I’m probably not the only millenial parent who remembers sitting in the vehicle alone, reading a book, while the adult responsible for me went into the store.
If you’re like me, you’ve spent some time pondering why that was okay then but isn’t something you’d ever dream of doing with your kids. Still, there are parents out there who make the same decision every day, and by far, the majority of their babies are okay.
Still, even today, the question is fraught, and some parents wonder why this would be frowned upon.
Reddit Mom Wonders About Daycare Drop-off
A mom turned to one of Reddit’s parenting forums to ask what they apparently thought was a simple, reasonable question and was shocked at the vehement responses. Below is the main body of her original post:
Three days per week I take my 3 year old to preschool (if his dad is at work at the time and can’t take him). His preschool is inside a church across the street from the elementary and middle schools in our town of less than 12,000 people. The car warms up to cozy temperatures on the drive over, I am inside for less than 5 minutes to walk 3 year old into the building, see that he goes into the classroom, and then I walk out. If I have to be in longer to talk to the teacher, I bring 15 month old in with me.
But do I have to take 15 month old out of the car every time I do drop off and pick up? He is always very happy and warm when I get back in after leaving him, I make sure he’s occupied with a toy or his sippy cup. It just feels weird to leave him in the car but dealing with the car seat buckling and unbuckling honestly takes longer than the entire drop off process if I just leave him in the car.
Most parents can probably empathize with the frustration of having to take the baby out of a warm cozy car, go through the process of bundling him up (we all know no coats in carseats, right?), and lug him inside for literally five minutes only to take him back out, unbundle him, and wrestle his little octopus tentacles back into the straps again, right?
Honestly, while parents in cars with buckled babies were not the inspiration for the invention of drive-through windows at restaurants, it would have made perfect sense if they were.
The Safest Choices Aren’t Always The Convenient Ones
Okay, sure, in the 1980’s, it wasn’t unusual to let a kid stay in the car alone. On the other hand, it was also pretty normal to let teenagers ride in truck beds and smaller kids flop around the backseat with no seatbelts, so maybe how we grew up isn’t what we want as the standard going forward.
Leaving your child in the car seat for five minutes would be super easy while you hand your older child off to a teacher. It would be even easier to plop him on the passenger seat with a toy for the drive. Still, we collectively acknowledge the danger of that, to the degree that we’ve made it illegal to protect kids from any parents who don’t recognize the risk.
In fact, according to Kids & Cars, leaving your child unattended in the vehicle is also illegal in 20 states.
Those laws vary in detail, such as the child’s age and the definition of ‘unsupervised.’ For instance, in Nevada, there may be an exception if another person at least 12 years old can see the baby, and in Louisiana, a person at least 10 years of age must be in the vehicle with the baby.
They all, though, stand as evidence that we recognize there are dangers.
A Lot Can Happen In Five Minutes
There’s a pretty low chance that anything will happen in five minutes. There are at least two problems with gambling on that, though.
First, five minutes may not be five minutes. As one Redditor pointed out:
“It’s easy to go from being out of sight of your 15-month-old for 3 minutes to 20 minutes simply because you get sucked into a conversation or there’s a bottle neck at drop off or what if your 3-year-old is having a rough morning and won’t separate? It’s not worth the risk.”
Even in the best-case scenario, that five-minute gamble is one that the parent would hypothetically take over and over, three times a week at least until warmer weather, if not throughout the school year. That’s a lot of risk./
Second, and most importantly, our job as parents is to be aware of and mitigate those risks.
Sure, it’s fairly unlikely that someone steals your car, with your baby in it, from a parking lot that your experience and local knowledge say is safe in those five minutes. That risk drops to zero if you carry the baby inside.
Other parents chimed in to point out all the different things that could go wrong: someone else losing control of their vehicle and careening into the parking lot, the parent accidentally locking herself out, the parent suffering a medical issue while she’s outside the car and being taken away unconscious in the ambulance. At the same time, nobody knows the baby is in the car.
Even Parents Who Think It’s Safe Advise Against Leaving Babies In The Car
Even those parents who don’t think there’s a real danger to leaving kids in the car — the ones who responded with comments like “we used to leave our babies in the car to run in to pay for gas,” tend to add a caveat with another risk they believe is higher: legal trouble. One said:
“But the world being the way it is….its not safe to leave your child in the car until college, because someone will call CPS …so don’t do it.”
(It’s probably safe well before college, although I’ll admit I’ve heard a few horror stories of older teens being harassed by adults who weren’t so hot at guessing ages thought they were rescuing a small child left in a car.)
Another Redditor told the story of an acquaintance who made the same decision and was reported for it. They said:
“She called the cops and it was a whole ordeal for them. You will be put on a case. Just take him in and get him used to it😭 also anything can happen. Unfortunately few people in this world don’t care about your baby being warm & cozy. It’s better safe than sorry.”
Yet another expressed concern that some well-meaning but overzealous person might decide to smash a window to get to the baby.
There Are Other Solutions Available!
Once, I pulled into a gas station with the baby in the car, and the police officer in the vehicle next to me recognized me. I honestly considered asking him to stand by the car for me for just a minute so I could skip the unbuckling, but I didn’t.
I have, though, taken one of my siblings or an older child along to sit in the car with a little one. The mom who initially posted her question might have a neighbor or friend who would do so, or another daycare mom might be willing to sit in the car with the baby for those five minutes.
If not, Reddit parents offered another solution:
“It’s probably worth asking if the school can have a support person at the driveway for this sort of thing. My toddler’s school has repeatedly offered to either send someone in to pick up my daughter for me or leave someone standing at my car in order to avoid my having to get the baby out. Thankfully for drop off, teachers bring them in from the cars because it worked so well when they had to do that during COVID.”
A few others suggested checking with the daycare to see if the three-year-old could be handed off to a responsible adult at the door rather than being walked to class.
Legality May be Questionable, Even If Your State Has No Specific Law
Some folks were not exactly gentle in their responses to the question. The mom who originally posted had updated her post within about an hour to respond to the level of vitriol she saw from some commenters. She argued:
“I hear you all, I think you’re jumping up on me like I’m leaving him for 3 hours to get a massage or go shopping at Walmart…It’s not illegal in my state. You all are very aggressive and judgmental, and many of these comments could have been made with an ounce of empathy while still saying you think it is a bad idea.”
While it’s possible to be more gentle with a parent who we’re trying to guide in the right direction, her update brings up another very relevant and important matter: legality.
She seems to suggest that her state is one of the 30 where there is no specific law forbidding this.
To be clear, that does not mean it’s legal.
If you live in a state that has no specific laws addressing leaving children alone in a car, you could still face charges if authorities deem it to be child endangerment.
To cite a single example, in North Carolina, a woman was just charged with child abuse and neglect in October for leaving a two-year-old in a vehicle for several hours, according to WITN. Though that was far longer than five minutes, the state didn’t need to have a specific law about leaving babies in cars for the charge to be applied.
Balancing Protection With Growth
As our babies get bigger, we must make many safety and risk decisions.
Can I let her spend the night at that kid’s house? Is it okay to let him ride his bike around the block? Can he play in the yard without supervision? Do I let her climb that tree? Should I let her use that curb as a balance beam or is it too risky?
The older they get, the more we’ll let them take calculated and careful risks because it’s part of growing up.
But when they’re so tiny? It’s just our job to err on the side of caution.
