Every summer, there are entirely too many cases of children dying in hot cars. Despite this being many parents’ worst fear, it happens to an average of 37 children every year. And the really unfortunate thing about these tragedies is they can happen to anybody – even you.
It doesn’t take a negligent parent to forget their child. It doesn’t even take an absent-minded one. Sadly, the reason so many kids get forgotten in the back seat of the car during the summer boils down to biology. Our brains are betraying us. Preventing this problem means outsmarting human nature.
The human brain is a powerful tool, but its attempts to streamline the decision-making process sometimes leads to bad results. If you’ve ever found yourself on autopilot while grocery shopping, that’s this phenomenon at work. When something gets done often enough to become muscle memory, the brain will free up thoughts for more complex tasks.
The brain creates a neural pathway for everything we do, and that pathway gets stronger as a task becomes habit. I can walk through my house with my eyes closed because it’s so familiar, but a slight change could cause me to walk into a wall. My brain might not account for the new information.
If your kids are in school or daycare for most of the year, your brain might be used to that fact and might not always adjust to changes in the routine. These changes tend happen most often in the summer, which is also the most dangerous time to forget something so important.