I’m in the driver’s seat. Where would we go with my foot on the brake? Jocelynn is not allowed in the car alone! See, I sit in the front seat, sort of tilty facing out, to talk to my sister or mom after picking Jocelynn up. I got into the car holding Jocelynn, and I’ve made it Jocelynn’s job to carry the keys outside for us…so she slides off my lap onto the floor. If the keys are not in the ignition already, she can’t do anything but pretend to put them in. If I’ve taken the keys and put them into the ignition, she either turns on the radio (turns ignition just a bit, then actually turns the volume knob on the radio)...then she starts fiddling with the keys again, where they fall out, and she tries earnestly (but unsuccessfully) to put them back into the ignition.
And yes it does happen a lot. A LOT. Usually it’s 3-4 yr olds, very seldom the child is older than that. I think once they’re school age they get the idea of what’s okay and what’s not. I had one where a guy put his 2 yr old in the front passenger seat of his truck (had not buckled him in yet), and walked around to get into the driver’s seat. The car was already on, with the a/c running so it would be cool inside. In the time it took the guy to get around to the driver’s side, the kid had jumped over the middle console and kicked the car into nuetral, while grabbing the steering wheel to pull himself into the seat. The car rolled down a hill, through a fence, into a neighbor’s tree, and over another child.
