You can’t do this.


It’s a PIA to move a baby for a small task…Like when the gas pump asks you to come inside (I literally will drive to another station), post office, picking up one thing at a shop, whatever. But you have to take baby or run errands later solo if there is another parent.

Too many things can go wrong that are unfixable.

In Maryland you absolutely 100% CAN do this if you are in line of sight to your car. Don’t make moms lives even harder. You are allowed to be 15 feet from your car with your kid inside the car for a 2 minute period. Jesus. Have we all lost our collective minds? I mean yeah if it’s a million degrees and I wouldn’t want to sit in the car myself with no AC for a few min, I wouldn’t, because I don’t want to make my kid uncomfortable. But any other time, it is FINE and LEGAL