What to do if your child is missing
Photo by Arwan Sutanto on Unsplash
In this episode of the Papa est Fatigué podcast, Jim and Dave discuss what to do if you get separated from your child. They’ll talk about some of their own experiences and provide some tips on procedures they use with their own families.
During this episode we’ll discuss:
Best practices if you get separated from your child
Some examples of how we got separated from our kids
Our own procedures for quickly reuniting with our children should we get separated
Resources mentioned in the podcast:
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Transcript
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Speaker 1: In today's episode, we're going to be giving you some best practices for what to do if you get separated from your child. Then we'll also share some of our own stories so you can learn from them.
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Dave: Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Papa est Fatigué podcast, the podcast for dads by dads. The other day, Jim and I ran across an article that provided a good PSA on what to do when you get separated from your child. Today, we're going to be discussing that article and some of the research we've done on the topic. We'll also share some of our own experiences and give you some things that we do to prevent getting separated from our children, or at least reduce the amount of time it takes to find your child if you do get separated.
Before we get into that, a little bit about ourselves. I'm Dave, I have two children, I have a seven-year-old and a four-year-old.
Jim: I'm Jim. I've got two daughters. They're five and seven
Dave: The article that started this whole conversation came from PopSugar. It was actually based on a TikTok PSA from Jess Martini. She said in the TikTok, "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. Do not start silently looking for them. You want to look loudly. You start shouting their description while you look. It's going to sound like, "I'm looking for a boy, age five, 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. By doing that, you've got every single person who is around you looking for your child instead of just you."
That was an interesting PSA and it started us down this path of, what are some of the other best practices if you do get separated from your child? We did a little bit of research and we found the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has some tips. The first one is to stay calm. If you're talking to employees at a store or the police, obviously, they need accurate information, they need you to be as calm as you can be. If you're freaking out or if you give them the wrong information, that can delay the search. Really, the first thing is to stay calm and that'll also help you think through the steps.
The next thing to do is to do a quick perimeter search and immediately find an employee. If you've taught your child to stay put if they're lost, hopefully, you'll be able to quickly find them by just calling out their name, but you don't want to spend too much time looking for them. I'll give you an example later on, based on my experience of where there's a little bit of a gap in this one. Generally speaking, it's the right thing to do.
The next thing is to head to the front of the store because that's where most of the employees are. Something that was interesting that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children found is that oftentimes, children try to leave the store and go out to the car. That's not something that I ever would have thought about like, "Hey, I've lost my five-year-old and he's waiting for me in front of the car." Last thing I would've thought to do. That one I think is really important.
Then when you get to the front of the store, you want to trigger a Code Adam. A Code Adam is a seven-step safety protocol that was developed by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Actually, way back in the day when I was in retail, I remember them telling us about this Code Adam.
What effectively it does is when there's a Code Adam, the store manager will split the store up into, I don't know, zones or something, but they'll effectively assign employees to go look for your child. You go to the bathroom, you go look in bedding, you look in sporting goods, and they'll divvy up the store and have somebody go search in those areas. On average, it usually takes about 10 minutes before a child is found using a Code Adam program. Relatively quick. Obviously, if you're the parent that is forever, but 10 minutes is pretty good and I think it shows the effectiveness of the program.
Then the last tip that they have is if you're not in a store, you want to call law enforcement directly and you don't want to wait. If you call the cops, they would much rather hear from you a second time saying, "You know what, I called you five minutes ago. I lost track of my son. I found him." They're much happier to hear that than, "It's been 30 minutes. I still don't know where my kid is. Can you come out and help me?" You really want to call them first.
Then once you've put that call in, you want to try and recruit help of the bystanders around you, again, just like that TikToker said. Once you've called the cops then say, "Hey, I've lost my son, I've lost my daughter, here's what they look like, help me out."
With all of those tips in mind, Jim, I think it would be interesting if we would share our experiences and to talk a little bit about maybe some of the things that we've learned or things that we've done differently, but for now, let's just start off with, have you had any experiences where you've been separated from your kids and what happened?
Jim: It's interesting to think about this. I was talking to my kids earlier this week, thinking about this conversation that we were going to have, and I asked them when they had been lost or when they felt that they were lost, what happened? What was funny is both of them said, "I don't want to talk about it." The younger one, I could probably think of three times where she's been out of sight and there's been some concern. The older one, only once.
The younger one, the most important time and the one that was really a panic for me, which probably in hindsight, was one of the safer moments. We are in an indoor play area in a mall and it's a thing where you pay money and there's hamster tubes, and bounce houses, and things like that. They had really good safety protocols and that the kids and the parents or the caregiver, whoever it is when they went in, they had ID bracelets that matched on a number.
Nobody was going in and out. No kid was going in and out with another parent, but still, it was a panic moment. Basically, the older one was running around with her cousin and the younger one and I were in this dead-end channel, where was some play stuff and I needed to go talk to the other daughter. I left and I just walked maybe 15 feet out the front of the dead-end space. Then I came back in and she was gone. I had that moment of like, "Oh, my gosh. My daughter was right here and now she's disappeared."
It started this frantic search and it turns out she hadn't gone very far, but I had ran around the place for a little while and I started thinking like, "Well." I got maybe it was five minutes, seven minutes, however long it was, I got to the place where like, "How am I going to tell my wife we only have one daughter now." [chuckles] How am I going to do it? Eventually, I found her and she was very affectionate and very clingy. I'd say it had been somewhat traumatic for her and also for me. She was probably young enough at the time that she really didn't understand that the safety protocols that we have in our family, but she learned them quickly thereafter.
The older one got separated, probably just once that I can remember. It was after dark and it was a Halloween party, a neighborhood block party and there was a scrum, all the kids going in to get the candy, and somehow she got separated. My wife and I somewhat panicked. Again, in hindsight, it was probably a minute, maybe two minutes, three minutes, but it just felt like an eternity. She did follow the safety protocols, which I'll talk about later. We were able to find her. She hadn't gone very far and she was obviously traumatized.
In thinking about both those events, yes, there are moments for me as a parent that are terrifying, but it's also really heartbreaking to see how terrified they are. Having those safety protocols and having that checklist that they need to do when they're in that moment, gives me some insurances.
Dave: One thing that I'm hearing from your stories and I think this will also be reflected in mine and probably is the standard case is that how quickly things go from being a normal situation and it's just like snap of a finger and all of a sudden what happened? It's obviously not for lack of being attentive. It's just that's kids and that's certainly in a Halloween situation when you're mobbing a house and it's dark out and maybe kids are wearing the same costumes and things like that, it happens so quickly. If you have some level of preparation and the child knows what they're supposed to do, it certainly helps the outcome.
Jim: Yes. With the younger one, there was a time, when you say that it happens so quickly, where she was within my sight, I turned to talk to somebody else, and I turned around and she wasn't there. I think about how long her legs are, how fast she moves, there's probably a perimeter where she is. It was in an aquarium. There was a lot of labyrinthine hallways and places you get lost. I went around the first corner and she wasn't there, and the second corner, and that's when the panic hit like it did just happen that fast. That moment is really terrifying.
Dave: It happens quickly too. The child is gone quickly and instantly, you're in pure panic mode. I think, again, it goes back to some of those tips earlier on about, stay calm, because if you're panicked, it's hard to think through, "What do I do next?" The panic then completely takes over you. If you have at least internalized some of the steps that make sense in terms of what do I do now that will help you control the situation so it just doesn't go down the tubes.
From my standpoint, we had one really concerning situation. My wife had taken the kids out to one of the tourist areas where we are and I was at home working. My youngest was probably a year, year and a half. That makes the oldest one about three or four years old, something like that. They're going up an escalator. My wife has the younger one, and our oldest daughter goes running up the escalator. When my wife gets to the top of the escalator, our daughter's gone. It's pretty wide open. It's not like, you get to the top of the escalator and there's a bunch of hallways, you can't see anything, you can actually see a fair amount of distance.
Jim: There it is, how long the legs, how far it's like? She shouldn't be more than 50 feet away, let's say.
Dave: Right. It's the length of the escalator ride, if you think about that. It's one floor worth of escalator and how quickly can a kid with the height of an escalator run upstairs, and so she's gone. My wife after she looks in the general vicinity, because again, how far could she have gone? She's obviously starting to get nervous.
She calls me and I am about 25, 30 minutes away from them. I say, "Call the cops first thing. Call the cops, get them involved." I call my parents I say, "This is a tourist area that they have their own security force. This can't be the first time something like this has happened. They must have a process in place." I asked them, "Please, call these guys." I jump in the car and just haul down there. In this 25, 30 minute ride, I'm going back and forth, calling my mom, calling my wife, because at this point, out of the three of us, I have the least amount of information.
My wife is there, and then my parents are at least talking to the organization that runs the tourist area. They all know a lot more than I do. All the way I'm thinking, what's going on here, because she knows that she is supposed to go into a store if she gets lost. If I'm not mistaken, I actually asked her before they left. I'm like, "Hey, if you get lost, what do you do?" She always knows what to do. I'm thinking, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, what happened? She knows what the responsible thing is. She knows what she's supposed to be doing. What's going on here?
I pull up to 25, 30 minutes later. As I'm pulling into a parking space, my wife calls and she said, "We found her." I get over there and I'm like, "What happened?" I get the full story. Essentially, what happened was, somewhere on this escalator ride up, my daughter turns around to the wife and says, "Hey, I'm going to go look at the magician," but my wife doesn't hear this. The daughter takes off and looks at the magician. The way that this place is laid out, it's actually you go up the escalator, and then you go back down the escalator.
She really wasn't able to see the daughter and she did think that she might be at the magician. Of course, you don't want to leave the last place where conceptually your daughter knows where you are. If there were two of us, obviously, it's a lot easier, but with one she's like, "I just don't want to leave here in case she comes back." What happened was, the cops met her where she was, and then she said, "I think she might be down where the magician is. Can you go check?" There's a bunch of kids there, so you got to figure out which is the missing kid. Eventually, they found her and reunited. It was utterly terrifying. 25, 30 minutes is a very, very long time.
Jim: That's a lifetime.
Dave: Also because this is a completely open area, it's outdoor. You're kind of like, what is happening here? Anything could have happened. That certainly shaped some of the things that we did a little bit later on in terms of how we handle them in terms of thinking this through in advance, getting ahead of any potential issues. The other two examples that I wanted to talk about are different. They didn't involve my children, but I think they do illustrate a few other points that I want to make.
One was, I was at Legoland and I was in line with my son. I don't know, he's three at the time. We're in line for a ride and we're almost to the front. We're pretty close to the kid who's operating the thing and this girl comes up. You're in the lane that's waiting to get on to the ride and this girl comes up, she's going the opposite way, which is the lane normally where people are leaving the ride, and she's crying. The woman behind me and I are trying to figure out what's going on.
This girl's-- she seemed fairly old, maybe nine or 10, maybe 11 years old. She was crying and we get through this conversation, she's lost, she has been separated from her family. We tell the ride operator because obviously they have processes in place and it's just taking longer than you would expect in a place like Legoland where they must deal with so many missing kids or lost kids. We're continuing to talk to this girl to try and calm her down because she's quite upset at the situation.
I would say maybe five minutes in, the woman says, "Do you know your phone number," and the girl says, "Yes."[laughter] What I find really interesting about that, is, first of all, this girl was fairly old. She's a little bit more capable than maybe some of our three-year-olds and four-year-olds. Also, tellingly was, one of the things that we taught our daughter early on is address and phone number.
Jim: Same.
Dave: As the parent who found the kid, it took us five minutes to remember to ask this girl for a phone number. Honestly, if the woman behind me didn't ask, I'm not clear I would have ever put it together. That's just one of those points where you're trying to calm the daughter down. I certainly wasn't thinking very clearly at that point, because the obvious thing is, "Do you know what your phone number is?" We can solve this very, very quickly. That's ultimately how it ended up being solved. She just called the parents and they met.
That was faster than going through the process that Legoland had in place, at least in this particular instance. That's one where, again, it's the parent being on that side, just be aware of all the different ways of connecting with people, and helping to reunite this child.
The other one was at the zoo. I was on a field trip with the class and so there's a bunch of parents. We're all hanging out at the playground and the kids are all running around all over the place.
This mom comes out of nowhere, and is like, "My son's missing, I can't find him." She's screaming it. You've never seen parents activate as quickly as when there is a parent in distress. This is an example of somebody using sort of that TikTok method like, "Help, I can't find my son." Instantly, the parents converge on this woman, what's your son's name, what is he wearing, what does he look like, they get the information and then everyone just splits out.
It wasn't like anybody needed to know what to do. As parents, I think we all know what to do.
We all gather together and help. Clearly, what had happened was, the mother was pushing the toddler in the swing, and again, it's just one of these instances where the kid ran off. He didn't run off, he just wandered off. Actually, here's a point that I want to make about-- I mentioned earlier, sometimes, if you do get separated, call the child's name if they've been taught to stay where they are when they're lost.
I want to circle back to this, because in this instance, and in the instance with my daughter, the interesting thing is neither one of these kids really knew they were lost. My daughter, as far as she was concerned, had told my wife where she was going to be, and certainly had no concept of like, "It's been 20 minutes. Where is everybody?"
Jim: She was watching the magician.
Dave: Exactly. That took up all of her time. Same thing with this child. He didn't know he was lost. As far as he was concerned, he wasn't lost, he was in the playground. That's one where I think also thinking about how the child thinks like, "Mom knows I'm here. I might not be able to see her, but she knows I'm on the slide." As far as we're concerned, if I can't see you all of a sudden, there's this moment of panic.
To think about that when you're separated from your child, when you're looking at that part of the reason they might not be doing what you expect them to do, is because they don't realize what's going on. They're thinking differently than you are. That was a big takeaway from the experience with my daughter and, again, I saw that in this instance at the playground.
With those stories as a backdrop to our experiences, Jim, why don't you talk a little bit about some of the safety protocols that your family has put in place?
Jim: We've been talking about the things that we do as parents. You've got a lot of good examples about that, a lot of good procedures and protocols. In thinking about this conversation, we start from the other side. From a very early age, we've had this five-step process where if the kid is lost, or if she feels like she's lost, stop, don't go anywhere.
Chances are the mom's around the corner, dad's around the corner, we're going to come back. If they don't see anybody then yell, "Mom, dad." If nobody answers, then yell our names, and if then nobody comes, then go find a mom with kids, and ask for help.
That was always interesting because we used to say, go find an employee, go find a clerk, at Target, find the person with the red vest. I like the idea of going to a mom with kids better. I think that that mom can do the things that she needs to do in the same way that she would with her own kids.
We've used it before or rather they've used it before, and it's been very effective. We also remind them frequently that parents come back. I think that's a Daniel Tiger thing, but parents are going to come back. That gives them some confidence to stay still and to know that we're going to come back and not, as you said, run out to the parking lot and go to the car or look for mom and dad in the bathroom or whatever it is.
It's been helpful. I think probably of all those pieces, it's the stop and stay still that I think is important. Even your daughter and your experience, she was staying still. She was just outside of the realm of expectation. If it had been a store or something like that, I think parents would have done a circling perimeter and would've found her eventually. Anyhow, that's been important and it has been effective.
Dave: That stop thing is I think also a way to stay calm, right? To just be like, "Hey, we're going to come find you. You don't have to come find us because we might be turning in circles. You hang tight." I remember when I was in France when I was younger. I was visiting. My parents, when we were on the Metro they would say, "If somehow you get on the Metro and we don't, because it's rush hour, get off of the next station when you realize we're not there. We'll jump on the next train and we'll meet you where you are."
I think that that just stand there. Don't go anywhere, we'll come get you, I think is important. It's interesting how you have approached also the mom thing. I'd heard about that. We have thought certainly in new venues, the big thing that we always do, new museums, it's always like, all right, these are the people that work here. It's an interesting point that you bring up about finding a mom with kids. Certainly, one of the things too about saying just the employee one is that not all stores have a ton of employees. Some stores are bigger than others.
Jim: Or maybe it's the guy who works in the stockroom. He doesn't know what to do with customers.
Dave: Just imagine going into a Home Depot, I can never find somebody to talk to when I want to buy something much less our child running around Home Depot, trying to find somebody in an orange vest. [chuckles] It also probably makes sense to have a couple of different options. Certainly, in a museum, generally, just because of the ages of the kids, our daughter's older now, and the truth is they go to the museums enough that they know their way. They don't need a map, they know the way around.
In a new museum, it can be hard to just say, here's the meeting point because in a big museum, in a new museum, certainly, at the age that our youngest ones are, it could be hard to find their way back to that meeting point. I've always liked to find people as opposed to find a place to meet. Certainly at this age. One of the other ones that I always do when we're at venues that are really crowded, like Disneyland, Legoland, or like a county fair or something like that, a state fair, is I always take pictures of the kids when we arrive and that photo is done head to toe.
That way if they get lost, sometimes it's easier to recognize the child by what they're wearing than what their face is or how hair might've been. Certainly, we all have pictures of our kids, but it doesn't necessarily reflect the way that they look on that day. I think it's also especially important to do a head-to-toe because for instance, if your kid's wearing green shoes and orange pants, you're going to be able to find that real quickly than if you're just taking it from the waist up, that might not be captured in the photo.
This is actually what happened to us when our daughter got separated is when the cops met up with my wife, my wife texted them a picture of our daughter and that cop then texted it out to all the people that were around the area. Certainly, if you had something that was taken that day, it's going to be a lot easier. They know that they can focus on a clothing combination, which I would think would be a lot easier to say, okay, I'm looking for a kid with whatever, black hair with an orange jacket and whatever purple pants or something like that. That's going to be a lot easier than a Caucasian kid or an African-American kid or something like that.
It's just any little bit of help. In as much as it allows you to just focus on a couple of things that they can remember, I think is going to be the most efficient way of finding a child.
Jim: This idea of taking their pictures ahead of time, one of the things we do in particular when I'm with somebody else's kids, my niece and nephew, for example, we will have a safety meeting before we go to the museum. We'll take a knee, bottle up, let's have a safety meeting, and talk about those things. What do we do when we get lost? Where are we going to meet? Those sorts of things. I'm picking up my tip. Those photos are going to be a key part of that meeting. That's covering a lot of bases.
Dave: Good. The other thing that we do, because we do a fair amount of international travel. Especially when you're traveling to a country where nobody speaks the language, or if you're traveling with a toddler who was capable of wandering off on their own, but it's not capable of speaking even if they understood the language is. I got the kids the last time we were abroad, I got them ID bracelets. You can just get them on Amazon. The one that I picked has the red cross sign. At least if somebody sees this kid by themselves, you would hope that they would see this bracelet with the red cross symbol and go, "Okay, there's something there that I should look at. Maybe that's a way of figuring things out."
I think it's important because even if the person who finds your child can't read English and doesn't understand what you've written in there, it still is a way to identify the child. I'll put the name in there. Usually, just the first name is fine. Then I put in a phone number and email address. I think it's important to do both because you may be in a situation where the person who finds your child doesn't speak English. Even if they pick up the phone, if you don't speak their language, then you've got nothing. That's one instance.
I think the other thing too is by having an email, obviously, it's very, very easy. The other advantage to having email is, again, if you have language issues on either side, you can quickly type something up in like Google translate, copy that, and just throw it into the email. Then it could be like, "Here's where I am." Then, "Here are directions If you're going to take a cab in the language of the country that I'm in, just show the cab driver this thing." They're at this police station or in front of this house or whatever.
I think providing a few different ways. I think most people understand the email conventions. That can be easier sometimes than a phone number. I guess it's a little broad to say that everybody understands conventions. The point here is to provide as many different ways to get in touch with you as possible. The last thing that we do, and I think a lot of this comes from, again, our experience with our oldest one is in certain cases, again depending on where we're going, I put a tracker on them. I did a lot of research and there are a bunch of different trackers out there.
The one that I have is a Jiobit, I'll put links to that in the show notes. What I like about that one is it works both indoors and outdoors. There are some that struggle a little bit more when you're indoors because they work on cell signals, which can be a little bit harder if you’re say in a mall and there's a lot of concrete or I don't know, a parking lot, something like that. That's one that I use also when we go abroad. They have international roaming, all of them require some level of a monthly fee. You just have to figure out what makes the most sense for your budget. I think the Jiobit, you can turn it on and off as you need to. We always use that.
The way that you attach it is fairly childproof. I actually, as an adult, it can be difficult to take it off their pants. It attaches to the belt loop or to a shoe buckle. It can be a little bit difficult to remove, which is exactly what you want. You don't want the kid taking it off and fussing around with it. Again, it's just peace of mind and we mostly use it again internationally where the kids just aren't capable of communicating what's going on in every instance. Also, in these really crowded spaces where it can be easy just to get lost in the crowd.
We have a friend, a parent that actually uses a Tile to do the same thing, the Tile is a little bit different because the range is Bluetooth only. I think it's whatever, 50 to 300 feet or something like that, primarily what he uses it for is when they're at the playground, I think he puts it on a bracelet or something. That's the secret. When it vibrates, that's a signal like it's time to go home. He doesn't have to go chasing around. It's just, "Oh, okay, dad's calling. I better go find him."
Just a different way of approaching it, but ultimately the same goal, which is to just keep a little bit of tabs. Also with the tile I think you can set up a geofence I know you can with the Jiobit, so with the Jiobit, you can set up say 100 foot radius. If we get 100 feet away from you, your phone will ring. You'll know that, okay. It gives them also a little bit of independence. All right, you can be 300 feet away. It'll be fine, but more than 300 feet, not so confident about.That was another thing that we did, certainly, when the kids were younger, we still do that a little bit now.
We hope this was an informative episode. If one of these tips helps you, we've done our jobs. If you have any questions for us, send us through the Facebook page, facebook.com/papaestfatigue. That's P-A-P-A-E-S-T-F-A-T-I-G-U-E. Then we'll be sure to put all the links in the show notes.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Papa est Fatigué podcast. If you'd like the podcast, please give us a review. Don't forget to subscribe to get ideas and hear discussions around parenting as a dad. Talk to you next time.
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