I can still recall the shudder I felt. It was summer 2019. That week I had just written my column about the horrific tragedy about the danger of children’s death in hot cars — heatstroke. I wrote in order in order to bring awareness of this self-caused agony of bereaved parents, so readers can take the necessary mental and behavioral steps to prevent it.
As I was exiting the hallway into the staircase, from a friend’s apartment where I had been hosted for Shabbat lunch, I saw the front page news of a Saturday slumberer who hadn’t yet brought in that day’s paper, lying at their door.
The headline in big block black letters screamed at me.
Heartbreakingly, splashed on the entirety of the front page, was a father — by all accounts a responsible, devoted and loving one, surrounded by police. He had left his twins in the back seat of his car, committing the worst lapse of memory possible, causing his own children’s death by heatstroke in his own car.
With the approach of Memorial Day weekend and the beginning of June and the rising temperatures it brings, I made a mental note a couple of weeks ago to be sure and write my column on this modern day tragedy.
Not a day went by and I heard the news of still another such tragedy. This time, in the Jewish community (of Los Angeles). A friend of the family, who as a morning drop off favor added the family’s child to his own brood, forgot his friend’s child, who was mistakenly left in the car.
Many daycare and early childhood programs have accountability systems in place (and all should!). If there is an unexpected no-show, an immediate call is placed to the parent or the guardian of the missing child, which in a hot car situation could make the difference between life and death.
The article that had originally brought me the awareness of this tragedy was a Pulitzer winning piece titled, “Fatal Distraction,” by Gene Weingarten.
I encourage everyone to read it.
The other week when I read the comments in response to the current article about the hot car tragedy, they were replete with judgement, condemnation and blame— some were seething. Only a minority of the comments expressed sadness and sympathy.
The general assumption by many readers was that the tragedy happened due to bad, irresponsible, neglectful parenting.
Yet, if I remember correctly, the key factor I came away with from Weingarten’s in-depth article was:
Not only could this unbearable tragedy happen to anyone, but the more we think it could never happen to us, the higher the risk.
We need to make a mental switch, and think — this could G-d forbid happen to me, therefore what steps should I take to ensure it doesn’t?
Apparently, change in routine seems to be a major culprit in causing a parent or caretaker’s lapse in memory.
So much of our overwhelmingly hectic and multi-tasking modern day living is lived on autopilot. Add a change in schedule, and it can become dangerous. Often, young parents are operating semi-exhausted states, their short term memories temporarily shot. Then again, anyone can sometimes blank out.
Even if it’s not a sweltering day, the interior of a closed parked car heats up very quickly. And children’s body temperatures heat up very quickly — far quicker than an adult’s.
Most of us have had near-miss moments in our lives, after which we find ourselves shuddering at what might have been.
Perhaps it was a phone call weighing on us that needed to be made, that distracted us, but we were lucky, and ultimately, tragedy was averted just in the nick of time.
Perhaps we also once forgot to drop our child off at daycare, but then a little voice coughed, and was a reminder.
Perhaps it was a different, seemingly urgent matter, that caused us to veer from engaging or focusing on a child safety task at hand, but then, mercifully, something caused us to remember.
These tragic hot-car deaths are the ones that weren’t lucky enough to be near-misses, and instead unleashed heart bleeding tragedy, a lifetime of psychic torment, collapsed lives, for the ones who inadvertently caused the tragedy.
These stories of the babies or little children left behind are the fatal cases we hear about that become “news,” and it’s agonizing to write the following words, but “cautionary tales” too.
In our modern day transportation, with children legally seated in the back, there’s an absence of eye contact, or, in the case of a sleeping baby or child, an absence of even face to face contact. This deepens the possibility of this tragedy, as we might get caught up, preoccupied in our own thoughts and lists we check off in our minds.
Remember!
Because we all have the power to forget.
This can happen to any of us.
Change of routine can be fatal, so take extra precautions as deterrents.
The horrific lapse in memory that caused a responsible loving adult to accidentally leave a child behind in a hot car, is not necessarily a measure of their parenting or persona, but rather of their human frailty.
Praying for a safe and joyous summer for families.
© IJN 2026