In an Instant...

This happened last year and I'm still obesessing over it. I was 8 months pregnant with my now one year old. My hubby was sleeping on the couch and I was in bed because I wasn't feeling good. My son, who was then 4, was laying right next to me napping. This all happened in 20 minutes of time because I remember looking at my clock. I shut my eyes and heard a noise. I woke up and my 4 year old was gone and the front door was wide open, before it had been locked. He managed to open it and left the house. I started screaming for my hubby who woke up and ran outside looking for him--no luck. I freaked out and started running to the neighbors houses (here I am 8 mos. pregnant and running and screaming for my neighbors to help us.) Finally, my hubby found him--two blocks away near a busy street. The little guy decided he wanted to go shopping and didn't want want to wake us up! Also, he told us that a couple who were walking told him to go back home. Now, we have hooks on all the doors and alarms. He knows better, but I'm still paranoid. So, I know where you are coming from and it is so scary.

I worked at the local mall years ago and the one thing I must add, is please, teach your child your name! We would have lost children - toddlers really, and when we asked them what their mommy's name was (so we could page her) they always answered "My Mommy's name is Mommy".

Over a decade later, when I had my son, I taught him my name, and how to spell it, before he even knew the alphabet.
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We moved into a small apartment complex when he was about 6 that had lots of children and they would all roam and play on Saturdays. The rule being he had to be home by dark and he had to stay in our section of the complex within hearing distance if I called him home. I have a pretty loud voice so he had a lot of room to roam. So one evening it was getting dark and I began calling him to come in. He doesn't show up and now it is dark. So I go out to look for him, spotted some other children heading home (we all had the same rules about when to go to home) and they told me that he had split off from the group a few minutes ago and should be home by now. So, I start to walk in ever increasing circles from our apartment checking back in with each pass - starting to panic and thinking about rounding up some neighbors to canvas the complex with me. About the third trip around, as I top the stairs to our apartment, I hear the most heart wrenching wailing coming from my living room.

The poor little guy had gotten back to the apartment, found the door unlocked, the lights on, but no Mommee in sight. He thought I was lost!!! And was just hysterical.

Taught us both a lesson - him to be home on time and me to leave a post it note on the door if I was going out to look for him.

When I was 3, my parents sent us to stay with our grandparents in Michigan for the summer. My older sister decided to take a bike ride. I asked her if I could go and she told me that I was too little. Next thing anyone knew, I was gone. For about an hour the family, neighbors and the police looked for me. Finally, they found my trike in front of a house. I had gone a block away and asked a girl if I could play inside her house and even told her mom that my Grandpa said it was OK! Kids are crazy!

We were at my aunt and uncles house (they have quite a bit of space but live on a BUSY, FAST road, so no going out front!) The kids were playing upstairs and when it was time to go we called up that it was time to get ready, our 2 and 8 yr olds came right away, but the 3 year old was nowhere to be found! Of course, all of us there (my aunt and uncle, older cousins, hubby, and myself) all started to freak out because after searching the house we couldn't find him anywhere! We were searching everywhere, looking outside (didn't know HOW he would have gotten out there, but kids are sneaky and quick), looking inside...right when we were about to call the police and report him missing, we found him-he was hiding between the two shower curtains and behind the bathroom door! Needless to say, our relief was indescribable!! I hope I never feel that panic again in my life!

this year while we went to sea world my kid was with me and then in a instant he was gone ,we look everywhere and can not find him and with all the people there i can not think very well all the bad thoughs come to mind so we ask for a help from one guy a the games and they find him in about 3 minutes,i look at the watch and it pass about 6 minutes since he dessapair and that's 6 minutes were the longest minutes in my life.

My kids were 4 or 5. We were at the zoo and of course there were a lot of school and camp groups there. We were watching some chipmunks playing under a bush. Well, I grapped 2 hands and my daughter had my other daughter's hand and we were going over to see the babboons. We walked maybe 5 feet. I turned around and my daughter was gone. GONE. It's that feeling where your heart wants to leave your body and your are empty and your whole body wants to hit panic mode but your are Mommy and you can't. I think at that point or maybe it was a little later that I realized a camp or school group had passed between us and my daughter when she turned to look at the chipmunks again. I started calling her and looking thinking she could not have gone far. Then I thought , I'll call security (there was still a bit of brain left) but what the heck is the number. Then I realized I was holding the map. Oh my gosh I cannot tell you how relieved (to put it mildly) I felt when they told me they had a little girl matching my daughter's description. 2 college students saw her standing about 15 feet away from where we had been, crying, and took her to the security office. She was more afraid that she was in big trouble then of being with security and strangers. The girls stayed until I got there to get her. When I think of what could have happened.....But this also reminds me that there are really great people out there.

Another time--cannot remember before or after this happened---my sis took the kids to a block party and when I went to pick them up the same daughter was missing. We checked everywhere. The alleys, a house that they were playing with a little girl that lived there ( and her father was just a total jerk that would not tell us whether his daughter was inside with mine or not and was just a total flat out jerk), backyards, the next blocks. It turned out the little girl she was playing with knew another little girl who had a backyard pool. Well the one little girl went home and my daughter stayed iwth the one with the pool, followed her and was on a float in the pool. There were adults there but they did not realize that this little girl they did not know was "missing".
Actually, I think the block party was worse than the zoo.

We all have these stories I think. It is the scariest thing in the world too.
We had just moved from another state. I was hesitant to put my little kindergarten carefree son on the big old school bus. I went ahead and did it. The first day of school, the bus came home and the neighbor girl said my son wasnt on there. I got on the bus and told him he wasnt leaving until they found my son. 10 min goes by....nothing. they were radioing everybody, nothing. Finally, after 20 min and just about the time I was about to call the police, they found him. They had him on the wrong bus! He ended up getting off the wrong bus too, luckily it was at a daycare and not in the middle of a neighborhood. The daycare worker recognized that he was not one of their children and radioed the bus company. What a scary day. All the thoughts that run through your head.
I am glad your son was ok!

Luckily I haven't experienced a "full-on" situation like that, but we were at our local children's museum last year, and it was just me with my 1 year old and my then 3 year old. I turned around to do something with the 1 year old and suddenly the 3 year old was just gone. He was nowhere near the play area where we were. Even though they are TIGHTLY regulated there and a kid couldn't get outside alone without an adult stopping him, I felt those fingers of fear fully reach around me and start to spread all over me. My heart literally melted and hit the floor and the first stages of panic swept over me. I snatched up my 1 year old and started running around looking and calling for him, and I found him pretty fast across the way in a big truck they have there. How he got over there that fast is beyond me. That experience let me know a) just how truly fast they can get away from you, and b) just how horrifically panicky and unlike any other situation that feeling is. Like I said, I was lucky and it wasn't dire, we weren't by water or a busy road or anything, but it was such a terrible feeling! I cannot imagine having a child abducted or disappear. I don't know how those folks live.

I lost my daughter for just a couple of minutes in a grocery store. I was bending into the chiller cabinet and turned and she was gone. I started running up and down the aisles but we must have just kept missing each other. We were both so upset and she has never done it again. I always remember saying before i had a child that i don't want to be one of those moms that shout in public. Well let me tell you I was running round like a crazy person screaming for my daughter. |Seriously though there is no other feeling like it, you feel like you are going to faint, throw up and spontaneously combust all at once.)

your son was fine is the moral of the story. If we teach our children appropriately, we dont have to worry if they wander off for a minute. We point out to our daughter what the people who are working somewhere are wearing (walmart, for example, she knows the blue smock) and she knows if she gets lost to find us or someone who works there. We've never had to test it, but we trust her. (she's 3). I know it seems like kids are kidnapped or whatever all the time due to the media, but they arent. I highly recommend Lenore Skenezy's book "free range kids: how to raise safe, self reliant children without going nuts with worry."

My story happened when I was still living in TN. My dad had drove down to pick up myself and my 2 dd's. We had stopped at a truck stop to get some lunch, My youngest dd was still in her baby carseat so I was busy getting her settled in, and my dad was throwing away garbage. I looked up and my oldest was no where to be seen. My heart raced and I couldn't breathe. She had wound up following a couple out, thinking she had seen me go outside. Luckily she hadn't gotten far, but by far the worst feeling I've ever had.

I lost my son in an airport a couple of years ago. He was 11 at the time (but looked like a teenager). It was both terrifying and empowering. We had just gotten through security. I checked behind me to make sure my three kids were with me, then continued into a store to buy some water and snacks for the plane. About 5 minutes later, while I was paying for the stuff, one of the girls asked where her brother was. I said "oh, he must be waiting for us right outside", I even thought I SAW him out there. I just assumed he was waiting for us outside the store. We took our time paying and exited the store, where I found him NOT waiting for us. I checked back in the store, nothing, looked all around, couldn't see him. Hundreds of people walking in EVERY direction. From where I stood, there were about 3 different terminals he could have walked to. I froze, not knowing what to do, probably for about a split second, but it felt like an hour. I just STOOD there in sheer panic. By now it was about 10 minutes since I'd seen him. THEN, before I could act, I saw him walking towards me (from the dead opposite direction of where I was about to go looking for him) accompanied by an airport employee. Apparently, after I'd checked to make sure my kids were with me, he'd bent down to tie his shoelace or something and in that instant, I'd entered the store, only about 10 feet ahead of him. He hadn't seen me go in, and thought we'd just headed to our gate. So he looked on the board to see which gate went to Denver and gone to that gate. Unfortunately, it was a different airline's gate, although it WAS a Denver-bound plane. When he realized we weren't there, he found a group of airport employees wearing uniforms and name badges and asked them to help him find his correct gate. A lovely employee was walking him back towards his gate when we intercepted them - me still frozen in panic in front of that store! She told me that my son (who has high-functioning autism and adhd) was extremely polite, articulate and quite confident about what he needed. She praised him for trying to solve his problem, then when he couldn't, asking a responsible adult (not just some random stranger walking around, but a uniformed, name-tagged group of airport employees) for help. He was very proud, and when I finally overcame my panic, I was too. I learned two things that day. 1) the feeling of losing a child is the worst feeling I've ever felt in my life and I never want to feel that way again. 2) My 10 yr old son was capable of advocating for himself and that someday, he would have to navigate airports (and life) on his own and the best I can do is to keep teaching him the way I have and trust he'll be alright. But I did learn my lesson...when we traveled overseas last summer, I had all 3 kids in my sight the entire time, I was NOT going to take any chances!