Don't Leave Pets, Older People, And Children In Parked Hot Cars

I was coming home from the gym and wanted to get something cold to drink and use my ATM card to get cash. The cool thing about Publix is they don't charge you to get cash back when you buy something or use the ATM machine in front of the store. From the little I know they respect their employees.

Anyway, I am in Pompano Beach and it's 95 degrees outside. I see this elderly lady sitting in a car trying to use her cell phone. I ask her if she's all right and she says she's dizzy and doesn't feel well. I wouldn't feel well either, sitting in a hot car in this heat. What kind of person leaves an elderly person in a car with the a c off in the Florida Summer. She asks if I can go inside and get her daughter. I tell her I can't leave her in the hot car and I let her hold on to me and take her inside. We find her daughter and as Shakespeare says "all's well that ends well." By the way she told me she was ninety one years old and her name is Mollie.

BTW, it's my birthday. My birthday kind of sucks as did Christmas and New Years because of my financial condition but the opportunity to do something nice made my day brighter and helped me take my mind off my problems.

cases where families forgot a baby and left it in the car. of course they died. a few years ago a cop forgot his dog -- a police dog in his car. it died.

happy birthday. hope your situation improves.

kids pulling hair from the head in trying to deal with the pain.

I mention that I used to occasionally take my daughter to daycare. Not very often, maybe about once or twice every couple of weeks. My daughter was a kid that could fall asleep in a car in a second so there was rarely any noise from the backseat during my short drive to work/daycare.

I was always afraid that I'd forget her back there because she was so quiet and I rarely had her with me in the mornings and it was a rear facing seat so I developed a routine where I'd put my laptop and lunch on the floor of the backseat right in front of her car seat. When I got out at work I had to look right at the car seat while I grabbed my crap. She's well out of car seats now but I still put my laptop and lunch right there.

on edit: typos

I was going to suggest that parents put their belongings in the back seat of the car. There is way too many parents forgetting their children in their car.

It is way too easy, particularly for working mothers who often do not have their babies in the car, but sometimes do, to forget that the baby is in the back seat quietly and blissfully asleep.

with the baby looking ahead. what if the child is choking? you wouldn't know it.

Front-seat air bags can kill young children when they deploy. Hence the rule about not putting kids of a certain age/height in the front seat, ever.

It is, however, a good practice to do something that will force you to go back to the back seat to get something you need, or will serve as a reminder to you in the front seat that you have a child with you in back.

in the front seat. Secondly, can't passenger side air bags be turned off for such circumstances? Perhaps I'm wrong, just something I remember reading once.

not a good idea, and even baby seats can be crushed by the air bags.

I know sounds incredible, but want a graphic description?

I was a single working parent. Whatever my other flaws as a parent, I never forgot my kids were with me.

Good thing, since they grew up in the Mojave desert.

one parent takes the child to daycare, sometimes the other. And even among couples, some spouses need to take second jobs and are overtired.

I often worked 2 jobs while raising my kids. Of course, not having their dad around meant that it was all me, all the time, but still...what a horrific mistake for any parent to make, for anyone to have to live with.

It will literally crush a baby, or young child... or just smother them.

But yet it happens...and we get damn hot here in the desert damn quick.

:toast: :party: You did a really good thing today :-). I really don't know what people are thinking when they leave others in a hot car (or cold car). I've located security guards twice this summer for pets who were left in cars in parking lots.

Apparently they were going to call the police on me and/or chew me out for leaving my dog in the truck on a 100 degree day.

What they didn't realize was the truck was running with the air on full blast. I'm able to lock her in the truck and use the keypad to get back in. Even then, I would never leave for an extended period of time in the event of some fluke engine failure.

I guess it was a matter of time before someone mistook it for animal abuse. I apologized to the lady who sounded the alarm. It turns out she runs an a dog rescue so I thanked for her looking out for my girl and other pooches.

my dog was in my suv with the windows up *BUT* I had the sun roof open and he was getting more air from that than he would've from a window plus I was parked in the shade. Somebody had told the manager and they announced over the loudspeaker that there was a dog in a car. I know they were looking out for him but I wish they would've looked more carefully, if they had they would've seen the open roof.

edit: changed one word.

not realizing the danger it can put them in. Case in point, my grandmother came to visit a few months after my first child was born. My ex-hubby didn't like the heat on past 62 at the time. But as she was visiting and older, he said if she was cold, turn the heat up. So I kept asking and asking, "are you sure you're warm enough, we'll be happy to raise the heat." "No, she was fine," she kept saying. Then six months later I hear through the grapevine that she's been complaining to everyone that we made her sick because we wouldn't raise the heat.

I admire your efforts here, but older women particularly, tend to insist on being left uncomfortably, perhaps so they can have something to talk about later, or whatever. I've many friends who have similar stories when it comes to elderly grandmothers or mothers, though I've never heard the same about grandfathers or fathers. Maybe it's a generational thing, I sure hope so, I hope it dwindles as newer generations of women become elderly.

I am familiar with the demands of the elderly. I took care of my mom from the time she was 78 until she passed away at 90. Her well being was definitely in the balance. It was 95 degrees and am sure the real temperature was 110 degrees.

of us, but IF she had said, "no, dear, I don't want to go in, I'll be fine here in the car." There's not much someone can do but drag her out of the car, which would look like abuse of another kind. Probably you're right, and the daughter is a scumbag, but not definitely right. It could be as I describe, it could be that the elderly women didn't initially want to leave the car and that the daughter's time in the store was taking longer than anticipated through no fault of her own. My grandmother was also old and frail, but I'll guarantee you that if she wanted to create a scene about being treated like a child, she could. And forcing someone out of a car that they thought they wanted to remain in, is treating someone like a child.

Mollie said "I'm dizzy and don't feel well" and was happy I escorted her inside to the air conditioned Publix.

to an un-determinable conclusion about the daughter and about how & why Mollie was still in the car. I think you did a great thing, but I think you're characterizing the players in the scene, Mollie and her daughter, without knowledge and perhaps entirely unfairly.

Ignorant doesn't mean mailicous.It means don't know. For instance I am ignorant of lots of things. Mollie's mom had to be ignorant of the danger of leaving a ninety one year old woman in a one hundred ten degree car. Mollie was glad I got her out of it.

Between allowing a frail older person to stay in an unsafe care and dragging her out, there is the middle. Where you listen for the concern, learn to address it and how to frame your request so that it will be easy to say "yes" to you.

These are simple skills that can be learned by anyone who has the sense to know they need them.

forcing someone into "allowing" her to be uncomfortable, then complaining for years about it. I'm sorry, you and I are usually on the same page, but I know too many elderly women who play this game to accept your idea that communication will always help. Perhaps sometimes, perhaps if the person doesn't have dementia or Alzheimer's, but certainly not "always".

But there are very specific comm tools to use in those very situations. It's just not "communication" like, tell me your feeling thingy. These tools have specific steps and good results with people who aren't processing very well and who may be very upset. Nothing is 100% but even 51% is better than someone wandering off into harm's way. You might want to check out SET. That's an easy one to learn and it can be helpful.

fwiw

grandmother to have your more direct style. You consider her more indirect style to be childish. But you're wrong. Her style isn't childish. It's just as mature as yours. It's just different.

(If you'd like to get along better with your grandmother -- and the many people like her -- you might want to read Deborah Tannen's book, "That's Not What I Meant! How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships." She is the linguist who also wrote "You Just Don't Understand: Men and Women in Conversation.")

You use the term childish, it isn't the word I used or would use. I said I would not treat her like a child.

And as for your books, stuff 'em. I used to read so many books like that, and guess what, they're all full of crap. The only way those work is if the person your talking to has also read the books. Otherwise, they remain the same, no matter what you or I do or say. This I've learned over 50 years with the middle 30 intently trying to improve communications with folks like my grandmother and my mother. Grandmother's dead, and mother is disowned because I simply had enough of her BS.

Not all grannies and mommies are nice or cooperative or clear of the blame for the discomfort they put themselves in, no matter how old or how frail. That's my point, and I'm sticking to it.

of having to AGREE to raise the temperature higher than your ex-husband wanted (or you normally had it at), by asking her if you should raise the heat FOR HER. Many guests, trying to be polite, would be reluctant to say yes in that situation. But almost all elderly people need a temperature closer to 70 than to 60. (Or even closer to 80!) Next time, just raise the temp -- don't ask her to approve it.

And had she found out that I had done that, she would've been outraged that she was treated like a child.

Its not about treating her like a child but treating her like a human being.

Its not that hard to be thoughtful without being condescending.

And the most polite -- i.e., considerate -- response for the host would have been to raise the temp without making an issue of it.

You knew what your grandmother needed -- more heat. But, for some reason, you wanted to put the burden of the decision on her. She, determined to be a good guest, hoped that you would understand her need -- without her having to be explicit about it.

This has nothing to do with anyone being treated like a child. It has to do with varying styles of communication and different standards of being polite. Here's the rule of thumb that your grandparents and parents probably were taught. It actually works well, if both host and guest understand and agree to the basic idea:

A good host tries to anticipate the needs of his guests. A good guest tries to make as few requests as possible.

There's no way to clearly explain the entire situation on here. Apparently your relatives are not as unmanageable as mine were, "were" being the key word. I won't have anything to do with any of them anymore because of constant crap and BS. My only hope is that I am the one to break the family legacies of BS, abuse, passive/aggressive, kissy face/slappy back, the whole nine yards.

Since my kids (grown kids) are the first from either side of the family to actually like each other and like their mother (me), and I like them, I'd say we have most likely broken the family legacy. We won't know for sure till one of the kids has kids, which should be a while if I did my job right.

You may have saved a life today. A little parade in your honor... You deserve it! :yourock:

:toast::party::applause::woohoo::bounce:O8):yourock::toast::party::applause::woohoo::bounce:O8):yourock::toast::party::applause::woohoo::bounce:O8):yourock::toast::party::applause::woohoo::bounce:O8):yourock::toast::party::applause::woohoo::bounce:O8):yourock::hi:

:yourock:

a sense of pride and self worth. You are a good person and you just proved it.:hug:

sometimes you have to wonder what's in peoples heads to do stuff like that. we carry water and a bowl for the dog if its over 75 and we have to leave her in the vehicle for any amount of time, if its over 85 she stays home
glad to hear you did this I hope her daughter was thankful too

:yourock:

Do they live in bubbles and have never heard of the deaths of kids and pets from this stupidity?

Too many blow off seniors especially that age.

When I stop at a Circle K and have a passenger in this heat here in Phx - I usually park in the shade (where one gets gas if there are several empty spaces and I leave the ac for them.

well, then you're just Satan. I can see you haven't been here long...you're going to make lots of friends.

I suggested that I couldn't understand how someone could forget their baby in a hot car.


I apologized for lacking empathy, but I'm still not sure I should have... I was just being nice. I'm surprised she hasn't attacked you yet. There's still time.

:yourock:

:party:

How many people get to do that on their birthday?

Congratulations on your present! I mean it. You did good, and can take that to bed with a smile tonight.

Even in the 90 degree heat here lately I've seen two guys doing it. Both dogs looked miserable as hell

Thank you for helping out those who can't help themselves.


You deserve a good birthday..... I send you my best wishes.

C'mon! PLEASE???

Oh, all right: Happy Birthday anyway. :-)

Blessing to you

Realize though that sometimes senior citizens ask to stay in the car, no matter how hot it is... dad... which means we ALWAYS leave the AC on.

Often she stayed in the car with the air condition on.

I understand respecting people's wishes but not when it endangers the person expressing their wish. And a wish to remain in a car that can reach a temperature of 140 degrees in seven minutes is

And many more!!!!!