Today I went to a mandatory court appearance with my good friend “Annie.” A month ago Annie left her two children, ages 2 and 4, in her (not-running) locked car for twelve minutes while she ran into Best Buy. The car was warm, as she had been running errands all morning. It was about noon in the first week of December; there was snow on the ground and the sun was shining.
The kids were tired and Annie’s oldest, who truly is quite articulate, said that he would rather wait in the car than go in with his mom. The kids were in their coats, in their car seats.
A couple walked by and called the police, who came and had been at the car for three minutes when my friend got back to it. The female police officer who wrote up my friend did not know for sure whether the statute Annie had violated was state or federal, though she guessed federal. She was positive that children have to be 8 to be unattended in a car, and 12 if there are any children under 8 present also.
My friend was so upset and ashamed about the whole episode that she didn’t tell anyone but her husband for three weeks. When she finally told me about it, I did some research. I couldn’t find a state or federal law about leaving children unattended in cars. There are groups pushing for legislation to make cars safer for kids unattended in cars, and there are statutes about neglect, harm, and abuse to a child, but no such allegations were made in this case. (The police made no moves to open the car; they could see that the kids were happy and safe.)
Annie and I scoured the internet. She called the DMV and learned it’s not a traffic violation; she called the district court and realized the clerks had no clue beyond suggesting a call to the city police department, and, oh, wasn’t that odd — according to the code on the citation, Annie was charged with “trespass and graffiti.”
Today at the court appearance, the prosecutor’s case paper had the correct code on it. Turns out, there’s a city ordinance about leaving children under the age of 6 unattended in a car in a public place. Annie was too flustered and intimidated by the judge to defend herself; she pled guilty to an infraction and paid the (happily-low) $100 fine.
Now, there are several issues here:
1) Children die in cars every year from hyperthermia.
2) The couple who called the police did the right thing.
3) The American justice system is probably the most defendant-friendly in the history of the whole history, and yet it is still a maze of Kafka-esque proportions.
4) Mothers who care about their children never stop worrying whether they’re doing it right.
1) Children die in cars every year from hyperthermia. This happens in the summer time, when parents forget (or don’t care) that their children are in the car. Recent cases have involved parents forgetting to drop kids off at daycare. I haven’t heard of any cases in the winter time among children running errands with their parents. In the Ohio case of Brenda Nesselroad-Slaby (whose 2 year-old died after 8 hours in the car), no charges were brought because there was no “reckless conduct” present.
I’ve never heard of a kid being kidnapped out of a locked car in a parking lot, but this could happen. I don’t know how it could possibly happen to a five-year old and not a six-year old, but there you go.
2) The couple who called the police did the right thing. My friend might wish that they’d considered waiting a few more minutes to see if a parent would return. But what if Annie had fallen and gotten hurt? What if you walked past a car with two kids in it? Would you walk by? I hope not. (I hope you wouldn’t act smug when the mother got written up for it, either.)
3) The American justice system blah blah blah. Ignorance of the law is a poor defence, but when almost no one knows what the law is, and when there’s no intent to neglect or actual neglect or any harm, what purpose is there in humiliating a mother who is honestly doing her best, which is pretty darn good?
4) Mothers who care about their children always think they’re doing something wrong. And if they’re not doing it wrong, for sure some other mother is.
We parents are so hard on each other. A couple months ago I told another friend how tempted I was to leave Spot napping at home while I ran to the school to pick up Sally. I was SO tempted: Spot had just barely fallen asleep, and I hated to drag her out into the cold. The school is only three minutes away; we live in a very, very safe neighborhood. My friend told me she’d recently left her baby asleep at home in the exact same circumstances, only she took the baby monitor over to the neighbor’s house.
I woke Spot up that day. What if there’s a fire, I thought. My friend who had left her baby at home also recounted a time when she left her kids in the car at the printers’. She could see them through the store window and she was only gone for three minutes. But, she said, she would NEVER leave her kids for twelve minutes in a large parking lot.
Neither would I, for that matter. I think. Except maybe I have, at the grocery store? Or the movie rental place? Sally is almost 8, so she’s probably been at least six any time I’ve done that. And probably I was only in the store for nine minutes, so that’s okay.
I do leave Susan and Spot while I get a drink at the gas station (or used to!) — in fact they were in the car when I locked my keys in it last month.
My point: there are large gray areas, despite laws about booster seats for eight-year olds.
And negotiating the gray areas is tough enough without law enforcers adding unnecessarily to the guilt and uncertainty parents feel every day. Surely police officers can tell a difference between a mother running a quick errand and a mother leaving her kids in a car while she bar-hops.
When I told Dick about Annie’s mistake, he said, “Wow, reminds me of that time your friend Andrea passed a car on the right and the police pulled her over and made her feel so bad for endangering her kid who was in the back seat.”
That happened almost eleven years ago, when Dick and I were dating. I still remember Andrea showing up at my house right after it happened. She was shattered at the idea that she might be (thought) an unfit mother. Dick and I haven’t talked about that in ELEVEN YEARS, and when we did talk about it Sally was the merest twinkle in Dick’s eye, but we both remembered it, and I bet Andrea does too.
I’ve joked before that I’m going to wait to have another kid until the American Academy of Pediatrics decides it’s okay after all for babies to sleep on their stomachs. Because if I have to count the weeks until another newborn can turn over by herself and get some quality sleep, I just won’t make it.
I know I make mistakes as a parent. (And I know I’m not the only one). But I hate the feeling that everyone else is watching, waiting for me to screw up.
Jane
p.s. I’m in the running for a spotlight on Mormon Mommy blogs, if you want to go vote (in the sidebar). Because I AM a good mother, dammit, and even if this post isn’t even “funny in a makes you think sort of way” (as one of my sweet readers said), but just plain “makes you think” (I hope), I’m, uh, sure I’ll have something almost-funny up again soon. (Thanks also to the MomNerd.)
Comment of the day (so far) from Keli:
A most excellent post, thank you. I have done this several times. I admit it. I will run into the “Sev” to grab a hot chocolate, and I admit, I don’t want to unbuckle my 2 year old, and wrastle the 5 year old, and then have to buy them crap they won’t eat or drink in addition to my hot cocoa. It’s purely selfish. But if a mom can’t have her selfish time, what can she do?
I usually try to get a 12 year old to sit with my kids in the car while I bar hop, though. That makes me a much better mother.
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