After eighty days on the road, you would expect a bad thing or two to happen. It's just the law of averages. Remarkably, with only a few days left in our epic road trip, we had not lost even one kid even one time.
Then-DisneyWorld. DisneyWorld was where we tarnished our perfect record.
If you are going to lose a kid, DisneyWorld is the place to do it. Their "Lost Kid" system is a well oiled machine, and we got to watch with concentrated interest at how the systems works.
With our winning streak blown, we decided to go all the way, and lost a different kid at a different theme park two days later. We're not certain if we just lost focus at the end or if we had just tempted fate one too many times. In the end, everyone was safe and sound and we were reminded of a few safety rules to prevent losing a child while you are traveling (or find them safely once they are lost.)
What to Do if You Lose a Child in a Crowd?
1. Discuss crowd safety early and often. As soon as a child is old enough to walk around on their own, they are old enough to start learning about how to stay safe. Don’t assume that they are too little to start learning what to do if they are lost. Our three year old stayed right in his spot and loudly asked if anyone could help him find his mom. I was very proud of my little guy, and very glad I took the time to teach him what to do.
2. Have a family plan. The standard wisdom says that families should choose a place to meet if they are separated. While this might work for tweens and teens, we have found that this is not a great idea for kids 10 and under. Instead, we tell our kids that if they are separated from their family they should stop and stand still. If after several minutes they are not reunited with their family, they should find a police officer or event employee or mom with kids and tell them they are lost.
3. Teach your child important information. Make sure your little ones know their full name, their mom and dad’s names, their address, and even a phone number. Practice fun ways to remember this information and rehearse when you are traveling.
4. Dress your crew in matching clothes. When we travel I always dress the boys in matching shirts. It amazes me how other people will help me herd my crowd because they can tell we all belong together.
5. Attach a sticker or bracelet with phone numbers to your child or put your numbers on a slip of paper in their pocket. Waterproof bracelets like the ones you get at a waterpark can be purchased an office supply store or you can use a sticky address label.
6. Take a picture of your kids before you attend a crowded event. I’ll be honest and tell you that I always thought this was useless advice because I was sure I would be able to remember what my children had on if needed. In the panic of the moment, though, I could barely remember my own name. We had to flip through our camera to give a description to the officers when our son was lost at the Albuquerque Balloon Festival.
7. Don’t Panic. One more time, do not panic. Child abduction is the tsunami of parenting fears, but the reality is that the chance that your child will be abducted is about 1 in a million. When my son was missing at the Albuquerque Balloon festival, every few minutes I could feel that tsunami threatening to wash over me and take me to ground in sheer panic. Only by concentrating on not panicking and reminding myself that I could not help my son if I did panic was I able to stay calm and focused on the task ahead.
8. Stop for a moment and do not move. Often your child is not far from you at all and will see you and hear you calling and come right back to you. If you immediately start run through the crowd, you might miss your child standing just a few feet behind you.
9. Ask for help quickly. Officials, police officers, and event staff are trained and ready to help you find your missing child. Ask the people around you for help as well. This is not a time to be shy. The more people you can involve in your search the faster it will be resolved.
10. Cooperate with officials. Officers and event staff may want you to stay in one location while they look for your child. As hard as it is to sit and wait, trust that they know what they are doing.
11. If your plan changes, share the changes with everyone. Our problems at DisneyWorld happened because we planned to go to one ride, and then decided to stop at another ride along the way. The Lost Boy continued on his way to the original plan, and discovered that he was walking alone too late. We could have easily saved the gray hairs we earned that day by just making sure that everyone knew the plan.
12. Make sure you know your assignment. Our trouble at Legoland was that each parent though the other was watching the baby and he got lost in the shuffling crowd. Almost every other time, we look at each other and agree which of us is in charge of which kids and that helps us all stay together.
13. Use the buddy system. Let older kids keep an eye on younger kids. The more hands and eyes you have on the job, the safer everyone will be.
Keryn @ walking on travels says
Best tips EVER! Especially for a mom of young kids like me. I am never sure how much my 3 year old can hold in his brain, but really he can learn our names and start learning phone numbers etc. And the take a picture of your kid tip, yes, I too never got why people thought they couldn't describe their own kid, but you have reminded me that panic can wipe even the simplest info out of our brains. Thank you!
Jenna says
Great tips. Thanks so much for sharing this important information!
Bethaney - Flashpacker Family says
These are BRILLIANT tips!!! I've honestly never thought about this before. Even though I have a "runner" my husband and I are usually together to tag-team him. My two-year old knows his name and his dad's name but not mine and certinaly not our last names. Time to start teaching!
Michele says
When we travel internationally, we give a business card of the hotel to each child, especially if English is not prevalently spoken where we are. Dressing kids alike is great. Last week, my 9-year-old got lost on the school field trip hiking in the jungle. Luckily, they wear uniforms and a stranger directed him to where his school group was.
Chris Little says
Our pediatrician told us a long time ago to train the kids to ask a mom for help locating their parents. It is difficult for young children to know what a police uniform looks like, some match gang colors and sadly men are more likely to "hurt" a child. Now that is a large generalization but the idea was that a mom with kids is easy to spot and in 99.9% of the cases knows what to do with a lost kid and is a safe person to help kids.
We also got great advice at Disneyworld to stick a small fanny pack on our kid. Don't break out the fashion police just yet. They can put their sunglasses in it, a snack and a business card with all our information on it. For good measure you could also take a Sharpie too it and write their name on it. It was also something that didn't have to come off them when they rode rides.
I would never remember what my kid is wearing that day either.
Jule9B says
This reminded me of a day when I lost my daughter in a department store. It wasn’t even a big place and I saw her in one second and the next moment she was gone. She was only two and I panicked! I thought she had probably crawled under some of the clothes stands where she had been hiding before, but she wasn`t there. I called her name, but she was not close enough or didn’t answer. These were the longest 5 minutes (or so, it felt so long but probably wasn’t more than 5 minutes) in my entire life. I told the shop assistants and everyone around me, everyone helped looking for my little one. I hoped that she hadn’t left the store and ran from one exit to the other to make sure everyone was aware of a missing child so that everyone would stop a lone child from walking away alone. When we finally found my daughter, she was sitting in a changing room, patiently eating the TicTacs I had bought her in the previous store and was absolutely unaware of what she had caused. 😉 This has never happended again and now she is old enough to know how to ask somebody for help should she ever get lost again. She also knows our telephone number and her dad’s cell phone number by heart.
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