re: There are bad days and terrible days; 2 year old dead after being left in a car

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As theOG confirmed, the kid would have likely been in a forward facing car seat. So that makes it more suspicious to me. That would be a big detail to confirm.

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It is plausible that it was forward facing, but in a somewhat ironic twist, it is recommended to leave your kids in a rear facing seat for as long as they possibly can fit. We have a convertible seat that can go both ways, and our child still faces the rear and will probably still fit well past 30 months or so, at which point we'll turn it around.

I say it is ironic because it is safer to have your child facing the rear, but you'd think it makes something like this a bit more likely as well.

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If you have a rear-facing car seat, put them in the middle of the backseat and put that mirror that allows you to see the baby.

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I thought about that too, but at the same time I was trying to think of potential specifics that would make it a bit more plausible for this to happen. I would say rear facing even with the mirror makes it much more possible than a front facing seat.

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Bravo, but surely you can understand that even good parents make mistakes. At the very least you can acknowledge that there are spans of time where you are not thinking about your kids, particularly when it is an otherwise normal day.

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There's always lapses, but this appears to be much more than a parental brain fart IMO. She tells herself for 8 hours that she took the kid to daycare, then somehow misses spotting a 2 year old in her backseat when she gets out for work, then misses that 2 year old as she gets in the car and drives to the daycare as she leaves for work.... THEN misses the 2 year old for a third time as she gets out and walks into the daycare. That's one HELL of routine for the "routine apologists" in this thread.

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It's the day that your wife ends up being called into a meeting unexpectedly to make a 90 min presentation plus q&a and leaves her phone at her desk.

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absolutely, that point isn't missed on me at all. i'm fully aware that this can happen to anyone, and my initial judgement sure has hell isn't to call the parents that this happens to bad people.

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I mean, I LITERALLY would watch him sleep. I was so deathly afraid of SIDS that I could not sleep when he slept. There was just no way.

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Tell me about it. My kids were on caffeine supplements because they had apnea issues at times and would legitimately stop breathing because they were sleeping so soundly. The damn apnea monitors (hospital grade, not those mats from Angel Care) made the same sound if they stopped breathing as it did if the batteries were low. It went off one night and it was a damn nightmare in my house. The panic of running into a room expecting your child to be motionless and breathless is one I wouldn't wish on anyone.

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I can't explain her actions after work, but I take issue with the people who say you have to be a terrible, irresponsible parent for this to happen.

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I don't know man. Like yourself, I'm a parent, I'd never say "I'd never allow that to happen."
Heck no, that's asking for karma, but there are a lot of questions right now and seems to be more than just a lapse or an episode of a parent taking their eyes off a kid for a moment. Hard to think about what that child went through emotionally and physically.

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my entire argument is that getting to work and forgetting your child in the car, eventually leading to his or her death is entirely plausible unfortunately.

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I would need more details before I would subscribe to it being entirely plausible. And, even if it was plausible, and unintentional, that doesn't mean that she is innocent of a crime.

Which way was the car seat facing?
How far was it from her house to the daycare? From daycare to work?
How far out of the way is the daycare from the "house to work" path?
How often does she take the child to daycare when she's also going to work?
Did the daycare place a call to her or her husband when the child didn't show up?
What type of roads was she driving on? Single lane? Double? Highway? (to get at how many lane changes she'd be making and how often she'd be looking back)
Was she listening to the radio while driving? Talking on the phone?
Was the child sleeping in the car?
Are the windows in her car tinted?
What side of the backseat was the child in? Left/right/middle?
Etc
Etc

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It's enough to make me vomit.

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i was talking to my wife about this story last night, and this is exactly what i said.

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I would need more details before I would subscribe to it being entirely plausible

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You don't need details before convicting someone on the OT. Especially if they are black.