^{Originally published on BabyCenter.com August 24, 2016}

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.

The American lifestyle doesn’t help, either. Our society is constantly on the go, and we’re encouraged to always think about the next thing on our to-do list. That means more brainpower devoted to those tasks and less time to slow down and check what’s most important first.

If you fear that you might be at risk to forget your child in a hot car, try leaving your wallet, purse, or cell phone in the back seat. The fact that you can’t run errands without those items can help you form a habit of always looking in back before leaving the car.

Forming a habit like this isn’t implying that your cell phone is more important to you than your child. It’s just recognizing the way the human brain works and forming the habits that you need to form in order to ensure that one busy day doesn’t turn into the worst day of your life.

This discussion isn’t meant to excuse parents who make that fatal mistake. But we tend to get pretty arrogant, especially if we can normally balance a career, errands, and childcare at the same time. The dozens of parents every year who make this mistake likely thought that it would never happen to them.

It can happen to me, to you, to anyone, because our brains are sometimes our worst enemies. The best we can do is understand that danger and take what steps we can to minimize it. Think about steps you can take. The summer isn’t over yet, and too many kids have died already.

_{Featured Image: Petr Kratochvil}