After an hour and fifteen minutes of playing at the library the boys and I left to get back into our black RAV4. I had tried to park in the shade at 10:05 am but the only two shady spots had been taken. Paddy suggested a shadier spot farther from the entrance. It's early I thought and parked in the sun.
I returned to the car saddled with my 15-month-old, my purse, and a bag of library books. I opened the driver side door, started the car to blast the air conditioning and opened all of the windows. After then emptying my hands and buckling my boys I got into the driver's seat. The thermostat on the dashboard read 97 degrees. I put the windows up, started to drive and started to sweat.
As I traveled down a windy and shady road the thermostat reading dropped to 85 degrees. After about five minutes it felt more comfortable in the car and I stopped worrying weather the kids were too hot.
What I did was start thinking about a video I saw on Facebook recently of a toddler being rescued from a car in a Costco parking lot. The mother returned after the police had broken the window and extracted the child. Her older daughter was at her side and her cart was full of groceries. My stomach turned.
There are many things in this world that are hard to make sense of but this is incomprehensible. Why would anyone leave a child in the car in a hot parking lot with the windows rolled up while they shopped? I don't even like returning a shopping cart on a hot day or leaving the kids in the car long enough to unlock the door to the house. But long enough to shop for shoes (as in a recent case) or go grocery shopping?
Something needs to be done. I was happy to see a sign as I walked into Walmart today. It reminded shoppers to look in their cars to make sure that you haven't left your child. This seems to be a drop in the bucket though.
Whether children are left in cars because caregivers forget, are somehow ignorant to the dangers or are abusive does not matter to me. Charging a caregiver with a crime after the fact does nothing, the harm has been done. What matters is what is being done to prevent this. Fortunately the child I saw recently on Facebook survived. Many others don't.
I don't often use this blog to talk about issues like this but I don't know where else to place my anger and sadness. Yet.
