MILWAUKEE, Wis. - A Milwaukee mother has been charged for leaving her three young children in a car while she went shopping.

Ashley Pirlot, 26, said her mother did the same thing to her when she was a child. Pirlot was arrested after two women called police when they saw the young children alone in a car in a Kmart parking lot. Pirlot was charged with three counts of neglect of a child, according to the Journal Sentinel.

The three children were found in the car when the outside temperature was 35 degrees. Authorities say the 6-year-old told police she was hungry and had not eaten in a while. Reports say the younger children were found with dirty diapers.

Pirlot told authorities she asked the 6-year-old girl to watch her sisters because she couldn't fit all three children in the shopping cart and "didn't want to deal with seat belting the kids" in the cart. The woman said she thought she had only been in the store for seven or eight minutes before police paged her. The Journal Sentinel reports,  Pirlot was in the store for approximately 17 minutes before police arrived.