my whole world stopped

[knittedbreast]

today i lost my daughter in a shop. I looked round and she had gone, i called her name, nothing.

i looked down all the eisles and i just couldnt see her. it was awful. i felt like everything was moving in slow motion like i couldnt react properly. then i couldnt find any staff (it was primark), so im running trying to find someone, anyone. I told them id lost her, suddenly security are there.

i must have looked a state, once the other mothers reaslised what had happened they grabbed their childrens arms. I could hear people staring and saying" thats ladies lost her baby, shes gone". it all went quiet.

I just thought to myself, god if i can have her back il never ever complain about her annoying me or whining again. I just kept looking but there was no sign of her, i cant explain how that felt. I just kept thinking the worst, someone had snatched her and run off with her and id never see her again, or worse theyd find her dead in a few days.

and then this couple are walking towards me and the bloke says "excuse me, have you lost your daughter? shes outside the shop. shed run towards the road from the shop and a lady grabbed her, shes with security".
I started walking towards security and there she was happily smiling, calling for me.

I just grabbed her, held her and cried. There is nothing worse than that feeling. i just kept imaging having to tell my boyfriend id lost our daughter. you could tell the staff and security were relieved, people looked me in the eye again. it was like they wouldnt look at me when they thoguht shed gone. It was horrible, they pulled their little ones closer like the fact mine had dissapeared might be catching.

im so glad i have her back.

Please watch your little ones, stupid to say but i looked away, just glanced.

im going to let her have her milk now.

Blimey. I 'lose' DD all the time (as in I turn round and she's gone) I've never experienced this panic that is being described. Does that make me a bad parent? I generally just assume she'll be somewhere around, call her, and if she doesn't answer start looking for her whilst rolling my eyes and getting cross.

Is that just me?

My brother used to "hide" from my Mum in supermarkets all the time when he was little. She eventually found a way of curing him by applying some tough love.

He ran away and got lost and couldn't find my mum again, Mum was frantically trying to look for him when an announcement came over the speakers for X's Mum to come to Customer Services. My Mum was so relieved but also angry as this had been happening week after week. She went to customer services and saw my brother sitting there being fed sweets by the staff! She hid herself away and called over one of the staff and said she was here watching but needed to teach him a lesson and could they look after him for 5 minutes, they agreed. Mum left it until my brother started to cry because he thought Mum hadn't heard and gone home! At this point Mum went over and gave him a hug and told him to never run off again. He never did! Sometimes tough love works I guess.

When I was a baby (about 9 months) my parents had a summer evening party. I was asleep upstairs in my cot, the front and back doors were open...

It seems I chose that moment to learn how to climb out of my cot, shimmy down the stairs and out of the front door without any of the 40 or so adults there even noticing. The first my Mum knew was when an irate and scathing old man appeared on the doorstep with me; he had been driving along the busy main road as I crawled out past our (open) garden gate onto the pavement heading straight for the road.

Mum was hysterical, of course, and says even 37 years later it makes her shiver to think about it. I have no idea how social services didn't get called...

I went to a party at my inlaws once, a family party, lots of kids, in a houseon a busy city road. My inlaws think I'm too protective of my DCs so I sware to myself that I'd chill out and let him wander around like all the other kids and not need to be with him all the time.
After about 30 mins, I asked if anyone had seen him. NO-one. He wasn't with the children. Adults hadn't seen him. Then someone said, "You do know the garden gate is open, don't you?" At a family party with toddlers aroung the place, no I bloody didn't.
I will never forget running the streets of this city, thinking someone had snatched him and how they were going to hurt him :(
It was horrible.

He was upstairs in the attic playing with pink keyboards!

I read the title and the first 'I lost my DD' and felt sick.

Then I read the rest and felt less sick.

But its horrible when your DC goes missing. My DS1 was a runner and I used to dress him from head to foot in bright orange so I could see him from a distance.

This is why I keep all of mine in pushchairs until they are 4. I don't care what people think. Obviously just for shopping and stuff, if we are in a park I will let them out, but will never take my eyes off them.

I am a bit paranoid though, in spite of living in one of the safest countries in the world.

Constance - I hate parties like that, when everyone thinks everyone else is watching their children, esepcaiily when there is a busy road closeby, or a BBQ or bonfire. It usually ends up being me trying to watch EVERYONE's children!

scarlett it dousnt make you a bad mum. shes dissapeared before for 20 secs to be found behind a clothes rach chatting to a shop assistant. but when it hapens and you cant find them, it feels different when you know they have gone and its out of the norm. thats when the panic sets in

Constance, my cousin's little boy did that but went into the back garden and fell into the swimming pool...luckily they both heard this splash and ran out and my cousin and her partner both dived in and fished him out doesn't bear thinking about what could have happened...

I am still paranoid at parties, and I don't care who knows it. :o

So so glad to hear your daughter is ok x

so am I constance! Swimming pools are even more lethal, there was one next to the villa on holiday in Spain last year, and the garden wasn't fully enclosed, it meant that I couldn't let any of the children out of my sight even for a second.

I've lost mine in shops when they thought playing hiding games would be fun. Not for me, thanks, kids. But the worst time was when DS1 was about 5 and we were out shopping with my sister and her DC. For some reason he decided we'd left the shop we were in and 'followed' us out. I thought he was at one end of the shop with my sister, and she assumed he was with me, so we had no idea how long he'd been gone. Cue childhunt with security guards, radio alerts, the lot. He was found outside Peacocks about 20 minutes later looking aggrieved that we'd all gone off without him.

Your post made me cry to, I know that this will probably happen to me at some point (DS is still young) and I'll be completely hysterical. DH is a lot more relaxed with DS than me as I'm constantly picturing maddy McCann or Jamie bulger when out in public,
I'm irrationally terrified of losing him even for few minutes.

I don't remember of course, but my mum has told this story many times. My brother and I were little. He was 4 or 5 I think, so I would have been 2 or 3. We'd been to London to visit our dad in hospital where he was having treatment for a skin problem. We were getting the tube home and were just about to go into the station. My mum says one minute my brother was there, and the next he wasn't. She was in Central London, with a toddler, in the middle of hordes of people, and couldn't find him. A group of school children were going down the steps into the station so she rushed after them thinking he might have got caught up with them. He hadn't. She rushed back up the steps, dragging me with her and frantically started searching the street. Finally a few minutes later she found my brother, a bit red faced, and very relieved to see us. Apparently he had stopped for a minute to look at Big Ben, and we'd kept walking, and when my mum had looked a minute later, he'd sort of been swallowed up by the crowds. Once we were all home my brother said, "Just think Mummy. If you hadn't found me you'd have to tell Daddy next week when you see him that I was lost!" My mother replied, "If I hadn't found you within the next ten minutes your daddy would have been out in his pyjamas searching the streets of London for you!"

I also once got lost in a town centre when I was 5. Well, to me it didn't really seem that I was lost, but to the woman looking after me it seemed to her that she had lost me! I was with my brother, his best friend, and the friend's mum who was looking after us for the day. We had been swimming and my brother and his friend, both aged 7, had had a falling out. I, who wasn't always that fond of my brother, delighted in taking the side of his friend, and we walked along behind my brother and the mum, muttering about how horrible he was. We suddenly realised that they weren't in front of us anymore, and weren't behind us either. They'd actually turned into a shop without us noticing, so of course we didn't follow. We had been on the way to McDonalds so we carried on there. I wouldn't have had a clue how to get there (my sense of direction and geography is still rubbish as an adult!) but the boy I was with knew the way, so we walked there. They weren't there, so we walked around the town looking for them. Finally, after about half an hour we were stopped by a policeman who had been searching for us. He gave us a lecture about not wandering off. I was very stoical as a child (these days I would sob) and just listened, but my friend cried his eyes out. Then the mum turned up, beside herself with relief, with my brother, who I like to think was feeling guilty, because if he hadn't have been horrible we wouldn't have lagged behind and got lost! Lol. Anyway, we then went to McDonalds (probably to give this poor woman a chance to sit and calm down), and I remember her saying "I'll have to tell your mum what happened" and me begging her not to say anything because I thought my mum would be cross with me for not staying nearer my babysitter. She did tell her in the end but I can't remember if she was cross or not. Probably just happy that the woman was able to tell her she'd lost her daughter while said daughter was home safe and sound.

It happened to me yesterday. We were at the playground and DD asked me to stand behind a tree (she has this game where she asks us to do this so we can't see her and then runs away and we have to catch her and tickle her). So I do that, she runs away towards the middle of the playground, I then realize that our ball is still be the tree so I quickly run back to get it, I turn around-no DD.

I didn't panic right away, but it's a large playground, lots and lots of kids, 4 exits- I make sure she's nowhere near the exits, go around few times, look at her favourite slides etc-she's nowhere to be seen.

And then the panic set in. I've lost DS a few times in the past, but have forgotten how horrible that feeling is. Even though I knew that she must be somewhere around, after 2 minutes of looking and not finding her I couldn't stop myself from calling her name in a quite hysterical manner and asking others whether they had seen her.

She has walked away and was behind a band stand. Phew. But that feeling is AWFUL.

She's 26 mo, btw.

Im so glad shes Ok OP

must be awful.

my dad as an 18month old has a Jamie Bulger type incident a 12 year old abducted him form his garden only for my Grandma & police to find him on top of a skip tied up, My dad can't remember anything between that in those long hours like a complete blank.

sorry thats heavy but lucky to be found.

I lost ds when he was 4 on the way out of school once. He was gone for about 10 mins, but had left the playground, crossed a road and was going to try and walk home by himself. Luckily another parent recognised him and brought him back to me. I just cried with relief. He still remembers it.

Kids eh? Can age you in seconds!

I got lost when I was 7 years old in Paris, I didnt my parents turning into a street, I went straight. It was horrible, I have never been back to Paris since then !

Its horrible isn't it, that feeling of panic is just awful. It makes me feel terrible for the parents of children that haven't been found like the McCanns, I just can't imagine how they cope.

We took ds to a soft play thingy when he was about 4, because he has autism we asked the lady on the desk where all of the fire exits were so we could keep a proper watch. Just that one, she said. And indicated the one behind us.

Which was great, instead of shadowing ds like we usually do we kept watch on the exits and kept track of him.

We hadn't seen him for about 5 minutes or so and were getting concerned frantic as hell so dp looked whilst I stayed by the exits.

A few more minutes passed and ds was brought in by two security guards, luckily they'd spotted him on cctv heading towards the canal in front of the building (there was also a motorway exit thingy behind he place)

The woamn on the desk hadn't mentioned the 3 unlocked party rooms dotted around the upper floor OR the fact that each had a fire exit

Makes me feel sick just thinking about it

That's not my experience, Bumblequeen. DD's nursery were always taking the kids out and about. To the library, to the park, to the woods, farm, lake. I would only find out where they'd been when I picked her up generally.

I think one adult to a few kids is generally less chaotic than a few adults to a tribe of kids.

I've still never had this panic. But then I've never lost her for more than 10 minutes or had to ask anyone else to help find her.

She's a bugger for hiding clothes rails though.

Horrible. I think most mums have been through that and you described it very well. It made me cry too.

We went to Chessington about 3 years ago when my ds1 (aged 5) went missing. The group of 9 of us met up and I said I needed the loo. I went off to the loo thinking I was alone. Queued up and then came back about 10 mins later. My dh said, 'where is X?' I said, 'I don't know, isn't he with you?' His response was, 'no he said he was going to the loo with you.' Well I had queued for over 5 mins chatting to all the others in the queue and he wasn't there so he had already been missing for 10 mins.

My friends told a member of staff and the whole place went into action. I have never felt that sensation before, it all goes slowly and the noises are kind of muffled in your ears as you can't hear properly. Total strangers helped look for him and one mum just held my hand as I quietly sobbed.

Instantly Chessington changed their exit policy and nobody could leave the park with a child without first giving a lot of detail. We were told that if he was found by Any member of Chessington staff he would be taken to the medical room. They must have been trained as all the staff knew what they were doing.

After 1/2 hour my dh went to the medical room and he was in there. Apparently dh cried and then shouted at ds. Ds decided he was bored waiting in a large group for me to come back from the loo and he took himself off to go on a ride but then got lost.