Talk:Forgotten baby syndrome/Archive 2022

Cleanup

I have just done major repairs to this article. First I removed the "proposed deletion" tag, after checking that the term has achieved enough notability to justify a Wikipedia article. Second I wrote a lead that describes the actual status of the term. Third I removed most of the body of the article, because it was directly lifted from the Forgotten Baby Syndrome web site, which violates Wikipedia's copyright rules. Finally I formatted the references in standard Wikipedia style. Looie496 (talk) 17:29, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Title bad

The near total lack of Google hits for the title suggest only two options: deletion or a new title that captures more hits. See Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL. Abductive (reasoning) 20:00, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I get 11,400 Google Web hits -- what do you mean by "near total lack"? Regards, Looie496 (talk) 21:09, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Go to the end of the Google results: 103, not 11,400. Abductive (reasoning) 21:35, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I get it now. Looie496 (talk) 22:55, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

"Forgotten baby syndrome"?? How about "Kids left in car while I get some milk" syndrome? What about people who forget to get some milk at night on the way home from work, so they have to go buy some before they can make a coffee the next morning, so they are late for work... can they claim the had "Forgotten milk syndrome"? Stop "syndromising" ordinary, often half witted behaviour; people who leave their kids in a car are criminally negligent and are not suffering from any syndrome other than maybe "It won't happen to me" "syndrome". (203.84.132.206 (talk) 06:31, 27 February 2012 (UTC))

″"Kids left in car while I get some milk" syndrome?″ It seems like you haven't read much about this. I've read loads of articles on the subjects of infants and toddlers with otherwise good, well balanced, loving parents, who legitimately forgot their kid was in the car. For most cases it seems they are on their way to work and something happens to change their routine. The memory processes for routines are far from perfect, no matter what the item is. Have you ever drove off with a drink on top of your car because you couldn't find your keys in your bag or got a call? Seems like that would never happen with a baby, but sadly it does. This is why consumer reports and child safety groups have published every summer like mad to remind people to have a plan. This started to happen often after airbags. I've read advice to leave bags or stuffed animals in the passenger seat, but the best advice I've read is to leave one of the shoes you're wearing off behind your seat so that you definitely won't forget your baby. What happens is they go to work on autopilot thinking they had dropped their baby off at daycare like they always do. The baby falls asleep or is unusually quiet, and it's in the safest impact spot behind the driver's seat, so you don't see the carseat and have no reminder there. You go into work like normal thinking you dropped your kid off at daycare. You come back to the car to find a dead baby. In fact, some parents have driven all the way to daycare or home with the dead baby in the backseat, not even noticing until they find out the kid isn't at daycare. So, it's not a bad title. People really do forget their babies. Some people are consciously neglectful, but a good deal of these incidents are complete accidents, and it's very very sad. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:A000:1112:E2ED:155C:CDFF:3DE0:F596 (talk) 11:04, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

‘Forgotten baby syndrome’, a term referring to a psychological state where parents forget their young kids or toddlers inside their vehicles and walk away.

‘Forgotten baby syndrome’, a term referring to a psychological state where parents forget their young kids or toddlers inside their vehicles and walk away. In general cases it is unintentional behaviour of parents with busy life schedules where they forget to either take their kids out of the vehicle or forget to drop them off. The results of ‘Forgotten Baby Syndrome’ are quite unfortunate where the child is either severely injured or dies due to entrapment in the car.

Hyperthermia (sub topic)

Hyperthermia or heatstroke is a term related with ‘FBS’ as elevated body temperature of the child trapped inside the car causes major damages like seizures, organ failure, severe brain damage and death.

Causes

‘FBS’ can be caused by overlapping functions of brain sections. Two of the brain sections called Prefrontal cortex (PFC) and Hippocampus (HC) work together where PFC is involved in the planning, control and execution of daily routines movements in a humans.

The HC is involved in complex processes of formation, organizing, multi-tasking and storage of new memories in human brain. It controls the cognitive portion of the brain effecting brain’s decision making abilities. It is also responsible for consolidating of information from short-term memory into long-term memory.

The collective functions of HC-PFC memory collides with Basal Ganglia (BG), which controls habit based actions and Amygdala, is responsible for emotional memory generation, resulting in altering the planned task execution. 

BG or habit based memory requires minimum thinking and planning to complete the daily routine task task (e.g driving through the same route daily). Domination of BG on HC-PFC memory can result in elimination of planned action in recent future (e.g picking up milk form the store on the way home). In the case of FBS, BG suppresses the plan of dropping off their child to day care or unconsciously forgets the child in the car’s back seat due to trivial distractions.

Major reasons

With the introduction of air bag safety guidelines in 1990, encouraging parents to restrain young children to the rear seats, the mortality rate decreased considerably. As a consequence, where as safety measures were successful in sir bag deployment accidents, the FBS accidents increased with considerable rate. With an infant secured in the rear seat of the car, the child is less visible to the caregiver, with the increasing possibility of FBS, specially in a busy schedule.

Shift of responsibility between spouse : While carrying out a different task out side of a parent’s or caregiver’s daily routine plan (in the case where a parent takes on a new responsibility of transporting his/her child in vehicle) • Busy lifestyle and schedule • Ignorance (In the case where parents or caregivers deliberately leaves their kids in the car unaware of the consequences ; generally to go shopping) • Stressful conditions ( In the case of personal emergency where Amyglada; emotion generating section becomes overactive causing panic and anxiety and suppresses HC-PFC function resulting in forgetfulness under high stress).

Effects of FBS

The major effect of FBS is vehicular hyperthermia. In hyperthermia, body consumes more heat than it can deplete. The temperature inside the car rises on by a considerable rate of 20° F (variable of outside temperature) within 10 minutes. On a hot, temperature inside the vehicle rises above 100° F in within 15 minutes. A child’s body warms up three to five times faster than an adult, accelerating the heat generation. Due to greater surface area to body mass ratio in children and immature thermoregulation, the absorption of heat in a child’s body increases as compared to an adult body. Heat stroke in children occurs when the body temperature rises to 104° F. For an entrapped child in a car seat, they are physically unable to extricate themselves from a vehicle, or prevent dehydration by remove clothing drinking and removing clothes. The temperatures rises unto fatal measure of 107° F triggering severe dehydration, unconsciousness, disorientation, severe brain cell damage and major organ shut down.

Pathophysiology

Vehicular Heat stroke causes neurologic dysfunction, such as disorientation, delirium, seizures, or coma. The pathophysiology of heat stroke is propotional the duration of body’s exposure to heat. With the body’At the onset of heat stress, heart rate increases while the blood circulation deters to vasodilate skin and muscle as reaction to degenerate heat from the body. This results in acute dehydration and imbalanced electrolytes causing hypernatremia (exessive sweating and water depletion) ands hypocalcemia (due to skeletal muscle degradation). These processes triggers a repercussion of cardiac functional failure (contractility and conduction), restraining the the body’s ability to maintain a constant cardiac functions. In the presence of dehydration and vasodilation, this drop in cardiac output leads to hypotension. With the longer duration to heat exposure, the microvasculature faces the endothelial damage and symptoms of coagulopathy (mostly in children). Other results of heat stroke are cerebral edema, necrosis and multi-organ hemorrhage and permanent disability.

Statistics

Since 1998, on an average, 38 children die due to vehicular heatsroke in US. According to Kids and cars.org, child vehicular heatstroke was highest in 2010 with mortality rate of 49 deaths. The mortality count for such incidents in 2014 has be 30 as of october, 2014. The average age of the victims is below 15 years. Child fatalities rate has increased over the last decade. The statistics shows a total of 586 fatality cases within 1990 and 2010. From a survey of child fatalities in US from 2006-2010, 16% of total deaths were due to vehicular heat strokes.

In case of pets

Pets like dogs cool themselves by panting and sweating through paw pads due to absence of sweat glands in their skin. Trapped in a vehicle, even with windows, open can prove to be extremely dangerous or fatal for due to the fur coat and vehicle’s upholstery. With the increase in temperature from normal 101° F to 105° F in minutes, the pet can suffer from severe heatstroke and death.

Symptoms in pets

Some of the symptoms in pets due to heatstroke are heavy panting, profuse salivation, very red gums/tongue, lack of coordination, inability to rise after collapsing, vomiting, diarrhoea, loss of consciousness.

In conclusion “David Diamond” a neuroscientist in United States was called to evaluate a case in court in US regarding a mother that had left her chilled in the car. He has argued that the mother could have forgotten the baby due to the “habitual actions.” When everyday habits become part of everyday memory “autopilot” the brain struggles with any changes with the preferred habit. The conscious part of the brain offend would be ignored by the brain (cortex). The alternative scenario created by cortex makes the mother (caregiver) to not to realize the change in her/his daily routine. An action justified and resisting to change by the brain. In other words, the “forgotten baby syndrome” is the clash between the prefrontal cortex which is the cognitive part verses the hippocampus that memories’ resent info and motor movements.

“We have a habit-based memory system and we have a conscious fact-based memory system that can compete against each other.” [MARK DUNN HERALD SUN JULY 23, 2014]

References: — Preceding unsigned comment added by Moisenm (talk • contribs) 01:28, 17 December 2014 (UTC)