Has your child ever “gone missing”

[Hipposat]

Yesterday 4yo DS2 went missing for ten minutes (although it felt like hours) Me, him, DH and DS1 were at an outdoor fair. DS1 was on a ride with DH and I took DS2 to the bouncy castles. All was fine, then DS1 came over to say DH had sent him over to get his phone off me (it was in my bag) I must have had my eyes off DS2 for roughly 5 seconds, turned back round to watch him on the bouncy castle and he was no where to be seen.

All 3 of us were running around shouting his name, asking people if they had seen a little boy walking around on his own, told a member of staff about the situation and they were helping us look for him and they stopped letting anyone in or out. At this point I am trying my best to stay calm but also trying not to throw up from fear. God it was absolutely terrifying. It was such a large space with hundreds of people. So scary.

DS1 eventually spotted him at the top of a fun house running around having the time of his life. I’ve never felt relief like it. I actually cried when I got hold of him. He is autistic so doesn’t understand the danger of just running off from us and wouldn’t have been able to tell anybody he was lost etc so this made it all seem even worse. We recently got rid of his reins as he was doing really well without them but I am going to order some again I think😅

Has anyone else been in a similar situation? I barely slept last night with guilt

Mine is unusual as ds1 was 15 at the time! It was in the Camp Nou Stadium in Barcelona. I had taken him and ds2 but ds1 was the only one with any interest in being there. It's dark inside and crowded. DS1 was taking ages looking at displays so ds2 and I went ahead to use the loos and sit down. We thought he would walk by but he never did as we somehow missed each other. There followed a hideous hour or so of us increasingly frantically retracing our steps/going against the crowd to no avail. Spoke to staff and they were radioing each other with his description but no luck and obviously not a priority as he was 15! Phones either didn't work or his was off charge - can't remember which.

We eventually found him at the gift shop and he was so cross as it had spoiled his visit. He did the tour while keeping an eye out for us - god knows how we kept missing each other. It was so dark and claustrophobic in there - I have never been so pleased to get out of somewhere as at one point it felt like the rest of my life was just going to be going round and round in there looking for him.

If we ever went anywhere really busy in crowds i would look for a prominent sight, a flag, statue, coloured sign or similar and point it out to all the family so that if anyone got separated from the others they had to find it and wait to be found. Like a pp my dcs were taught to never leave a shop if they were lost and to stay in one place not wander around.

Yes.

Ikea. Lost for 25mins.

Have to say the staff were amazing. They had security on all exits and staff checking all sections. They were brilliant.

My younger sister (5ish) and I had hobby classes on a Saturday morning. My class started just as hers was finishing and was on another floor of the building - hers was next to the exit. She had to wait on Exactly This Spot until Mum came to get her no more than 5 mins later. One day she was nowhere in sight. After frantic searching she was found at the house of a friend from the same class who lived nearby. She was put out to be in trouble about this as she had chalked a message on the pavement (hopscotch was very in at the time, hence chalk) for Mum saying where she had gone.

She also disappeared from the back garden and when Mum questioned the rest of the kids she was with she was told that sister had gone to find the Gypsies. Luckily she hadn't made it to the end of the road. Apparently it was to do with a book she was reading at the time.

My eldest who is almost 10 has done it twice. First time he was 3, in the park next to our house with his little brother like we always did when he suddenly ran off through the gate furthest away from our house. By the time I had got there he had vanished! Found by my husband just round the corner as he was on his way home from work, no doubt very confused why his small child was all alone until a minute later he got my phone call. I was very relieved to hear he had picked him up!

Second time was last summer, he stormed off out the house in a mood and disappeared. I was less worried this time around because of his age, it was at home so he knew where he was but it must have been going on 15 minutes so as the minutes went on I started to get more and more worried.

Found him skulking around metres away from the house still in a mood.

It's a horrible feeling though and one I still get if I lose sight of them for a second.

DD1 no.
DD2 I lost at Legoland when she was about 4yo. I had ds in the buggy and she asked if we could go to the "round and round" ride. I said yes, went to turn the buggy round and found she had run straight off to the ride. Only thing was what I thought she meant by the "round and round" ride wasn't what she actually meant (we had annual passes and went weekly), so when I arrived, she wasn't there. So I asked the ride operator if he'd seen her and he immediately put a call out on the radio. "Any identifying features?" So I gave the most obvious one, which is she only has one hand. He came off the radio to say that they'd stationed someone at the exit to ask every child to show both hands, so she couldn't get out. Dd2 was found very quickly, and (totally predicably) I arrived at customer services to find her having a lovely time chatting to a couple of members of staff and being fed ice cream and donuts. In fact she was having such a lovely time she really wanted to stay...

Ds was lost at an event aged 8/9yp, and it was nerve-wracking, but at the same time I knew he wouldn't go with anyone, and I was sure he'd be found fine in the end. I wasn't sure what he would do and there were several options for safety that he might have taken, all of which were at least 10 minutes walk away in different directions, so I didn't want to set off and check them out.
He'd been performing on a stage outside with a group, and when he went on, there were about 20 people, mostly us parents, watching. I stood to one side of the stage at the front, and said to him I'd be there when he came off.
What I hadn't bargained for was the next act was amazingly popular and by the time he was coming off there were more like 1000 people watching. The next act security refused me to walk round the stage when I realised, so I was trying to push through this number of packed people. Ds otoh came off and plunged into the crowd because he "knew" where I was going to be. So by the time I got through, he'd well gone.
So we had about 45 minutes where he was missing, before the next act finished, and it began to thin out and security found him just as they were about to call the police. He told me he'd just decided he better walk home (1 hour, in the dark) when he was found.
He was totally calm - which was probably part of the problem; he didn't look lost. Dd1 would have asked someone in authority, and dd2 would have burst into noisy tears, so would have attracted attention. Otoh either of them would have gone with someone that said "I know where mummy is and I have some sweet puppies..." so I'd have been more worried by them missing for that length of time.
In all fairness, if he had walked home he'd almost certainly been picked up by the police fairly quickly. I'd have told them that one of the possibilities would be that he had decided to walk home, there was only really one route, and a small boy on his own in shorts in December would have been fairly easily identified by a police car.
I think it was probably worse for the group leaders who were horrified - they were normally really careful, and I think he said "there's mummy" and went. Wasn't their fault at all.
After that if he did that sort of thing I used to pop my old mobile in his pocket so we could text each other if it happened again.

DD2 when she was 2 in a playground, but was only out of sight for maybe 2mins before I clocked her and that was paralysing enough, I feel awful for you that lost them for 10/15mins etc.

My mum did the same with my elder brother back in '68, left the big pram outside a shop, came home and had sat down with a cup of tea before she realised she realised something was missing. She dashed back frantically to find the pram and DB still there, unperturbed. I think she was still getting used to having a baby. 😅

Yes a few times. Once in ikea when dd was 1. She went through a little tunnel and when I went to other side she’d disappeared. Spotted her about 30 seconds later. Horrible stomach drop feeling.

Most recently last year school called asking why she wasn’t at school. She’s now 9. I said she is. They said wait they’ll look for her. Longest 5 minutes whilst they went to her class and playground looking for her. They were very apologetic and hadn’t marked her present at school.

My DD 5 ran away from me leaving a crowded theatre at night. She planned to hide just round the corner and surprise me but I didn’t know which way she had gone and the other exit was to a busy car park / road. It was probably only around 5 minutes till I found her but it seemed like far longer. We were both absolutely distraught!

My son's first week at nursery and he was just doing a few hours settling in sessions. I took him to nursery and was due back to pick him up in 2 hours. Thought I would use the time to have a nap. Woke up form the nap and couldn't find my son anywhere, was thinking how is he not in his bed or the bed next to me, went crazy searching the whole house thinking the absolute worst and that he must have got out somehow. Then I remembered he was at nursery.

This happened to me the other week! Apparently my 10yo was in the toilet when the register was taken 😕

DS has twice, once at an aquarium for about a minute and again at a farm for a lot longer. I’m not actually sure how long it was but I’ve never been more terrified in my life. I was convinced he’d been abducted but he’d actually snuck into the big kids’ play area!

My parents did this….. left my youngest brother at a festival….. walked all the way home before they realised. Dad rushed back and brother was stil asleep under the table!!!

Only once,this was when she was 12. She said she'd told me that she was staying after school for some event,I didn't recall her telling me. She probably did,she was very good like that. I was recovering from a major illness at the time and my memory wasn't good as it could have been. When she wasn't home by her usual time of 3.45 pm I wasn't too perturbed but as time wore on and it got to 4.45 pm I started to worry. This was before mobile phones were common. I phoned her school asking if she was there and they assured me that she wasn't. The woman I spoke to was quite dismissive and said she'd probably gone to a friend's house and forgotten to tell me. I said she wouldn't have done that. She turned up at 5.15 pm, and was adamant that she had told me. I ended up in a row with the receptionist at the school the next day when I phoned to ask why I'd been told she wasn't there when she actually was.

When I was a kid, about 7 or 8, so around 1973-74, me my mum and sister were in town, this is Liverpool city centre BTW, Christmas shopping, very close to Christmas. Anyway while shopping I got lost, typical 1 second my peeps were there the next they were nowhere to be seen. After a minute or so I decided the best thing to do was to walk home, long story short, that's what I did. It wasn't a trivial distance either, it took me about 2 or 3 hours, it was maybe 5 or 6 miles. Not sure if I had money with me, but I'd say yes, as it was Christmas, but I didn't know what bus to get, as my mum had been driving for a couple of years by then, so I just went the way she drove. When I got home my old man answered the door, I can't remember what he said, but there was a couple of police in the house, my mum had reported me missing, she was at the police station in town in bit with worry. 1 thing I remember was stopping at the park a couple of miles from home to skim some stones on the pond, lol, typical little boy behaviour.