A 6-month-old boy died after being left for hours in a hot car in Louisiana, authorities said.

A 6-month-old boy died after being left for hours in a hot car in Louisiana, authorities said.

The baby was found dead in the backseat by his parent at about 5:46 p.m. Tuesday, according to the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office.

When the parent went to pick up the baby from day care after work, they realized they forgot to drop him off at day care that morning, the sheriff’s office said.

  • Thrillhouse@lemmy.world
    0·
    4 months ago

    From the Pulitzer article (please read it):

    Diamond is a professor of molecular physiology at the University of South Florida and a consultant to the veterans hospital in Tampa.[…]

    “Memory is a machine,” he says, “and it is not flawless. Our conscious mind prioritizes things by importance, but on a cellular level, our memory does not. If you’re capable of forgetting your cellphone, you are potentially capable of forgetting your child.”

    “The quality of prior parental care seems to be irrelevant,” he said. “The important factors that keep showing up involve a combination of stress, emotion, lack of sleep and change in routine, where the basal ganglia is trying to do what it’s supposed to do, and the conscious mind is too weakened to resist. What happens is that the memory circuits in a vulnerable hippocampus literally get overwritten, like with a computer program. Unless the memory circuit is rebooted – such as if the child cries, or, you know, if the wife mentions the child in the back – it can entirely disappear.”

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
      0·
      4 months ago

      You posted the article after I posed the above comment. I have read it.

      Edit: to the downvoters: should I have not read it? Because I get you downvoting the previous comments but I’m not sure what your problem is with this one.

      • Thrillhouse@lemmy.world
        0·
        4 months ago

        Hickling is a clinical psychologist from Albany, N.Y., who has studied the effects of fatal auto accidents on the drivers who survive them. He says these people are often judged with disproportionate harshness by the public, even when it was clearly an accident, and even when it was indisputably not their fault.

        Humans, Hickling said, have a fundamental need to create and maintain a narrative for their lives in which the universe is not implacable and heartless, that terrible things do not happen at random, and that catastrophe can be avoided if you are vigilant and responsible.

        In hyperthermia cases, he believes, the parents are demonized for much the same reasons. “We are vulnerable, but we don’t want to be reminded of that. We want to believe that the world is understandable and controllable and unthreatening, that if we follow the rules, we’ll be okay. So, when this kind of thing happens to other people, we need to put them in a different category from us. We don’t want to resemble them, and the fact that we might is too terrifying to deal with. So, they have to be monsters.”

          • TheFonz@lemmy.world
            01·
            4 months ago

            It’s Ok. I think it’s easy to dismiss obvious situations such as these, but as a tired parent I can tell you the mind will play tricks on you. I always triple check everything because I know I’m already exhausted. I can’t fault another parent for a mistake though.