I lost my 3 year old today

[AngelaD]

In school would you believe, I was collecting the older one and she ran ahead, next thing I knew she was completely out of sight and had crossed a road (with the crossing lady), I was absolutely frantic.
I didn't handle it at all well, cried and everything god knows what the teachers must have thought.

everyones nightmare..poor you

how long was she lost....I would ahve been a wreck aswell,don't worry about what others thoought

Literally only minutes, 5 at most but i'm running around screaming her name, my other two looking at me like mums gone banana's

lol at the other two thinking you were bananas.

It's the moment of panic when you expect to see them and then don't,when that carries on for even 2 minutes it scares the hell out of me.I know my ds has wandered down an aisle and I've just thought i'll quickly look for i second at this whilst calling him ,then before I know it he's at the other side of the bloody shop.I really should tie him to me ,he is a bugger for walking off.

My sister 'lost' my Mum and Dad.
They were out shopping in the City, and they turned around in a shop and couldnt see her anywhere. She was about 5 at the time.

My parents were frantic, looking in the shop and outside the shop etc for a while, then Dad decided to go back to the car (which was parked fairly close to the shops, but across a busy road)

She was standing next to the car.

She explained to them that 'they had got lost, so she thought they had gone back to to the car'
She said in a very loud voice ' I did wait for the green man before I crossed the road, I was a good girl'

My parents didnt know whether to laugh or cry!

I would invest in some reins and sharp suppose the crossing lady hadnt been there today it doesnt bear thinking about.
Children can be so unpredictable in large crowd situations even if with the best will in the world you are certain you are watching them hawk like.
Teachers are well used to wet shoulders so i wouldnt worry about that hope all is ok now.

I reckon anyone would be the same AngelaD! We all turn into lunatics when they go missing! I'm sure the teachers are used to it and a lot are probably Mums themselves!

My parent's managed to lose me aged 4 in Italy on holiday! All on the beach, my mum sunbathing and i asked if i could go to my dad and brother well within sight further up the beach playing football..then i was gone, i can remember it vividly, i ended up in a little cafe and the italian waiter gave me smarties..next thing my parents turned up with the police, i was gone for about an hour!...i dread to think how my mum must of felt.

I have also managed to loose DS (now 3.10) on at least 2 occassions. Once he went ahead of me as we came out of the Drs and he even crossed a road and hid behind a wall. I really panicked and I told him off when I found him.

The 2nd time I lost him was a couple of days ago. We were in a shop and he went down a different aisle to me. I went to the end of his aisle but he wasn't there, so I checked the toy aisle but he wasn't there either. At this point I started to panic. As I went back to the aisle I had gone down originally, I noticed DS standing outside of the shop. Its on a main road and a busy high street, I literally glued his hand to me after that.

My grandma once lost me on the common, she'd taken me and the dog (stupid poodle called Sooty) out for a walk, the dog ran off, she went to find him and FORGOT she had ever had me with her! My mum went absolutely berserk when she got back without me apparently.
I remember a very dark evening on the common and then seeing my dad with a flashlight.
I always hated that dog.

My ds2 (2yrs)gave us all a scare a couple of weeks ago. We were at in-laws and he disappeared. Someone had left the front door open so we searched outside, couldnt find him, searched the house, still no luck. We were calling him and were starting to think of calling the police when dh heard a very quiet giggle. He found ds hiding in his Nans bedroom down the side of the bed but dh had checked every room just a couple of minutes before. I never knew a 2yr was capable of being that quiet or clever as he obviously knew what he was doing.

My nan 'lost' my uncle (her 4th baby) one day when he was in his pram. She took him shopping, forgot to collect him from outside the bakery and it wasnt until my grandad came home for tea that she realised what she had done. Luckily the owner of the bakery had taken him in and had been feeding him cream cakes all day while waiting for Nan to return. The two ladies became close friends after that. How can you 'forget' that you were pushing a pram when you left the house!

bloody hell pepperabbit,can you imagine that happening in this day and age??

poor you..your pooor parents

My mum took me shopping when I was couple of months old - she left me in the pram outside (as they did in those days) and went in with my then 7yr old sister. They apparently then came out, got on the bus home and mum only realised I wasn't there when my sister said 'mummy why have we left the baby at the shop?'

A frantic rush back to the shop found me asleep still in the pram.

One of my friends also found herself going down an escalator in a shopping centre with her ds1 (4 yrs old) and remembered that they had come out with her 4 week old baby !!- also again found asleep in a pushchair in the shop they had just left. I think this is more commom than people like to admit nowadays (especially with subsequent children) lol

I lost my three year old in the library. While I ran frantically up and down the aisles, he had walked to the door (because I had told him we were leaving) and followed out a man pushing the stroller. fortunately dh was in the car and saw him. Here is the awful part. The man pushing the stroller turned and looked at him then kept walking leaving him outside alone. How would he have felt had I done that to his child. Unbelieveable!

My parents lost me in a hotel when I was three. They found me in the bar sitting on a man's lap

My grandparents lost my younger brother once for about 6 hours - he must have been about 7 or 8 and this was about 30+ years ago, so before the days of mobiles etc. He was staying with them and they went for a walk on some open moorland which was also used by the army for training. Somehow he got separated from them - I think he went to the loo behind a bush, started walking in the wrong direction and by the time they realised he hadn't reappeared he had walked for several minutes in the wrong direction.

Somehow after quite some time he found his way back to the road and was walking aimlessly along it. My grandparents had searched for ages, and then called the police. The police immediately mobilised the army. A family in a car spotted my brother walking along the road on his own, stopped and realised he was completely lost - I believe they had seen him earlier that afternoon with my grandparents. They spoke to him and took him in the car to the police station (a different one to the one my grandparents had gone to) but eventually everything linked up and he was reunited with my grandparents.

I have gone completely cold just thinking of it. I'm pretty sure my mother knew nothing of it until after he was found - she was absolutely devastated and I remember not understanding why as he had been found. I heard later that the police/army found some boy's socks in a ditch during the search, which my grandparents could neither identify or discount. They were also completely shattered by the whole thing.

The intervention of the family who spotted an aimless child and didn't let it lie was the thing that made the whole difference. I'm sure they literally changed the course of a number of people's lives with that act. I have always hoped that in those circumstances I would always stand up and do the same thing.

How many lone men would be cnfident talking to a lost child nowadays though, it's traggic but i doubt anyone would feel comfortable taking a child in their car either.

my mum did the opposite.....she came home with an extra child ????

She had her 4 kids plus her friends 3 (whose husband had just died)

she was at supermarket and was piling all the kids back in the car( a mini),about 40 yrs ago mind.

kept hearing a child crying in the back on the way home,got home to count 8 kids instead of 7!!
drove straight back to shop to find irate mother accusing her of abduction(quite rightly!).My mum's answer after apologisiing profusely was why the hell would I want another one fgs!!

would be headline news these days

ggirl - I know I shouldn't find that funny but I did!

My heart stopped when I read the title of this thread you know, I was thinking of something else!

We once lost dd in the cheese section of the supermarket!

ggirl how funny. Completely off topic it reminds me of when I was helping a friend to move flats. I took two of her cats inside to join the other one, from the van we were using, and then spotted another lurking by a parked car. After much howling, spitting, scratching and cursing (me), I managed to bundle the 4th cat into the flat where it shot behind the sofa and then shot out again pursued by the 3 others. My friend then explained she actually only had 3 cats.... Sorry for digressing !

Left my office one lunchtime to buy a sandwich ? it was my birthday ? and noticed a small child being interrogated by a fierce looking woman in a black coat, with a bemused man looking on. Thought nothing much of it and queued at my sandwich shop. On the way back, noticed a woman in very-high-heels rather frantically wandering from market stall to market stall seeking ?Darren?. She was carrying the child I had seen earlier.

She rushed to a nearby stall and it occurred to me that her burden might be the matching pair of the child seen earlier: I asked her if that was likely and she screamed something about why hadn?t I brought her Darren to her directly, and what was I thinking about leaving him to this woman-in-the- coat, and anything could have happened to him by now and it would be my fault. I said I was sorry, and we rushed (I rushed, she tottered) to where the other child was still being interrogated. There was an emotional reunion. I suggested they might all like to go and sit in my office reception area to recover.

As we were heading that way, I was berated by woman-in-black about why I had allowed this to happen and how I should be paying better attention to my family. I thanked her again and apologised as best I could ? I considered offering her a fiver for her trouble, but thought better of it.

I followed the high-heels and her two charges to the office, where they had taken up residence on the visitors? sofa. By the time I arrived the receptionist had sent to the bar for a large brandy, and was organising a taxi home. I fended off the head porter, who was upset that I had introduced a smoker into reception contrary to the new non-smoking policy.

I was now late for a meeting, had no time for the sandwich, and in about half-an-hour I checked back that they had all departed OK, which they had. Except for the brandy and taxi bill. Anyway, it was worth it for the story, and it made a memorable birthday ?

And they did all turn up at the office on the next market-day, much calmer, with offers of recompense for the bills. I did let them buy me coffee ? super family, super kids ? still scatty, though. We exchanged Xmas cards for a few years afterwards.

My brother wandered out of a shop when he was about 4 or 5. Two 'helpful' teenage girls found him outside. Instead of taking him into the shop and seeing if his mum was there they walked him to the police station - about 20 mins away! To say my mum was distraught was an understatement!

Great story Slartibartfast! Very vivid.

lost my 2 years ds at a steam station. I was taking some photos and my husband went to get back on the train with the kids to wait for me. Train was due to leave in under 10 mins. I get back on the train and see there is no ds - interogate husband, who still hadnt ( even as i got into the carriage on my own!) noticed and was just keen to get off and hurry to the cafe to get a drink (diet coke) before the train left. He thought I was keeping ds with me? why on a station when I wouldnt be able to take the photos I wanted and keep an eye on him? Obviously 'you take them back to the train, I just take a couple of photos and join you' I felt was a fairly obvious statement - especially since the kids kept running in different directions. The whole point of taking back on the train was to free me up to take photos without me worrying about taking my eyes off them on a busy station. I started shouting as they were trying to shut the doors. my husband rang along the platform to where we had all been and there was ds still looking at the train - less than 10 mins but it felt like a life time as the terrible premature end to ds life flashed before my eyes. He could easily have fallen on the rails, been abducted. my husband and I were both so shocked we could not even apportion blame or shout at each other.