There are few things more frightening for a parent than losing your child in a crowded place like a shopping mall, zoo or stadium. The moment you realize that your child is missing, it’s impossible not to consider the scary idea that he may have been kidnapped.
A woman in New Zealand recently lost her son in a Kmart, but was able to track him down because of a parenting hack that potentially saved lives that she saw on TikTok a few months ago.
The woman was shopping at the store when she noticed that her two-year-old son Nathan was missing. She immediately told a friend to alert the team to make sure he didn’t go out the front door of the store.
“Another friend searched the area where he was last seen,” wrote the mother in a Facebook post.
The mother started looking for him, rummaging through the macaws and running down the halls.
It was the “scariest 10 minutes of my life,” she wrote later.
via Mike Kalasnik / Flickr
But then she remembered a hack for parents she saw on TikTok by blogger Jess Martini. “If your child goes missing, spoil their eyes and start shouting their description,” recalled the mother.
“I miss a boy, he’s wearing a yellow shirt and has brown hair. He’s two years old and his name is Nathan!” she shouted to the rest of the store as she remembered not to “fall” in tears.
“You need people to understand you out loud,” she said.
The mother’s calls immediately instructed everyone who heard them to start looking for the child. It was like multiplying the search by a factor of 10. “I turned a corridor and heard ‘He’s here!'”, She wrote. “I came back where I came from and there he was. A man passed him after hearing me calling.”
She immediately thanked the man, realizing that if she hadn’t screamed, he might never have known the child was missing. “Nate would have passed him and wouldn’t have blinked,” she said.
In November, parent blogger Jess Martini posted a video sharing the best way for parents to locate a missing child. It is great advice because the automatic response is usually just shouting the name or running around silently looking.
“For all the parents out there, if your child goes missing, don’t look in silence or just call his name,” says Martini in the video. “Shout loud and clear. Say you are missing, give a description and repeat, repeat, repeat! “
“Everyone will be on the alert and if someone is trying to take off with their child, the chances of escaping are lessened,” he added.
Advice is a great reminder to make a mental note of what your child is wearing when you go out, so if they are gone, you can easily provide a description. It also proves that when a parent needs help, most people are more than willing to lend a hand.
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