Dissociative amnesia: this is why forgetting your children in the car can happen to anyone
Given the recent news stories that have seen more parents forget their children in their car, it is now essential to raise public awareness about such a delicate issue to clarify, inform in a preventive perspective and prevent ignorance and prejudice from taking their harmful course. . In the days following the umpteenth tragedy, in fact, which was followed by the usual social drifts with a lot of controversy and accusations addressed to the parents themselves - the first victims of these terrible events - we would like to investigate more thoroughly on a phenomenon that has nothing to do with carelessness and neglect but which responds to a mechanism of mental blackout, due to various reasons and difficultly sustainable rhythms of life, which could happen to anyone.
"Dissociative amnesia - this is the technical term used to define the phenomenon in question - is a sort of transitory memory gap that leads to a disconnection of the functions of consciousness from memory; a" temporary amnesia that leads to totally forgetting a piece of existence, life and time for a given period of time. Generally it can be triggered by moments of intense stress, trauma or situations of particular tension and physical and mental fatigue.
What we want to underline is that episodes of this type - unfortunately always frequent with the arrival of the hot season - do not depend on a parent's lack of love, attention or consideration towards the little ones, but are lethal consequences of silent and subtle stress diseases typical of the modern era.
Dissociative amnesia can happen to anyone
The first thought to be eliminated is that this phenomenon cannot happen to us. Dissociative amnesia can in fact happen to anyone and it is therefore good to know its characteristics, symptoms and possible preventive strategies to avoid reaching unmanageable levels of stress and run the risk of running into it. In the days following the recent tragedies, many have been on social media to address aggressive and polemical tones towards the protagonist parents, so much so that one of these was forced to close the Facebook profile due to the constant relentlessness against him. This clarifies the lack of understanding and awareness about the phenomenon that does nothing but create misunderstandings, not leading to a possible resolution or diminution of the danger.
In fact, since 1998 more than 600 children have died from heatstroke because they were left unattended in a vehicle, most of them under the age of three. Already some time ago, Andrea Albanese, one of the parents victim of associative amnesia, who had forgotten his two-year-old son in the car causing his death, had expressed the need for a law on car seat alarms, to avoid the perpetuation of avoidable tragedies. He had done so via the Facebook page No more dead like Luca, from which, in recent days, following the tragic news story of the mother of Arezzo, he wrote as follows: "Nothing has changed, nothing has been done, the events recur, the dynamics of the tragedies are always the same, the bills have been" forgotten "in Parliament for years!".
The proposal raised by Albanese and supported by thousands of people, would have the purpose of equipping cars with an acoustic device that signals the presence of the child on board: special sensors would in fact be able to detect the presence of the child on the high chair once it is turned off. the engine of the car, and trigger an immediate alarm capable of alerting the parent.
Dissociative amnesia: watch out for symptoms!
The signs to pay attention to are intense stress, physical and mental fatigue, difficulty concentrating and remembering things, difficulty sleeping, irritability, a tendency to "act automatically".
If you feel a very high level of stress and feel the need to stop me, express this need, also relying on the support of a doctor. In general, however, it is always good to carve out moments for yourself, which allow you to regenerate from daily commitments and the stress that follows. Nowadays the rhythms to which the lives of parents are subjected are excessive and alienating and the standards of perfection that are required of them are very high: you are human, do not be excessively pretentious and severe with yourself.
What to do to avoid running the risk of forgetting a child in the car
Starting from the premise, useful and fundamental to keep the attention threshold high, according to which it could happen to everyone, there are also some small moves that could be used to avoid running the risk of forgetting the child in the car:
- Get used to talking to the little one during the journey by car, even just with sounds or simple words, so as to remember his presence and avoid getting out of the vehicle in an automatic hurry.
- Get in the habit of calling your spouse, grandfather or anyone in charge of taking the child to school, so as to remind each other of the child's presence and to better monitor the situation.
- Leave some things that you are sure you will need near the seat, so that you can not forget the presence of the little one.
- Get into the habit of looking at the car before walking away: at first it may seem like an exercise, then it will be an automatic move that will allow you to further control the situation.
- Find out about apps and sensors that signal the baby's presence in the car.
