Forgotten baby syndrome can affect any parent. The consequences can be very serious for young children. How to explain such a phenomenon ? What to do to avoid it? Expert explanations.
In summer, “forgotten baby syndrome” often makes the rounds in the news. This phenomenon occurs when a parent forgets baby in car without realizing it, for a few hours or a whole day. An oversight that can be fatal for toddlers who end up succumbing to the heat and the dehydration. This was the case on June 7, 2023 in Belgium, Six-month-old baby dies of ‘very bad heat stroke’, according to the Belgian prosecutor’s office, after being forgotten in a vehicle all day. These tragedies arouse emotion, but above all the incomprehension of public opinion. How to explain this phenomenon, what are the causes? What to do to avoid it? Answers from experts.
What is Forgotten Baby Syndrome?
We’re talking about “forgotten baby syndrome”, when young children, most often infants, die of hyperthermia after being left for several hours in the family car in direct sunlight. For most of them, the parents unfortunately forgot them in their vehicle when they were supposed to drop them off at daycare or the nanny. Thinking they have done so, they go to work leaving baby in the cabin, windows and doors closed.
Scientists talk aboutan involuntary omission. The parent is in “a state of hypnosis, a state of autopilot where it is the unconscious that takes the lead”, has explained Ilana Waserscztajn, clinical psychologist at BFM TV, which explains why he doesn’t realize it at the time. In other cases, it also happens that unscrupulous parents intentionally leave the child in their vehicle while they are away for shopping, administrative procedures or because the child is sleeping.
The parent who forgets his child is in “a state of hypnosis, a state of automatic pilot where the unconscious takes the lead.”
Whether “forgotten baby syndrome” is so often in the news is that it can affect any parent who a priori has his head on his shoulders. “In in most cases, these episodes concern adults whose psychic and cognitive functions are perfectly intact“underline the researchers of a scientific studies published in 2020 in the magazine Rivista di Psychiatry.
The explanation would come, according to David Diamond, professor in the department of cognitive, neural and social psychology at the University of South Florida (United States) from the fact that our memory relating to habits, such as taking the same route every day, takes over prospective memory (related to the tasks to be performed). This is what he explains in an article published in The Conversation. “When we repeatedly drive along a fixed route, such as between home and work, the memory of habits can override the plans stored in our prospective memory”.
Forgetting your baby in your car in summer is a real danger
In summer, babies are very sensitive to heat and the sun. If a baby is left alone in a vehicle in the middle of summer, it risk of suffering from both dehydration andhyperthermiaand to die.
Risk of hyperthermia
Inside a closed car, the temperature can rise dramatically. According to one scientific studies published in 2015 in the International Journal of Current Research, “there can be up to 55% increase in temperature within the first five minutes and up to 90% within 15 minutes, even if the car windows are partially open.”
Death
In case of hyperthermia, there is a high probability that the child will succumb to the heat. “Two to three hours is enough for a child to die”, notes the study. In cold weather too, “the child may die of hypothermiacharacterized by a drop in body temperature below 35°C”, indicates the report of the Consumer Safety Commission.
Psychological consequences
Of the psychological consequences significant can also occur. As the Consumer Safety Commission reports, “These can take the form of a acute reaction to feelings of abandonment that such a situation gives rise to and which will manifest itself over time by anxiety attacks and nightmares recurring or by a depression hidden, in the form of a withdrawal into oneself by fear of the outside world or what could be experienced as a new parental abandonment”.
What to do not to forget baby in the car?
To limit the risk of forgetting your baby in the back of the vehicle, the authorities advise:
- Place baby in his car seat, fastened and rear facing, on the front seat, passenger side. Depending on his age of course, we will see him and we will therefore be less likely to forget him.
- Leave your phone, your purse in the back of the vehicle in order to be certain of having to turn to retrieve them when getting out of the car and thus see if the child is present.
- Leave baby’s comforter or diaper bag next to uson the front as a memo.
- You can also place “anti-distancing” warning devices. These sensors are to be attached to the baby’s car seat and are triggered when you move away from it.
- Finally, we try to rest to fight against the decline in vigilance.
“When I found my son, he was scarlet”
Testimony of parents who forgot their baby in a car
Some parents who have experienced the forgotten baby syndrome share their testimony. At the microphone of RTL, a 37-year-old mother, recalled the event that upset her in August 2016 when she forgot her 16-month-old baby in the back of her car. She confided not without emotion: “I never really realized he was in the car. I have no idea how long it took. When I found my son he was scarlet. I screamed, I screamed. opened the door and he was crying (…) he was not dead (…) I don’t know how much it impacted him, a multitude of factors that make it can happen to any parent.”