Have you ever?
Have you just lost sight for a few seconds and almost discovered what a coronary feels like?
Fortunately it hasn’t happened to me but I know of some incidences where I have to wonder what the parent was thinking when they allowed their child to roam about.
re: Lost Your Child…For a Little While…?
I got lost when I was five as I wandered away when my Mom wasn’t looking, I remember wandering around trying to find our car and standing next to it hoping my Mom came soon and that no uncle gave me a toffee (
) That was the only time, otherwise she was always very careful. She had all my cousins with her too who were my age, too many annoying kids which didn’t help I guess. 
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I “lost” her at Target once. I was freaking out!!! Turns out she was hiding between the clothing racks in the mens section It happened in a split second, she was standing right next to me and then she wasn’t. So scary!!!
The staff was very helpful thank god. This was a couple of days after I read the news about that little girl being grabbed in Walmart.
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We lost my nephew in a mall. He was in front of us one minute, and the next he was gone. Luckily he was smart enough to stay in 1 spot, where we eventually spotted him. The poor kid was so scared. Scariest moment ever.
Another time, my parents “lost” my brother. We looked for him everywhere in my dadi’s house. Even under the beds. Turned out he went on a joy ride with my chacha chachi 
This was before the era of cell phones so we couldn’t exactly call people an d find out.
re: Lost Your Child…For a Little While…?
Yes! I’ve lost sight of him in Sears- same thing as Wendy’s little girl- he was hiding in the racks. The panic sets in immediately and it’s terrifying. I have made it SO CLEAR to him since then to never wander from my side. Even when we go for walks, he knows to always walk ahead of me so I can see him.
I saw a great idea on Pinterest too - write your name and phone number on your child’s inner wrist in sharpie and cover in liquid bandaid. It seals the marker in and if they get lost, someone can call you. But also I read a great article on how you should always teach kids to seek out another mom with kids if they are ever lost vs. Any other kind of adult.
We lost our younger one for few mins in busy park. She was only three then. I think it was the most horrific free mins of my life. I was running everywhere like crazy. Almost wanted to cry and throw up. I don’t know if I over reacted or not. Losing my kid was always my biggest nightmare. I am a very paranoid kind of father.
re: Lost Your Child…For a Little While…?
We had an interesting experience last weekend while out with our friends at a beach front park.
It’s a small park…it took us about 20 minutes to walk from one end of it to the other. We were there with a few other couples and their kids. Just like 20 other families scattered about the park. Everyone was having a great time…eating, swinging, skipping rocks in the water, building stuff in the rocky sand, playing badminton (yes it was mostly desi folk), playing catch, walking dogs, riding scooters, etc, etc.
Our picnic table happened to be situated such that we were closest to the parking lot…nestled between the covered area and the swing set.
About an hour into our visit a middle-aged, Italian man approached me and pointing to a young child leaning on a sign post adjacent to the parking lot asked, “Does this child belong to your group?”
I looked, recognized that he did not and said, “No he doesn’t. Why?”
He responded, “He seems to be lost and he was headed for the parking lot when I asked him where his parents were. He’s been standing there alone for about 10 minutes now and he doesn’t look too happy. Maybe you can ask him if he speaks another language.”
I went over to the child and asked him, “Hey buddy, where’s your mommy? Can you point to her for me?”
He looked around and then turned to me and said, “Mommy” with a bewildered look on his face. I realized that he didn’t know where she was.
I said, “Can you see daddy? Can you point to him for me?” Again, same look on his face and just “Mommy” out of his mouth.
I offered my hand to him and said, “Do you want to come with me and we’ll look for your mom?”
He took my hand and then turned to face me and held out his arms asking me to pick him up.
I realized from the limited vocabulary that this little guy was no more than 3 years old, if that. He was very obviously desi but I couldn’t tell if he was Pakistani or Indian so I tried to ask him his name in Urdu. Nothing. Just “Mommy” with eyes scanning the park.
The Italian man said, “Maybe you want to walk him around the park. I would have done that but I’m a man and people are sensitive to this sort of thing. That’s why I got you.” I thanked him and walked towards our bench where I asked for one of the guys to walk around with me. I wasn’t able to carry the little one the whole time so I asked for some muscle. 
In short we walked the whole park. It took us a good 40 minutes to search each individual area and the beach. Nothing.
Nobody recognized the child. We asked each party if anyone had come around looking for a lost child. Nothing.
We told each party where we were seated and to send people our way if they came in search. Nobody came.
About an hour had passed by now and we couldn’t find anyone to claim the child. We started joking around that in 10 more minutes we were gonna adopt him as our own. 
By now a group of about 10 people had formed that were worried about this little one. We sat the kid at our bench and gave him a bottle of water. General consensus was to call the police. All sorts of speculation was now rampant through the group. Maybe someone had dropped him off and left? Maybe he had been forgotten when the family left?
While one of us was on the phone to the police department a desi woman, seemingly 30 years old, casually walked up to our table with a man and some other kids in tow. She knelt down by the boy. He recognized her as his mother, smiled and continued to drink the water. The guy from our group that had walked the whole park with the little one in his arms asked if she was his mother. She said, “Yes, why?” with an innocent look on her face.
This is when many of us just lost it. We asked her how she could be so careless to leave her child unattended for so long. How could she not know that someone had walked away with her kid in his arms and had been gone for 40+ minutes? She kept insisting that he was not lost and that he was just at the swings 2 minutes ago.
Now the police wanted to speak with her on the phone.
She offered all sorts of excuses to the police. (the brackets show what we were all shouting in the background as she spoke to the police. she kept walking away so that the police could not hear us but a bunch followed her around.)
“No, he was not lost. I was right here.” (No you were not!!! We couldn’t find you anywhere!! The kid couldn’t find you.)
“I have three other kids. I was playing with them. My husband was watching this one.” (No he was not!!! He wasn’t anywhere near your child.)
“He was at the swings two minutes ago.” (No he wasn’t!!! He was about to walk into the busy parking lot when this man stopped him.)
“He’s a difficult child.” (Don’t blame the kid. You are responsible for him no matter what.)
Ultimately the police came and interviewed the parents as well as those of us that had found the child.
Initially they believed the mother when she said, “I was looking for him everywhere!” and asked us why we had taken the child all over the park and why we didn’t call the police right away when we did find him.
One man decided to identify himself as the boy’s uncle and said that we were “trying to create trouble for the family” by making such a big fuss. When we asked this man why he didn’t ID his own nephew when we came to him he said that we had the child “so closely hugged in our arms that he couldn’t see his face”. Yeah, right! Fortunately the police officer was intelligent enough to see that this man was not really related to the kid and was misguided in his intention to help the parents out of this mess. It was the first time I’ve actually witnessed a policeman tell someone to “Move along sir.”
We explained that we carried the child around because we all have kids and we know what it’s like when one wanders away. It only takes a few seconds and we really didn’t want to call the authorities and create trouble for the parents. We wanted to resolve the matter. When we realized that the woman was not only careless but belligerent in her approach we insisted that the police come by so that the parents would learn how serious this can get and remember this day forever. But the police were also right in there position that if this was a different case, by now they would have been 45 minutes behind in their efforts to locate the family/child. Lesson learned…call the police immediately because you don’t know the circumstances.
The part that we found astounding was that the parents were not in the least bit grateful. They showed absolutely no remorse for their lack of attention. In fact, they continued to insist that the child was never lost and they had done nothing wrong.
Thankfully the police decided to launch an investigation and the Children’s Aid Society will take over the case.
re: Lost Your Child…For a Little While…?
Muzna I am positively shocked reading all that 
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Muzna that’s a horrible story! How can anyone be this careless with a 3 year old. There is no excuse for how this poor child was treated.
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Thanks for sharing advice to tell kids to locate another mom with kids. Will see about teaching that
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This is so very, very important.
We taught this to Noor when she was little.
We kept repeating how easy it would have been for us to simply put the child in our car and drive off…
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my heart races even now when I recall the whole thing.
I was going to write about it on Monday but I kept getting so upset that I couldn’t until today…
the Italian man had come to the park with his kids and his mother…she came over and gave me a hug when it was all over…she felt me trembling and said, “The mother of the child is not even upset and you are shaking. So many people on this earth beg God for children and then we have such mothers that have more than they can watch.”
re: Lost Your Child…For a Little While…?
OMG Muzna that just crazy!!!
OMG Muzna that just crazy!!!
On our last visit to Lahore we lost the light one and didn’t even realize he was gone. My in-laws have a combined family system; there are 5 families in the house. So there are 25 kids and my son is the youngest and a little toy for all his chachus and phuphos (my hubby is the only one with a kid out of the 25 kids in the house.) So i didn’t worry about him playing in the front yard with his chachus as they did every day, the whole day long.
When one of his chachu left on his motorcycle, my 2 1/2 was able to unlock the front door and walk out on the street (i guess following him.) 3 houses down from our house is the main road and a Gourmet Bakery that he often walked to for ice cream etc. My SIL was walking back from the market and noticed him standing at Gourmet 
and returned home with him.
This whole time no body at the house knew that he had walked out. I was so scared at the thought of him standing there, and the thought of the “what if…” Alhumdulilah my sil was saw time at the right time.
re: Lost Your Child…For a Little While…?
uff one mistake I made in my life, we friend took our kids to play area after tht we were buying food for kids in food court my daughter was 2 I didn’t strapped her in the pushchair , I was paying the bill and looked back it was just moment of seconds and I don’t have words to describe because my daughter was missing . uff those 2 mins were the hardest mins of my life. I just ran staright to a toy shop I thought she must have gone there asked a security person he started making announcement, I turned around and she was standing in opposite direction trying to grab the balloons uff I was literally dead and it took me few weeks to get over this, even if she was sitting in her pushchair I used to keep checking the belt.
now after this if I am shopping and huby is looking at him I keep saying kahn ha, nazar a rahi ha, huby is I am wth her you do your work. even at home I keep checking in which room she is, huby says I keep stalking her, I should give her break, but i cant i still keep checking her, even sitting wth friends my attention is on her. she is 3 i cant strap her all the time we are out, the worst is speech delay, if god forbid she gets lost she will not be able to explain anyone. and this makes me sleepless.
re: Lost Your Child…For a Little While…?
There are many, many stories of little ones wandering off on their own…even unlatching doors to go out.
I understand that this can happen to anyone…and frankly you only need for it to happen once.
What baffles me is how long should it take before you realize that the child is actually missing?
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and two weeks we found a Pakistani girl crying in food court saying she lost her father. she was standing alone all terrified and crying i asked her wht happened and she said my father was standing here but now he is not, i asked her did she know dad’s numb she said yes we called and he picked the phone we told your daughter is waiting for you here, he came and told oh sorry i went to washroom, huby was atleast inform your daughter before leaving. and such a dheet person said mei ne kahn jana tha washroom se yehin wapis ana tha, bachi bechari ki jan nikal gai
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My mom left me in a grocery store. I was a few months old, in my baby carrier…she had gotten on the bus and was halfway home when she realized she left something behind. She said she forgot me because seh had received a letter from Pakistan (crazy in laws drama) and her mind wasn’t all there.
She later told me I was playing with the cat in the store and the ppl who worked there wouldn’t give me back bc I was too cute :khatti:
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This is what I was wondering…
Ugh, this makes me so mad. It’s one thing for this to happen, but to be so nonchalant, and arrogant and…just awful.
For some reason, I’m thinking about the Madeline Mccann case…2-3 years old, and the parents left her alone in a hotel room. :no:
re: Lost Your Child…For a Little While…?
^ That’s a cute story now but omg so scary! When you hear stories about parents forgetting their infants in the car … really scary!!!
@DA wow!!! That dad needs to learn a lesson, how careless!
Muzna, I’m shocked and so pissed off at those parents!!!
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there have been so many deaths in middle east because parents forgetting their child in car.