A Texas mother was taken into custody Tuesday after police alleged her 22-month-old child died when she left the infant in a car outside a Corpus Christi school on one of the hottest days of the year.
The mother, 33-year-old Hilda Ann Adame, was jailed on charges of causing serious bodily injury to a child and child endangerment/abandonment with imminent bodily injury, according to a Corpus Christi Police Department incident report.
It was not clear how long the infant had been in the car before the baby was found unresponsive, according to the incident report.
That would suck to be arrested after accidentally (even if it was pure stupidity) killing your child. My car got to 122 recently. That's an unthinkably bad day.
Parents, teach your kids how to bang on the door as early as you can, so they can at least ask for help in the event they're strapped into a car seat and can't escape.
Shit happens, even with loving parents. Do you know what it feels like to have four hours of sleep non-contiguous each day for three years? That's some parents' experience.
Teaching your kids to survive regardless of your parenting doesn't mean you're a bad parent. It means you care about your kids enough to do everything possible to make sure they survive.
In the real world, there's no excuse, just explanations.
A 2 year old just cannot be expected to handle a crisis of any sort. You can teach them to be careful, to be aware, to be expressive, to be communicative, but never to handle a real crisis.
This mistake happens to mature, professional people, of no discernable background, race, income. First parents, second parents. Doctors, layers, teachers, janitors.
Habit distribution, sleep deprivation and distraction have no pattern of afflicting only some cluster of "irresponsible" people, in so much that anyone could determine who is in, or out of that "irresponsible" group. Including you.