Helpful Tips to Prevent Leaving a Child Behind

Another mother’s experience about a child left behind in the car.

Editor’s Note: We first featured this topic in July 2020 in this post: Don’t Think It Can’t Happen to You, along with a follow-up focus on the Clever Elly device. But, now that warm weather is back (although it’s important for all seasons), it’s a good time for a reminder. Here, Chava adds additional important information about how our brains function, plus some additional research, tech solutions, and hacks.

I never dreamed it could happen to me.

Full disclosure: I am a safety fanatic. Not only do we have smoke detectors in every bedroom – they are wirelessly interconnected, so when one beeps, they all beep. I send a booster seat with my 6-year-old’s carpool, and the straps on my children’s car seats and bike helmets are as tight as my kids will tolerate.

So there I was, meandering through the produce section of my local supermarket. Oh, peaches are on sale, better get a few bags of those. Should I get a whole watermelon or a half? Blueberries – Dovid loves to eat those in his highchair —

DOVID! I brought him shopping with me, but he’s not in the cart!

Heart in my throat, I sprinted out to the parking lot and snatched a sleeping and sweaty Dovid out of his car seat. Baruch Hashem, it had only been a few minutes, and the only negative effects were Dovid’s indignance at being so rudely awakened. But I was shaken to my core.

How does a mother forget her child in the car?!?

The answer, it turns out, lies not in love, carelessness, or good intentions. 

Did you ever drive to work, while simultaneously planning the menu for your son’s bar mitzva and sipping your cappuccino? Or fold laundry while humming along and supervising your toddler’s playdate?

You can credit the basal ganglia – that awkwardly named part of our brain that plays a crucial role in our ability to carry out routine tasks without much conscious thought, allowing us to shift to autopilot mode and share the focus with other more demanding tasks.

The problem comes when this automation leads to unintended consequences. In the case of accidentally leaving a child in the car, the basal ganglia’s efficiency in executing rote habits (driving a familiar route, for example) can override our conscious awareness, causing us to “forget” the child in the backseat.

Add on sleep deprivation, multi-tasking overwhelm, and schedule changes – and the unfortunate truth becomes clear: forgetting a child can happen to ANYBODY. Yes, even you.

In my case, it seems that since I had dropped off my daughter at a previous stop, my brain “checked off” the kids-out-of-car ‘box.’ Other scenarios include parents driving to work and bypassing daycare drop-off, missing an older child (capable of exiting herself) who fell asleep, or simply having a change from one’s usual routine.

I did some research. 

You can minimize your risk by using tech devices combined with some good old-fashioned habit hacks. Technology is not foolproof – always combine with habits below. And make sure the grandparents and other caregivers are on board, too!

These are some of the solutions I found. 

1. Phone apps
   1. Kars4Kids – Android Google play/Bluetooth. Alarm when you and your phone leave the car. Can be turned off if there are no kids in the car. (Some reviews said it stopped working.)
   2. Waze – set in settings, only works when Waze is running. Settings (tap maginifying glass bottom left, then gear icon top right)>General>Child reminder. When you arrive at the destination you programmed into Waze, it will make a sound and display your reminder. BUT it won’t go off if you don’t get to your destination (e.g. if you park 2 blocks away).
2. Devices
   1. Clever Elly – Plugs into charging port. Voice warning when leaving car. $29 cleverelly.com. Clever Elly was featured in this BCP post.
   2. Steelmate 1U –  $34.99, a sensor under car seat that alarms when the driver seat belt is unbuckled.
3. Habit hacks
   1. Establish an ironclad habit of opening the back door of your car, every time you get out, even when you are alone. To lock your habit in, add a verbal cue like “check kids,” and say it. Every. Time.
   2. Always place something essential like your purse, phone, or left shoe in the back seat.
   3. Communicate with caregivers – make sure they will contact you if the child is not dropped off as expected.

Here are some products I researched that I do NOT recommend:

• Safeseat app – almost no reviews anywhere
• Backseat app – seems to be no longer available
• Elpho+eclip app – need to remember to turn on app for every trip
• Ride N Remind – expensive to purchase + additional expense of professional install