Skip to content
KidSafe Foundation
  • Books and more
  • Give
  • 0
Menu
  • For Parents
    • Activities
      Birds and Bees
      Body
      Camp
      Child Abuse
      Communication
      Education
      General
      Grooming
      Home Alone
      Internet
      News
      Pandemic Parenting
      Parenting Elementary
      Parenting Preschool
      Parents
      Personal Safety
      Private parts
      Reporting
      Resilience
      Sexual abuse
      Spanish
  • Educators
  • Healthcare Workers
  • Events
  • KidSafe Español
  • Programs and Education
  • Our Impact
  • Who we are
    • Contact Us
  • Give
  • Books and More
  • Home
  • Topics
  • The Most Important Thing To Do If You Lose Your Child in Public
General, Parents

The Most Important Thing To Do If You Lose Your Child in Public

(original source: Popsugar Parenting)

Have you ever been out with your family and you lose track of one of your kids? If you’re like most parents, you’ll scan your surroundings, you’ll dart from one spot to another trying to find them, and eventually, you’ll start shouting their name. Ideally, you locate your kiddo, but if you don’t want to risk a far more frightening fate, a mom on TikTok offered up a PSA on the very first thing you should do if your child goes missing in a public place.

“If you look around and your child is no longer with you, what you want to do is you want to start loudly looking for them,” Jess Martini, a parent to three boys, who has used this advice successfully in her own life. “Do not start silently looking for them. You want to look loudly.”

And she doesn’t just mean calling out to them.

“You may feel you look stupid doing it and maybe you do, but it is so much better to look stupid than to be sorry.”

“You start shouting their description while you look,” she said. “It’s going to sound like this: ‘I’m looking for a boy, age 5, short brown hair, brown eyes, Caucasian, red Nike t-shirt, black shorts!’ You’re going to keep repeating yourself while you look over and over again.”

At this point, she said, “you’ve got every single person who is around you looking for your child, instead of just you.”

Best-case scenario? Someone finds the child and returns them to you. And the ideal worst-case scenario? If “someone was walking away with your child, they are more likely to let them go because they don’t want that sort of commotion.”

Although parents might not be going to a lot of crowded public places – like amusement parks, zoos, or shopping centres – amid the pandemic, this tip has already helped families. Another parent, Kelli Hoobler, recently took to TikTok to explain how her middle child had gone missing. While the other adults in her group took off running in one direction and simply shouted his name, she began running in the opposite direction and followed Jess’s advice to loudly describe her child. “We found him within 15 seconds.”

Jess wants to remind her viewers to not feel ashamed for losing their child in public – and to certainly not let that keep them from practicing this tactic in the moment. “Remember: these things happen to even the best parents,” she said. “You may feel you look stupid doing it and maybe you do, but it is so much better to look stupid than to be sorry.”

To access the original Pop Sugar article and PSA click here.

Related Posts

  • Body
  • Communication
  • General
  • Parents
  • Personal Safety
  • Resilience

Do Children Need Selfcare

Learn More

#AskKidSafe

Tweet us your questions

Tweets by KidSafe

Tweet #AskKidSafe

We want to hear from you

Ask us a question or share a story

 

KidSafe Newsletter Sign Up
KidSafe-Foundation-Logo-RGB

info@kidsafefoundation.org

855-844-SAFE

Volunteer Form
  • Who we are
  • Contact Us
  • For Parents
  • Educators
  • Healthcare workers
  • Programs and Education
  • Events
  • Our Impact
  • KidSafe Español
  • Blog
  • Books & More
  • Give
  • Site Map
  • Privacy Policy & Terms

Contributions benefit KidSafe Foundation, a 501c3 not-for-profit tax-exempt organization.

Our EIN is 271067698

© 2022 KidSafe Foundation a 501c3 Non Profit. All rights reserved.

Please fill in your details to access the lesson

KSF does not share personally identifiable information about Users with third parties unless legally required to do

https://kidsafefoundation.org/topics/the-most-important-thing-to-do-if-you-lose-your-child-in-public/