I don't want to judge in this case as the facts don't seem clear. I just hope that they all pull through!
People think that we are crazy to bother strapping our kids in the car (particularly MIL) especially when we are just coming home from their house as it is 14 houses down the road. We do usually walk but if it's going to be late or wet, we drive. I don't care! It only takes 2-3 minutes to strap all four kids in and I don't see the point in risking it just to save 2-3 minutes. MIL is all about money so I just say to her that I didn't spend over $500 per carseat to not bother to use them! It usually shuts her up!
In the case of not putting a 3 yr old in a seat, I wouldn't do it, but it was obviously a difficult situation and to think back to when I was a kid, no kids were in a carseat beyond 18 months. It's a bit different to a baby under 12 months.
I actually dobbed (sp?) someone in one day! We were at our local shopping centre where there are only two 'Parents With Prams' parking spots. We didn't use them that often but if there was one empty we would as all the other close parking was 'Seniors Parking' and to get to the others we had to drive past the PWP spots. One day as we pulled out this flash new Land Cruiser drove in and a lady sitting in the back seat was nursing a baby that was obviously less than 6 months on her lap. I thought, maybe they were desperate.
A few weeks later the same car pulls up in the space next to us and once again the baby was in the back on this womans lap. I kicked myself last time I didn't dob them in and actually lost sleep over it.
DF refused to leave until the police arrived incase they left the carpark. Apparently the baby was just over 4 months. Their excuse was that they didn't have the money to buy one yet. WTF! The car they were driving was newer/younger than their baby and would have cost well over $80 K. The cop just laughed at that as they had just bought a huge t.v.!
I have been blessed and most of the time my kids are happy in the car. Mind you, we try to leave late afternoon for long trips so that they will sleep most of, if not all the way. We made the mistake of stopping 30 minutes before we got to our destination on one trip and DD1 screamed all the entire 30 minutes until we got there!
We only recently bought our 8 seater car even though as of lat Feb. we have had four kids. We just shuffled them round. DF usually just took the three older ones out and bubs and I would stay home. Or if we went out with family, one of the kids went in their car (we have 8 car seats. Just didn't have a big enough car!)
As DF was made redundant early last year and was still not working full time, no body was going to give us a $50k loan, so we had to use all our savings and save the last few grand. But we managed untill we could afford it! You've just gotta do what ya gotta do!
Not worth my childs safety!
