‘Forgotten Baby Syndrome’ is a common memory failure with tragic consequences

If parents think they would never forget their child in a hot car, they should think again. It can happen to anyone.

A leading expert in cognitive neuroscience who has studied the role of memory in such tragedies has found that stresses parents face in everyday life can make these memory lapses more likely. 

“Forgotten baby syndrome” is not a negligence problem, but a memory problem, says David Diamond, Ph.D, a professor of psychology at the University of South Florida.

“The most common response is that only bad or negligent parents forget kids in cars,” Diamond says. “It's a matter of circumstances. It can happen to everyone.”

With summer here, many families change their daily routines for vacations or other reasons, and that disruption is a common factor in these tragic incidents, his research found.

“The worst thing any parent or caregiver can ever do is to think that something like this could never happen to them or someone in their family,” says Janette Fennell, founder and president of KidsAndCars.org.  

The tragedies occur at an alarming rate: More than 20 children (from 5 months to 4 years old) have died in the U.S. this year in hot cars, beginning as early as February. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that on average a child dies from vehicular heatstroke every 10 days.

And it’s not just a summertime problem: Even on days with mild temperatures, the heat inside a closed vehicle can reach dangerous levels within an hour, posing major health risks to small children or pets left inside, Consumer Reports’ testing shows.

Use these tips for preventing warm-weather tragedies.

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How the Brain Functions

Diamond says the issue involves two parts of a person’s working memory: prospective and semantic. Prospective memory helps us remember to do something in the future, while semantic allows drivers to make the trip from work to home on “autopilot,” where they arrive without remembering clear details of how they got there.

Prospective and semantic memories work together to help us make changes to our routines; these changes could include things such as “drop off the baby at day care” or “stop for groceries on the way home.” When the working memory fails, such as when we’re distracted or stressed, there can be catastrophic implications, Diamond says. He gave examples of situations where critical safety steps can be overlooked, such as a surgeon leaving tools in a patient, a pilot not setting the wing flaps for landing, and caregivers forgetting that there’s a baby in the car.

“The habit brain system is a great convenience that allows us to go into autopilot,” Diamond says. “The beauty of it is that we don’t have to remember every turn, but the problem is that it’s actually guiding our behavior. When it guides our behavior, it suppresses the other part of the brain that is supposed to remind us of additional information.”

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“We have to accept the fact that our brain multitasks. And as a part of that multitasking, the awareness of a child can be lost,” Diamond says. “We have to accept that the human memory is flawed. That includes when loving, attentive parents lose awareness of their children when they are in a car.”

Since 1998, 765 children have died from heatstroke in cars. Diamond has studied many of these cases and, at the Lifesavers Conference in San Antonio earlier this year, he presented a few factors that commonly occurred: change in routine, stress, and sleep deprivation.

Many times, when a child died, there had been a change in the day’s routine, Diamond says. For example, a parent who wouldn’t normally be responsible for day-care drop-off might have been given that task that day. Because our brains recognize a pattern for the day, this parent would drive to work as usual, even though the baby was along for the ride. And unless there was an external cue, such as seeing the diaper bag or hearing the baby, the parent’s brain would continue on autopilot and could even create a false memory that the child is safely at day care, Diamond found. Sleep deprivation and stress can also increase the potential for a working-memory failure.

Conflicts between semantic and prospective memory are normal, Diamond says. His research has shown that they happen to everyone—not just parents and caregivers—on almost a daily basis. The added stress, distraction, and sleep deprivation that parents often face can contribute to tragic situations.

What You Can Do

The first step to preventing these hot-car tragedies is for parents and caregivers to understand that human memory is faulty and that these memory failures can happen to anyone. The key to avoid such incidents is for them to use strategies aimed at overcoming memory lapses. Diamond says, “The strategies need to be child-specific. When you have a child in the car, do something unique.”

Some strategies from the CR car seat team include:

• Create safeguards. One idea is an agreement such as Ray Ray’s Pledge, whereby parents promise to notify child-care providers if their child is going to be late or absent. In return, the child-care providers pledge to notify parents if children do not arrive at their usual drop-off time.
• Set reminders on your phone to check with your spouse or partner to make sure he or she has dropped off the child.
• Create visual reminders. Place the child’s diaper bag, jacket, or hat in the front passenger seat.
• Force yourself to go to the backseat. Keep your backpack, lunch box, or briefcase there every day.
• Never leave a child unattended in a vehicle for any length of time, regardless of the outside temperature. Vehicles can quickly heat up to potentially fatal levels on even mild-temperature days.

“Education is very important, but education alone won’t end these tragedies,” says Fennell of KidsAndCars.org. “It’s going to take education along with technology to help our imperfect brains.”

You can also invest in a car seat or vehicle with integrated reminder technology, such as the Evenflo SensorSafe or General Motors’ Rear Seat Reminder. Consumer Reports experts have evaluated these technologies and found that integrated systems that default to “on,” rather than needing to be activated by the driver, are the most beneficial. (The concern is that most parents don’t believe a hot-car tragedy could happen to them and therefore may not choose to turn on a protective feature.)

“When my now-14-year-old son was an infant, this almost happened to us,” says Jennifer Stockburger, director of operations at CR’s Auto Test Center. “My husband was responsible for dropping our son at day care one day, which was not his normal routine. He drove far past the day care, and only when our son made some noise did he realize his mistake. Even if you can’t imagine making such a error, I encourage parents to use the tips to safeguard their children.”

Concerned parents can contact federal lawmakers at congress.gov to urge them to support the bill known as the HOT CARS Act. The bill would require cars to come equipped with technology that alerts drivers if a child is left in the backseat after the ignition is turned off. It’s endorsed by Consumers Union, the advocacy division of Consumer Reports.