Quote Originally Posted by sandwolf View Post
Yea, I haven't looked at any of the research, but I strongly encourage every parent to accept the idea that this can absolutely happen to anybody and to be vigilant about preventing it.

My wife used to take my boy to daycare every day, but every once in a while she would need to go in early and I would need to take him. Well his daycare is at the same exit as my office, and after fighting traffic, listening to the radio, etc. for 30 minutes, there were a couple of times that I just fell back into my normal routine, took the exit and turned right to go to my office instead of turning left to go to daycare.....now I always realized my mistake before getting to my office, but it's not hard to see how a situation like that could end tragically for a great, loving parent with a lot going on at work and a sleeping baby in a rear facing car seat.

We are creatures of habit, so don't take on the mindset that you are above this and that this could only happen to a shitty parent. Every parent should put some type of system in place to prevent this....I put my briefcase in the back seat by the car seat, my wife and I text each other to make sure he got dropped off ok, etc.
I've done something similar. I have a 3 and 1 year old and in the past, my wife would take them to daycare and on other days I would. One time when it was my day I was halfway to work before I realized my kids were still in the back seat. I called my wife right then and said no more. I will take them every morning from now on. It scared me some kind of bad that it was that close to happening.

We also now do what several others have mentioned which is that I text my wife once I'm leaving the daycare and the kids are dropped off. If she hasn't heard from me by 7:30 she calls.