Today I went shopping with my mom and Elizabeth, and here was what I said, in order:
5 minutes into the store: “It makes me nervous to let her go off by herself like that—but I think it’s good for her, AND for me.”
6 minutes into the store: “I hope she can FIND us when she’s done trying those chairs.”
7 minutes into the store: “She probably went to the toy section.”
7.5 minutes into the store: “Okay, let’s just go look in the toy section, just to set my mind at ease.”
8 minutes into the store: “Okay, now I am getting anxious.”
8.1 minutes into the store: “Okay, how about if we split up and you go that way and I go this way.”
I walked my entire part of the long main store aisle, and what I was thinking was how incredibly, incredibly stupid I was going to feel if I let Elizabeth go off on her own “because it’s good for her AND for me” and she got taken by some horrible person and I never found out what happened to her and/or did find out what happened to her. Oh, I’ll be SO GLAD I worked on her independence and my anxiety THEN, won’t I? SO GLAD. SO WORTH IT. Why have I been “working on” my “issues” with worrying that one of my children will be taken, when ACTUAL CHILDREN ARE ACTUALLY TAKEN EVERY DAY BY ACTUAL BAD PEOPLE, AND THOSE CHILDREN BELONG TO ACTUAL PEOPLE JUST LIKE ME, WHO IN THOSE SITUATIONS HAVE EXPERIENCES EXACTLY LIKE THIS ONE AND THE CHILD IS NOT FOUND? WHY HAVE I BEEN “WORKING ON THAT”???? HAVE I ACTUALLY EVER USED A WORD LIKE “STATISTICALLY” IN THIS CONTEXT?????
I kept looking behind me to see if my mom had found her, and the answer kept being no. I started thinking about what the next step would be. Alerting the store? Calling 911? Running out into the parking lot? If I’d updated my Facebook status at that moment, I would have been searching for the “feeling dazed horror” option.
I got to the far wall, and I turned around and started walking back. Here was my greatest fear, and what I was increasingly sure I would see: that I would see my mom walking back towards me from the opposite far wall, by herself. I saw nothing. I kept walking. And then I saw my mom, walking toward me without Elizabeth, and then I saw that no, she was with Elizabeth, and that’s when I started crying. Elizabeth was embarrassed and I think a little mad at me, saying that she ALWAYS goes off to look by herself. GOD MOM STOP BEING SO EMBARRASSING. Statistically it was very unlikely it would have ended any other way.
Thank god. This was me, EXACTLY.
I don’t know – I let my kids play outside in our neighborhood unsupervised, etc, and I consider myself fairly laid back about such things. But I have yet to let my 8-year-old be on her own in a store. So I don’t think you are ridiculous for worrying.
Oh, I recently had this discussion with my mom, who was quite cheerfully telling my son (Henry’s age) that he could walk across a large gourmet food store with complex aisles (i.e. not good visibility) and up a flight of stairs to the bathroom. Um, no. And believe me, by far the greatest danger would be an e.g. $26 jar of pickled organic garlic getting knocked to the floor by you-know-who but still, he’s just not ready to make that traverse on his own (and I’m much like @suburbancorrespondent in general attitude about this).
Also we recently temporarily lost a friend’s daughter of an age similar to Elizabeth’s at our State Fair which just: OMFG. But she was just a short way down the midway, and fine. Thank the heavens.
Lost child = worst feeling ever.
If it makes you feel any better, I just had the same experience today with my NINETEEN YEAR OLD son at the mall.
It’s a mom-thing. If we can see them, then we know that they are okay.
I just found a lost kid at Six Flags so clearly the universe owes us one and this evened it out. I am happy to share my karma.
My son went through a phase where he thought it was funny to hide from me in public places. WORST PHASE EVER.
My 8 year old is in the phase. So annoying!
I know this phase. It’s AWFUL.
I think about this too as I let my 8 year old walk across our condo parking area to get the mail. There’s hardly any cars! She’s perfectly safe! It’s good for her to do this small thing on her own! It’s good for me to trust her! And then I get panicky thinking about the what-ifs as I stand and watch from the stairs.
This makes me terrified to have children. The worry, my god. I have lost other people’s children at the playground before (you can’t watch multiple preschoolers every second, it is not possible) and it is the single most terrifying feeling I know. This constant increasing surreal feeling, this “oh, he will be right there…” and then he isn’t right there, in the tunnel or behind the slide. Until finally, he is.
In the future, alert an employee. From history (at Target), they will shut that place down faster than you would think possible. It is rather embarrassing to be the reason why no one can leave a store but it’s impressive that major stores have that protocol in place. When my oldest was maybe 3, she liked to bob and weave around the clothing displays. An employee say me doing what you were doing (frantically scanning every aisle from the main aisle), asked me if I lost a kid, and used her walkie talkie to call a ‘code yellow’. Asked my daughter’s name and what she was wearing and got that info out immediately. Found her 3 minutes later, thankfully. I was so impressed I wrote a glowing letter to corporate….
Dear god. I lost my kid in an elevator in a parking garage today. Doors slid closed, called it back, No kid. He got off and got on the other one. He is five and I knew no one would take him, but dear god, I spent that three minutes scared. I use statistically unlikely as a justification all the time, but it is a feeble defense to that primal fear.
Today I sent Joseph (7 years old) into the front yard to look for the cat because someone had left the front door open. I told him to look by the house, in the flowerbeds. He came back in a few minutes later saying, “I didn’t see her, and Bethany didn’t see her either.” I asked who Bethany was. “Oh, some lady who was walking her dog. I petted the dog! He was really nice!” I asked how he could pet Bethany’s dog if he was up by the house looking for the cat. “Oh, I wasn’t by the house, I was down by the street.” (which is a medium walk away from the house)
So. Here we have: wandering off, speaking to a stranger, getting close enough to pet the stranger’s animal which also means GETTING CLOSE ENOUGH TO THE STRANGER TO BE SNATCHED. *headdesk*
I hate this! I don’t want my kids to be scared of everyone they don’t know, but this is EXACTLY the sort of situation that we, as parents, have been taught to be wary of! This makes me think of the news show that was talking to parents about what they’d taught their children about strangers, while, at the same time, behind the parents, someone was telling the child they needed help finding a pet and the child went with the stranger! Not that I think Bethany was anyone other than someone from our neighborhood, out walking her dog, but I hate that I have to worry about this, and that I end up making my kid worry, even if I only calmly remind him that he’s supposed to follow directions and not wander off and he’s not supposed to talk to someone he doesn’t know or pet their animal unless his parents are right there.
I really hate this.
I have read that the latest research suggests if a child knows someone’s name, they are no longer a stranger! So we really work on “don’t GO anywhere with anyone unless Mom or Dad or a Teacher says it is okay, even if you know them.” And the follow up is “if anyone tries to MAKE you go somewhere and Mom or Dad don’t know, you scream your bloody head off and scratch and kick and hit as much as you want.”
He hadn’t ever seen Bethany before; she must’ve told him her name at some point when they were talking and he was petting her dog.
I have also told the kids not to go anywhere with anyone, even if we all know the person, if a parent doesn’t know that they are going somewhere. But, since we need to review not talking to strangers or taking something from/petting a stranger’s animal, we should probably review that one too!
This made me PANT with fear and anxiety and DREAD. When I lose sight of Felicity in a public place even for a SECOND, I can feel the hysteria rising in me and want to throw up. I am afraid I am going to feel this way until she is 35.
I wandered off in a department store when I was FOUR — my 8-year old brother was supposed to be watching me but got absorbed in a 2XL display (anyone? Anyone?) — and I went RIDING ON THE ESCALATOR BY MYSELF and some kind stranger took me to the store people and they called my mom over the intercom. She was FRANTIC of course and I can still remember her coming into the room in total distress. But hey, happy ending and all of that. (OMG)
It’s always my MIL who wanders off and gets lost, since my kids are too young yet for that stuff. Oh, except when my MIL wandered away from my infant in the stroller for whom she was responsible. Sheesh.
I’m so so sorry. It’s a horrible feeling!
I lost my 4-year-old at a large nature conservatory (?) (not sure how to describe it adequately, but it is huge). I lost him on their free admission day when it was wall-to-wall people (like Disneyland crowded). He ran away from me and around a corner and was gone. I tried to stay calm, but I was panicking.
Thankfully my sister was there to stay with my younger one while I frantically called for him and searched. And several other moms noticed my distress and joined in the search right away. I looked for him for less than 5 minutes before alerting a volunteer- I thought she was an employee, but she wasn’t. It wasn’t a good first contact because I said, “I’ve lost my child, what is the protocol for that?” and she said, “Ummmm…”
Once they found someone official for me to talk to, they told me not to worry and they would tell everyone to look for him over the radios. Then they actually said to me, “Just wait here and we will find him.” WAIT HERE? As in, stop actively looking for him?! I started to cry and just stood there, scanning the crowds, watching my sister juggle her two kids and one of mine and praying my heart out. He was lost for about 15 minutes, maybe as long as 20.
Eventually someone brought him to me. He told someone that he couldn’t find his mom, which I didn’t know he even knew how to do!
I am 30 years old and have a lot of visibly gray hair and it’s all from this child.
You have described my thought process exactly. THESE THINGS HAPPEN TO *PEOPLE.* ACTUAL PEOPLE. I AM A PEOPLE and that’s why we have no pool.
Also, we were at a playground last Sunday, all three of us. We were right with Penelope the whole time, but at one point, she went up into the structure and came down a slide on the other side. Phil had to backtrack just a couple of steps to get to a point where he could duck under, and I had my eyes on her the whole time – it was crowded and night time and loud, but we weren’t more than 10 feet apart. She looked around and realized we weren’t right there – Phil was coming around and I was on the other side of all the climbing crap – and she turned in the opposite direction Phil was coming and started trotting, yelling, “MAMA? DADDY? MAMA? DADDY?” Just running and looking for us. I was running parallel (well, walking, I’m an adult and she’s a toddler) and trying to yell to her that I could see her, I was RIGHT HERE, but she couldn’t hear me, and it was not more than a moment before Phil caught up to her. We never lost sight of her for a second, but SHE lost sight of US, and I could see her fear at being “lost” and okay, I’m just going to tape her to my thigh, and it will be Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday left thigh, Monday, Wednesday, Friday right thigh, Saturday rest, and no one has to go through that again and I’ll trim down a little but not bulk my thighs unevenly.
I’ve never lost one in the store, but I had a really bad case of the flu when Donovan was about two. We were dirt poor, and so I’d been working through it, until the night I fainted and they made me stay home the next day, where I fainted again. I woke up, and the front door was open, and Donovan was not in the house. So my apartment complex was treated to the sight of me in a cami and shorts, bathrobe thrown over and flapping open, hobbling around as fast as my shaking legs could take me, wheezing and gasping and coughing, nose streaming, sobbing, and screaming his name in my hoarse, flu-ravaged voice. I was so far past terrified, because I had no idea how long he’d been gone. 2 minutes? An hour? We lived 200 yards up an alley from a four lanes in each direction highway. I found him, walking down the alley toward the road. I staggered back to the apartment with him, called his dad and told him he had to come home. It was the most horrible two minutes of my life. I have never been that terrified, before or since. I was so sure he was dead, or taken–I knew in my bones I would never see him again, and it would be my fault for not being tough enough to handle the flu.
Turns out, the little bugger had figured out he could stand on a couch cushion and reach the deadbolt. After that, we installed a special childproof lock at the top of the door, and I never had a door without one of those from that time until Erica was out of grade school.
As a teenager, I loved to walk to the mailbox after dinner with my dog. It was about half a block away in a quiet, safe neighbourhood. My dad forced me to wear reflective gear and bought me an “attack” siren and a whistle. He was worse with me when I was a teen than as a child. Now that my sister and I are in our thirties he still freaks out about us traveling on our own, etc. I don’t think parents ever grow out of parenting.
You’re really going to miss the ten years she took off your life. I HATE that feeling. Let us know in a week when it subsides.
Does anybody besides me immediately switch to anger? Once the misplaced child (and let’s be honest, they misplace THEMSELVES) has been found, all my fear drains away and all that’s left is RAGE. WHY did you disappear, and WHERE did you think you were going, and HOW DARE YOU? My six year old quietly observed, “Mama you are angriest when you’re scared,” which of course made me cry. I think it’s possible I just have too many feels.
I don’t even let my 10 year old go off alone in stores. They always have to have at least one sibling with them. Luckily, they don’t like to stray very far yet anyway. The two youngers (8 and 4 at the time) went missing at a huge, very crowded downtown park once. They had gone over to their dad so all was fine but it was a long while before I realized it. We even alerted the officer on duty who was completely useless. :/
Even though your title gives away the happy ending of the story, I still had to scroll to the end to check first before I could bring myself to read it, and I don’t even have any kids. Also regretting reading all the comments too. KeraLinnea wins some sort of prize for most horrifying.
This happened to me at the beach this past summer. This is the first year I have been willing to go with 2 kids by myself (without my husband). On this particularly crowded day, both of my kids were in the shallow water right in front of me and I looked away for a second. I was having a conversation with a friend, but staring at my kids as we spoke. I looked at my friend for a second just to acknowledge something she said and looked back and couldn’t find my 4 year old son. I did a full 360 scan of the beach and couldn’t see him anywhere so I ran right to the lifeguard (who was pretty far away). I was pretty much convinced he was pulled out to sea because that was where I last saw him and a second later he was gone. The lifeguard asked for his name and what he was wearing and told me I had to stay there with him and not go looking for him which made me want to throw up. The whole time I was telling myself that I was sure he was fine and we would find him, but this little voice was telling me that this was now happening to ME. Those horrible stories from the news….it’s now ME. The lifeguard was speaking into his radio and at that moment I looked toward my friend who had stayed near the water (and her kids and my other child) and she was holding my sons hand and waving to me. It turns out he had run up to the dry sand to lie down and warm up. So part of the reason we couldn’t see him is because he was lying down and hidden behind other people. I still don’t know how he moved so fast.
I have twice lost mine in a store. Both times he gleefully ran off from me (he was 3 at the time with a wildly independent streak, which he still has) and I was equal parts pissed and relieved when I found him. He was equal parts scared and relieved when I found him. It’s so hard to find short children among the tall racks and shelves! You can be right next to them and still not see them!
I’m kind-of stupidly doing that every time KT wanders over to the next-door neighbors’ …and subsequently goes inside. I KNOW that’s where she is, and that she’s perfectly safe with people I know, and yet…
I would have felt scared too.
When we were visiting Nashville, Harper went off on her own to a different section of the park/playground we had visited. I was helping Michael with something and I looked up and couldn’t see her. It was a full five minutes before I found her and I was in a full-on panic. I was two minutes away from calling 911 when I spotted her. All was well but I swear I’m having heart palpitations just thinking about it now.
I’m not even brave enough to let them go off without me in the first place!