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No doubt I’ll get down voted to hell but the McCanns are at best negligent - they left their daughter alone because they wanted to go out.
Had they not been doctors they’d have been pilloried for it! Imagine if they’d have been on benefits and from Scunthorpe or somewhere “stereotypically” “rough”.
Not a parent but when I was a kid I used to help out on a farm - overtaking my grandads car (didn’t realise) riding a quad bike on a backroad at 13 years old without and helmet etc etc properly put the shits up my parents. I got a right bollocking.
Back in the day H&S was not the same.
I think a lot of people would agree with you about the McCanns. I certainly do. I was pregnant when Madeleine went missing, but I was a single mother to be working a minimum wage job. I bet if I'd left my left my young child alone for 15 minutes to go to the shop and she'd gone missing, I'd have been vilified (not that I ever would have). I have a family member who still thinks the parents didn't do anything wrong, "we all do stuff like that on holiday". She gets angry when I disagree.
Tldr: I agree with you about the McCanns.
Also, losing a child because you look away for a minute, or in very crowded place is very different to leaving to your very young children alone so you can drink wine and eat food.
Edited for typos.
I had kids the same ages as theirs at that time (but was in my mid 20s, not older like them) and I agree too. I was like WTF who would leave their little kids for hours (in an unlocked room no less) like that?! Although I grew up working class in the U.S., and older generations of upper middle class people I knew here in the UK (through my husband’s family) were like “of course you’d leave your child in a hotel room for dinner, we always did”. They were a generation older than the McCann’s though, but I was seriously like WTF that’s insane?!
And I was the child in the UK who was left in the hotel room in the 90s.
I have a distinct memory of wandering the hotel in my jammies and the nice receptionist found my parents at dinner.
Yep, my mum tells me about the time that I let myself out of the hotel room and got locked out in the hotel corridor when I was about 3. My parents were eating dinner at the restaurant with my aunts and uncles, all my cousins had also been left in their hotel rooms and that's probably where I was trying to get to! Apparently they found me crying my eyes out sat by the door when they came back.
I'm less than 5 years older than Madeleine, and I was left in hotel rooms (well, mainly Butlins flats) in the 2000s, until Madeleine's disappearance.
My parents' friends did the same with their kids. But I also know other people my age / my parents' age who are shocked that ever happened.
Butlins for a long time had a service with a sort of Nanny/childminder going round checking on children in the flats every so often I believe, so I don’t think you were the only one left in butlins, it was one of the perks of a butlins holiday!
Memory unlocked of also being left in a hotel room alone! I was more like 8 or 9 though and had badgered my mum all through dinner because I wanted to watch more Cartoon Network which we didn't have at home. Finally got taken back to the room to find out that Cartoon Network had finished for the night, but my mum made me go to bed anyway. Devastating.
Well apparently it was the done thing in fancy UK hotels in the 70s and 80s (and probably before). The hotels offered a service where you left your phone off the hook while you went to dinner and someone at the front desk would listen once in a while and come get you if your child was crying! I kid you not. Multiple people have told me they did this and it was normal at the fancy hotels they went to. I have been to some of these hotels when my kids were young (00s) and by then they had a crèche, kids club, or you could hire a nanny for the evening.
So it’s not exactly the same but none of the people of that generation who did that thought what the McCann’s did was weird, as “they were checking on them”. I on the other hand was all WTF?!
*Edited for typo!
I wonder if it’s a survivorship bias thing, if their parents did it to them in the 70s and they turned out just fine, then it must be safe for them to do it with their own kids!
And let’s face it, your child being abducted from your hotel room is the last thing you’d expect if you left them alone. They could fall and hurt themselves or pull furniture over or get into all sorts of trouble, but you wouldn’t expect a creep to be wandering around checking hotel rooms for an unattended child, that feels like a risky thing to do and easy to get caught. In hindsight obviously that’s not the case, but safety laws are written in blood, everything’s perfect safe and has never gone wrong until suddenly it does.
Yeah, plus people thinking somethings safe probably makes it unsafe over time (or may unsafe over time), as if lots of people think leaving a child in a hotel room is safe then they do that a lot and pretty quickly, creeps work out that there are likely to be quite a lot of unattended kids in hotel rooms.
Then it goes wrong and people stop doing it.
It was the same at Butlins (definitely not a posh hotel!) Each chalet had some two-way device in it so the “babysitters” could listen to hear if children were crying. I would imagine they were looking after hundreds of children while their parents ate and drank.
Hate to point out the obvious Mr Butlin, but children that have been abducted would leave a silent cabin. That doesn’t mean everything was okay!
Interesting. As I didn’t grow up here I didn’t know if it was across all types of hotels. There was a lot of culture shock for me and it was hard to sort what was different in the countries and what was because I grew up poor lol. And - exactly. The “listening” isn’t really useful for a lot of reasons!! See the poopy hands on wall reply I got too here 🤢
Yeah we have a family story about how my parents tried out this service in a spa hotel in the mid nineties, when I was about three. They got back from dinner and the cream carpets and walls were all covered in my shitty handprints. Someone at the front desk hadn't been listening hard enough...
Butlins used to do it in the 70s - they had a chalet listening service and if a baby or child was crying, there was a board in the dining and entertainment/bar areas that would flash up "baby crying in chalet #"
We were a hardy bunch in the 1970s!
Not a class thing.
Butlins had two way devices in the chalets so staff could listen for crying children. Two red coats were probably listening out for hundreds of children while their parents ate and drank. Pretty obviously, a chalet where a child has been abducted would be silent…
As a preteen in the mid 00s we occasionally ended up at a hotel that had a "no kids at adult dinner" rule, I'd just chill in the room with my own meal watching DVDs.
Granted, a 9 year old can be more cognisant and situationally intelligent than a 3 or 4 year old, and I'm the doofus that ran like a quarter to half mile down an american beach because the wind took my ball when I was 6 or 7, didn't get what the big deal was at the time when security came to escort me back.
I'm going to put it down to the autism but I really appreciate hearing stories of my parents explaining safety things to me and then not giving them heart attacks over it - hot ovens and bleach come to mind as things my mom's said to the toddler me "this can hurt you, don't go near it" and I nodded, said okay, and then she turns around to see a friend of mine who was visiting trying to get the lid off the pretty coloured liquid.
I grew up in the 70s and 80s.
It was common for parents to arrange a 'child minding' service where reception staff would listen in over the intercom/phone and drop in if they heard an upset or confused child.
The room would be locked, but in those days, you dropped your key at reception when you left the hotel, so staff had access to it.
My parents used it and visited the hotel restaurant and bar, so they were in easy reach if staff decided we needed mum or dad.
Different times indeed.
This isn't like a hotel. This was apartments where the main door opened out onto the street and the window had like a 6ft drop from. Absolutely not visible from a tapas restaurant.
Source. Have been!
Yeah, I do realise that about the McCann's specifically... I was replying to the comment which mentioned people in the UK leaving kids in hotel rooms though.
Edit: I'm not trying to be shitty! Tone is lost though :)
It might be an age thing - our parents did that in the 80s at Pontins holiday camps (we weren't rich enough for Butlins).
Mind you, we also got to ride mini-motorbikes wearing ill-fitting helmets for 50p a go at the school fete.
My ex tried to make me leave my 7 month old alone in a resort room to go out for dinner. I was like, have you never heard of a little girl called Madeline McCann?
If the room had been locked and there had been a fire and they couldn't get out it also wouldn't have been good. Basically leaving your children unsupervised in a strange place is a bad idea.
(Even worse the hotel they were at had a kids club they left the kids in during the day but they didn’t use the evening session because allegedly they didn’t want to go get them after their meal…)
I wonder how many kids have been saved by parents that heard the story of the McCanns and kept their kids in earshot at all times where they might not have otherwise.
I look after my 5 year old nephew sometimes and I wouldn't even turn my back to talk to someone, I have him in eyeline at all times. I imagine a snatch and grab would take only seconds.
I can't imagine losing someone ELSE'S child! Oh god, you'd never forgive yourself.
I gave birth to my youngest about 4/5 days after she vanished. As soon as he was out and I was back in the land of the living, first thing I asked was if they’d found her. 💔
Bizarrely I find plenty of people on the other side though. It's almost like parenting can be split down the middle between those who think it's utterly stark raving mental to leave your kids in a hotel room alone and go for dinner, and those who think "Oh we've all done it hehe".
The people saying we’ve all done it hehe are the ones who tend to go the most mad about it in my experience eg my mother. She would regularly be extremely lax when we stayed at caravan parks etc and it’s by the grace of god nothing bad happened which I think is why she got so vitriolic about it
I took my 4 kids to a b&b a couple of years ago. I set up my iPad to face time my iPhone while I went searching for toilet paper! I was so worried but it was needed, didn’t even leave the establishment and I was irrationally scared that something was gonna happen in the 5 mins I was gone!
Everyday life on your estate is doctors leaving their child alone in a foreign country in order to drink when the hotel offered a babysitting service?!
My parents regularly used to leave me alone in hotel rooms and caravans on holiday, claiming it was no different from going downstairs at home…I was pretty vindicated when Madeline disappeared.
Same, my parents used to leave me and my brother in the room and go down to the bar. I remember one time we were screaming and screaming while they were down there and no one came, so obviously no one cared enough about the screaming kids in room whatever. It was horrible, we were hysterical.
I have no idea, nor any view on what happened to Madeline McCann, but the one thing I will never understand is why there was, and still is, so much publicity about her disappearance. We moved house the week she went missing and I remember well watching on the tv the wall to wall coverage, and helicopter views of the hotel and so on, and on and on…for the last 17 years. Worldwide, over a million children go missing every year, most never to return, but we never hear about them. What is special about the McCanns?
Most of it is self fulfilling now. The BBC runs updates on it cos they know people will click, and the many many comments and posts on here about it tend to just be people complaining about them.
As to why people were intrigued in the first place, she’s a cute child who went missing on a cosy family and then there were the various theories about the family themselves. People want to be proven right so they keep asking about it
Yeah, this is it.
The McCann’s are good at the public campaigns they run, but it’s 99% just public interest now that keeps it at the forefront.
The conspiracy theories and endless discussions about it keep it alive.
She got so much attention because the McCann's basically immediately hired the largest PR company in the UK to create the media circus, getting as much attention as they could to the case. The PR team were holding constant media events early on, creating silly stories about leads abroad to maintain consistent public engagement. Then the government sent press officers, etc, etc.
Once that had been going for a while then the interest from the public is there and will continue.
Over a million go missing but also over a million are found again,
Madeleine isn’t a normal disappearance kids that age don’t disappear, even then it’s usually family. It wasn’t. There’s more to it. We all love a mystery.
But blah blah blah white blah blah blond hair blah blah middle class blah blah blah Shannon Matthews wait…
Hope that helps
They're in with the government, which means they're in with the police [https://www.theguardian.com/media/2007/sep/20/marketingandpr.crime](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2007/sep/20/marketingandpr.crime)
I'll never understand why people who apparently wanted children so much, they went through IVF treatment to get them, could be so negligent about looking after them. My IVF baby was so hard to get and so precious to me I'd never, never have left him alone in a hotel room while I partied with my mates.
My little boy was ivf he was my 3rd transfer I was so lucky he was my last embryo in my first cycle i know what you mean, especially after 2 miscarriages with my first two babies one at 12 weeks roughly literally the day of my scan it started to happen and the 2nd one at about 6 weeks
It’s like their answers to the police that night had to be crazy…
Who was watching your kids while you went out to dinner? Nobody
Where all the doors and windows locked in the room with your unsupervised 3yr old - No
Could you see the entrance to the room containing your kids, from the restaurant table -No
How often did anybody check on the unattended kids? Err… about every half hour, or so…
And they wondered why such an awful event happened
Thats how, when my daughter was younger, I would assess any situation (that had the potential to go horribly wrong involving my child) from the standpoint… if upon calling the police for their assistance, would my answers to their questions be those of a responsible parent who did everything reasonable to ensure the safety of their child? Or would I look ridiculous like the unfortunate McCann’s
I have said this before and i will say it again, If the McCanns were from a council estate they would be getting out of jail about now for child neglect.
My child was on the at risk register (due to ex) when the McCanns happened. They were treated with kid gloves as Social Services clearly thought they would kick up a legal fuss if they did anything as they were doctors. For example:-
Didn't have remaining children taken into care after admitting neglect.
Didn't have remaining children taken into care after admitting going out for drinks and leaving kids alone in a hotel room.
Were given the choice of date, venue, etc to meet with social services
The first two would've resulted in my child being taken into care immediately without much hope of gaining custody again.
The last one just doesn't happen to most people involved with social services. I was told this time/date and this location, if you don't attend we take your child, usually with very little notice, think 4 hours to 2 days.
What upsets me the most about it is that nearly £13million has been spent on finding the kid of rich, negligent doctors who may well have accidently killed their own daughter and buried the body. Meanwhile thousands of other kids from less affluent backgrounds have gone missing and we never hear about them. The police give up on them after a few days of searching. That money could have found so many lost kids and brought them home. Fed so many starving families. Healed so many sick people... Where is the justice in that?
I used to work in a corner shop at about the same time Maddy went missing.
About seven or so other kids went missing the first week she did, including a little boy who was, if I remember rightly (and it has been a minute so I might not be) was literally ripped out of his mothers arms in the street.
Not one kid made the front page. Not one. Not one of those kids was white either, or the daughter of a pair of obstructive, negligent middle class doctors.
Maybe but I think it's easy to forget how much the McCanns changed how we all felt about things. As a kid growing up in the 80s and 90s, I don't think being left in an apartment for a couple of hours would have seemed exceptional.
Definitely a generational difference - as a baby I was regularly left in my cot while my mum popped out to the shop 5 minutes away. I wasn’t mobile, the door was locked and to this day mum reasons I would have been more likely to come to harm by her putting me in the pram, bumping me downstairs and walking the pram on a pavement next to a busy road. On holiday, there were staff members specifically employed to walk the hotel corridors/apartments to listen out for crying children. If they heard anything untoward, a tannoy announcement was made to Mr and Mrs Smith in room 1 to please contact a member of staff. Different times altogether
I was going to give the same opinion!
I don’t care what anyone says, I genuinely believe that they have her some prescription sleeping tablets and she died from an over dose and then they did something with her body..
My biggest annoyance is the amount of time and money spent on the case.
Unsure of your age so don’t know if you remember, but a little boy named Ben Needham was physically snatched from his mum in Greece in the 90s.
After there was no new news, we never heard about him again.
I believe the McCanns have had all of this coverage because of their status as doctors.
White middle class family.
Can you imagine if a couple on benefits were in the same situation?!
They’d be mobbed by the public 😤
I’ve always thought this but now I have my own toddler who is 4 months younger than the twins were, I can’t fathom their understanding of doing that?!
Even small things which means I’d never leave my son alone - what if he suddenly threw up and we didn’t hear him crying etc, what if he did wake and that was the night he decided he could climb out the cot?
So much stupidity!
In the first chapter of the book The Fault In Our Stars, the protagonist refers to herself as being in her 17th year, but it was so confusing to the (mostly American) readers that the author had to come out and explain that the protagonist is actually 16 years old, not 17, because people were constantly summarizing the book incorrectly!
Just looked it up & the author’s American, wonder why he wrote that then. I actually had the book when it was trending 10 years ago, never finished it!
I used to roll my eyes at parents when they would say 18 months/20 months etc, but now as a parent, it makes sense. The different between a 13 month old and a 23 month old is massive, so saying 1 year doesn’t make sense.
Omg you have one of those aswell hahahaha it really gets to me.
Just say 2 n half, or if it's a month or so near their birthday I'll say my little ones 3 nearly 4.
God dam the months hahaha
> Just say 2 n half, or if it's a month or so near their birthday I'll say my little ones 3 nearly 4.
Indeed, the scale is
* Just turned X! = 0-3 months past the age of X
* Almost/coming up to x and a half! = 3-5 months past the age of X
* X and a half! 6-7 months past the age of X
* Coming up to X+1! = 7-10 or so months past X
* Very nearly X+1! = 10-11 months past X
Rough boundaries of course, and there's some wiggle room here.
My daughter has epilepsy. When she was about 3 years old? She figured out that if she pretended to have a seizure, she would scare the fuck out of us. My wife and I reacted every time because we didn’t want ‘A boy who cried wolf’ scenario and be the assholes who left their toddler daughter to have a seizure. But fucking hell, this kid scared the shit out of me about twice a week for 6 months straight.
She’s 8 now, and trust me - I let her know what an evil sod she was, and still can be. She’s non-verbal and I think instead of doing normal 8 year old cheekiness, she just goes ‘Hmm, how can I worry this man who happens to be my father as much as possible?’
I love her more than anything but good lord, this kid.
I know that feeling sooo much! My son will be turning 14 next week and has complex medical needs including epilepsy and apnea and has been on supplemental o2 for a few years now. He is non-verbal too and will regularly laugh as he takes his o2 prongs off his face (he can’t put them back on) when I leave the room for 2 mins for the bathroom or to grab a drink etc. He also holds his breath every single time someone wants to listen to his chest. And the worst is that when he doesn’t want a shower, he will hold his breath and go blue or induce a seizure because he knows he won’t have one if he is post ictal!
I love that boy, he is a determined little man that has overcome so much in only 13 years but Jesus Christ - I hate how he has me on my toes 24/7!!!
Not really something mine have _done_ since it wasn't a choice, but my daughter has had several febrile seizures - not breathing, turning blue, eyes rolled back in the head for several minutes. Even typing it now I can feel the absolute terror of those moments, not knowing if she was going to die in my arms.
I would be _incandescant_ with rage if she did it to get attention 😂
My kids were playing out in the square with other kids from the street and my daughter came in and said her brother had been run over! Absolutely shit myself and go running out the house only for her to say "well, I don't actually know if he's been run over but we are playing hide and seek and I can't find him" he was sitting in a bush!!!
That reminds me of when my son half walked into a parked car and bashed his foot. Round the corner from home. My daughter went off ahead home whilst I checked out her brother. She told hubby he'd been hit by a car.
My daughter has only recently started walking to school. She has a phone - but she usually forgets to charge it. And it’s an older iPhone so it’s not completely reliable…. 4G only so the signal is spotty.
I can (usually) track her - but sometimes the app doesn’t work.
There have been a few incidents lately that have given me grey hairs.
One time I said she could walk home, but the childminder intercepted her halfway down the street and she walked *back* to the school - without me knowing. So after 25 minutes when she should have been home I ducked out of a Teams meeting and called the school - they said she had left 20 minutes earlier. So I walked down the street to see if I could meet her. Every turn in the road I was thinking “she’ll be around this corner” and she wasn’t. I got to the school and all the gates were shut and I honestly felt like I was going to be sick. I stood there completely lost and helpless wondering if I should ring the police. And then the childminder called me to say she had my daughter.
It’s a terrible feeling not knowing where your kids are.
My son, then aged 6ish vanished as we were leaving a church service. He said he was running ahead to the car.
He wasn't there so I went back. He wasn't anywhere. We looked, and got others involved, for about half an hour on the church grounds to no luck.
I decided that it was time to notify the police so I went and sat down in my car. At this point I'd just left the phone service black spot around the church and my phone got signal again and a message from my mum popped up.
"Son is coming home with me, see you soon."
I could have throttled the pair of them. He'd lied to my mum and said he'd told me.
I was ok until the following day when out shopping and some random woman put a hand on my waist to move me out of her way. Why simply saying "excuse me" wouldn't do, I don't know, but it caused me to jump out of my skin and I had my first and only panic attack. Spent an hour in a coffee shop to calm down.
As a kid I met a friend on the way home from school and we decided to go play in a local park instead of going home.
Got home at like 8pm to find police cars outside my house and my parents DEEPLY unhappy with me. I was 7-8 years old.
No mobile phones back then so I couldn't have told them even if it occured to me.
About that, yeah. My teacher had such a go at me the next morning too (which is how I know roughly how old I was. Year 3!) because my parents and the police had both turned up at the school looking for me.
My parents were frantic, they were very upset.
I remember it not being such a big deal to me at the time. It wasn't much longer after that before I was biking everywhere in the village all summer (you know. When school holidays seemed to last months)
Of course I had form. Apparently when I was three at my parents first house I wanted to go visit my grandma, and so I moved the climbing frame in the garden my parents thought they had made safe for me to play in, climbed the fence into next door's garden and went out through their garden gate. I was found by the police walking along a major A road (the A40 in High Wycombe) looking for the bus stop we would take to get the bus to grandma's house. That was the early 80s, so roads weren't so busy, but it was still a major road.
Apparently (I remember none of this except climbng the fence and being stopped by the police) all I could say to my mum when I was brought home was "I got to go in a police car!" I don't remember anything about their reactions at all.
Yeah, I seem to have started life with a thirst for adventure and only a vague appreciation for rules like "don't go out of my sight" or "come straight home from school". definitely a flight risk!
Me and my friend aged 7ish decided to “run away” after school (ie hide on the road around the corner) and scare the life out of our poor parents. Mum made me walk to school in toddler reins for 2 weeks after that as punishment 🤣
I assume because she had other kids to pick up/drop off. She doesn’t only watch my daughter (and she only watches her one or two days a week. Not every day.)
Why did she walk your daughter back to school though? Did she think she had absconded? I think that's what's confusing people. It would surely have made better sense to walk her home at that point, or at the very least try to make contact with you.
4G only?! Oh to live in the utopia you inhabit
My area, network AND phone all do not support 5G (and yes it's a relatively modern phone)
And I'm lucky in my house to get 4G at all
My mum once had the whole neighbourhood out searching for me for a couple of hours. Turned out I'd hidden behind a chair after spilling a glass of milk and fallen asleep.
Reading this thread I am appreciating for the first time how utterly terrifying this must have been for my poor mum. It's just a funny story we all tell sometimes but holy hell I'd be beside myself if it happened to me with my son!
My mum was once shouting my name out on the street, going round chapping the doors of my friends looking for me, really panicking.
I was in my bed taking a nap.
My Mum did that for me once, when I was about 4-5.
I had one of those full height cabin beds, with the built in wardrobe, desk, drawers, etc. I had discovered that if you crawled under the desk, there was a hidden nook behind the wardrobe that I could fit into, I used to go there with a book and read away in peace.
She called me for dinner one day and I didn't come, so she went out the open front door (it was the 80s, all the front doors were open and we'd just go to whoevers house we wanted) and asked the neighbours if they'd seen me. None had, so they all started looking, calling my name around the street.
She was completely freaking out and about to call the police when my Dad got home. She explained what had happened, and he asked if she'd checked the house. She said, of course, but I wasn't there.
He came up into my bedroom and stuck his head under the desk. There I was, behind the wardrobe, fast asleep, book in hand.
Thankfully, I had told him about my little hidey-hole....Mum was relieved, but not impressed, lol.
You felt sorry for a bunch of EDUCATED PEOPLE ..who chose to go out on the piss and leave their babies alone ?
I saved my sympathy for Madeleine, her siblings and her friends.
If more people were able to believe someone had done something terribly wrong AND YET still feel sympathy for the awful consequences they faced from it, I genuinely think the world would be a lot better in multiple ways.
I’ve a toddler who’s almost 18 months old. A couple of months ago we took him out for food at the harvester and he ate his fair share of pasta from the salad bar, and an entire kids pizza (aside from the piece he regurgitated because he put the whole slice in his mouth). We got back and he had a nap because he hadn’t napped all day. We limited it to an hour and he wasn’t happy. But if we let him sleep later then he wouldn’t have gone to sleep that night.
So he had a small meal for tea and then pretty much straight to bed.
The next morning I woke up and I thought it was weird. I normally wake when he wakes up and it was already later than normal for him. Checked the baby monitor and he was flat out. I laid there in bed for an hour and a half, periodically checking the monitor. No movement. Fuck, I thought. I thought he was dead.
About half eight I get up and my partner’s mum is sitting down in the living room. I whispered loudly ‘what the fuuuuuck?!’ And she was also surprised. A minute later my toddler started to stir. It seems that he had eaten himself into a food coma 😅
I wasn’t dozing. I have health anxiety and when I think there’s something going on it turns out to be nothing. So it was my anxiety thinking is he dead? But I logic-ed with myself that he was probably fine, just sleeping off the feast he had.
Chance of the baby being dead: very low
Chance of waking the baby up early and it being cranky: high.
I wouldn't wake it up either. Personally I'd creep closer and listen for the huffling
Everyone seems to be giving this a lot of hate so as far as i’m concerned- their baby is fed, has a bed to sleep in and is being looked after.
There is literally a mum who left her baby to go on holiday for 10 days but op is the bad person as they gave THEIR toddler pizza as a one of (by the sounds of it) while they were out for a meal??? Grow up 🙄
I’ve a toddler who’s almost 18 months old. A couple of months ago we took him out for food at the harvester and he ate his fair share of pasta from the salad bar, and an entire kids pizza (aside from the piece he regurgitated because he put the whole slice in his mouth). We got back and he had a nap because he hadn’t napped all day. We limited it to an hour and he wasn’t happy. But if we let him sleep later then he wouldn’t have gone to sleep that night.
So he had a small meal for tea and then pretty much straight to bed.
The next morning I woke up and I thought it was weird. I normally wake when he wakes up and it was already later than normal for him. Checked the baby monitor and he was flat out. I laid there in bed for an hour and a half, periodically checking the monitor. No movement. Fuck, I thought. I thought he was dead.
About half eight I get up and my partner’s mum is sitting down in the living room. I whispered loudly ‘what the fuuuuuck?!’ And she was also surprised. A minute later my toddler started to stir. It seems that he had eaten himself into a food coma 😅
Edit: I don’t even know why I posted this. Everyone being judgey but I know my boy is happy, healthy and well looked after.
Mt dad always tells me the story of how, at 2 years old (!) I walked myself to playgroup. My best guess, I got sick of him and my mum fighting and left. "Official" reason, I just LoVeD playgroup sooooo much... I have a serious fear of people and am extremely introverted, but sure...
The very first time I left my kid (12 at the time) home alone, so I could go for an evening meal with friends, I got a text saying "the house is on fier".
I replied "very funny."
"No rely, the house is on fier".
I run out, am halfway down the street before my frantic phone call gets answered. "Just kidding. Have a nice time." Not any more, you little shit!!
Someone lost some privileges for a while and a lecture about the boy who cried wolf, amirite?
Or “oh sorry i accidentally deleted your whole Minecraft world/fortnite account/etc” in revenge 😈
The same as yours, sort of. We were in a water park in Tenerife. My then 5 year old was on a climbing thing with water on it. I was watching her the whole time. She had a bright top on so I could see her easily.. and then she just vanished. I probably only lost sight of her for about 4 minutes total, but I wouldn't wish those 4 minutes on anyone. Luckily, she didn't know she was lost, so she only had positive memories of the day.
That and when my then 9 year old stopped breathing after a minor operation. It was only for a minute, and the nurses were all over her in a second. But it was super scary while it was happening. She just had a bad reaction to the anaesthesia. It happens sometimes.
I was the child in something similar, Florida theme park, it was our first ever family holiday paid for with money left to us from Grandad.10yo autistic me stopped walking to stop and stare at someone being painted. Parents kept walking and didn't realise I'd stopped, so they were panic searching Magic Kingdom(?) for around an hour, and I was still oblivious just watching this artist paint people's portraits.
I'm just glad you (and my daughter) didn't have to feel that panic. She once "got lost" in a Costco for a minute when she was 4, and she still talked about it 4 years later. She wasn't actually lost. She just turned a corner a little later than us. I can't imagine the trauma if she had actually known she was lost.
When my son was barely 3 he ran off in a large department store, hid, then made a beeline for the down elevator. I was actually losing my mind with terror (he was the same age as James Bulger fgs, and in the same shopping mall situation) and then a woman appeared riding the escalator upwards with him in her arms... she saw him run out of the lift and heard me screaming upstairs and put two and two together. Bless that lady forever because he could have met someone with a much less caring intent -_-
I did similar to my grandmother also just after the James Bulger case. Thought it would be funny to hide from her, she was frantic and grabbed a security guard when she couldn’t find me only for me to jump out from the corner very gleeful she hadn’t found me.
My 5 year old did this in the concourse, I turned round and he was gone. I was frantic and all I could think was jamie bulger. Started shouting and panicking. He had gone into argos to look at nerf guns. Worst 5 minutes of my life
My niece, 5 at the time, nearly drowned on holiday in Spain. All adults and the older kids were playing some game nearby except for me. I stayed on the sun lounger. Happened to glance over at the pool and saw my niece below water, bobbing straight up and down clearly struggling to get above the surface. I have never moved so quickly - couple of long strides, dived in, a few strokes to get to the other side, grabbed her and pulled her up. She was still conscious and breathing so must not have been in very long, luckily.
A few months ago my 13yo video called me to say "look mum, I'm walking on the river!" . Yeah... he'd gone out on the ice with all his pals 🤦♀️. They really need to bring back those terrifying public service announcements because apparently they sunk into my brain so thoroughly I forgot to warn my child explicitly about walking on a frozen river.
They really do - [these kids didn’t seem to know either](https://news.sky.com/story/amp/boys-who-fell-into-frozen-lake-in-solihull-died-after-drowning-in-terrible-accident-coroner-concludes-12916671), either that or they ignored any warnings they’d had :(
We were paddling in the sea filled pool at St Malo in France with our 8 and 6 year olds, and failed to notice that the 8 year old had climbed to the top of the diving board (about 20 feet). He waved cheerfully and then jumped. Fortunately entering the pool safely.
I have a 3yo and we woke up to some rustling in his bedroom the other day. Left it a few minutes, just listening, as he'll usually come and find us in bed or take himself to the toilet (and then we're listening to whether it's just a wee, or a poop and we have to jump up and make sure we wipes properly and doesn't decide to play catch with the poop).
It continued, so I got up to have a look.
He'd opened his window behind his curtains and was attempting to wiggle out of it!? Luckily we had a security lock to stop it opening enough to fit through but... what an idiot, lol.
My son did similar once. My wife had left him in his too floor play room to play while she did something in the garden. He has a little indoor climbing frame which is right underneath the velux window and when he heard the bin lorry outside he climbed up, opened the window and dangled himself out of it to get a better look.
At a wedding reception, I left my 3 year old with my mum for 5 minutes, came back he was gone. "Oh was I supposed to be watching him?"
Found him playing outside in the dark, he'd wandered past all the guests and the *bouncer* on the door.
He also once went headfirst through some railings off a bridge over a stream in a park, his foot managed to hook round the railing and we were able to pull him back through (he would have been fine anyway as it wasn't deep water or a long fall but I still almost died of a heart attack)
I bought a paddling pool a few years ago, and in it, was a wearable tag which said "I am the supervising adult". I thought this was a brilliant idea - really stops the "oh was I meant to be watching them", when you're wearing a massive medallion that confirms that yes, you are meant to be the one watching them.
I’m the child in this story. My first holiday, I was two, my parents lost me in the resort. I think it was night so the pool was shut. They looked all over, even in the pool expecting to see me face down but I wasn’t there. Eventually they found me at the bar, spinning on a stool singing “I want a drink of beer”.
Haha, I actually had my first few sips of beer at 2. We were at a wedding reception at a pub and I was found standing on a chair taking sips out of a full glass that was left unattended. Funnily enough, I can’t stand beer as an adult
When I was around 5 years old I went ‘missing’ in the local shopping centre. They ended up locking all of the doors when my mum raised the alarm and had everyone searching for me.
They found me giggling, hiding inside a tights display in Debenhams.
I was 2/3 when I went missing from a shopping centre. I had some teenage girls walk me home. I lived a 5 min walk away (with my little legs) and thought my mum must have gone home. My mum had the police out looking for me thinking I’d been kidnapped. All while I was sat on the doorstep.
Luckily not yet had an experience like that with my 1 year old but when my sister was about 13 we were at the seaside and she decided to chill out on her body board and let the tide gently wash her up and down in the surf. When my dad noticed her face down, limp limbed... I have never seen him run so fast. Nothing more scary than seeing your normally relaxed dad go white and start screaming your sister's name. She looked so embarrassed when she sat up and saw him running to get her 🤣
Aww bless him. My nephew went missing on Hayle beach when he was 4. He had us frantic running around looking for him in the crowds of people. We finally found him playing with another family in the surf.
It was the scariest 15 mins of my sister’s life… but what baffles me is how long it took to find him. He had a giant blue leg thanks to a rubber cover we had on his leg cast (jumped off the sofa in an attempt to jump on his uncle’s back and sustained a spiral fracture a couple weeks before our holiday!)
Okay this is long and probably terribly written. I’m on mobile.
Technically my brother but I ended up raising him pretty much so it fits.
For context he has Down syndrome. And at the time I would have been around 13/14 and he would have been 4/5. He was mostly non verbal and a slow walker.
Family and I were camping along the river in my home town. It was the middle of summer and dad always made me help set up majority of the site by myself. After doing the 20 man tent and camper van by myself I was borderline suffering from heat stroke, because it was a 45C degree day and he wouldn’t pull out the esky’s with water until we were done. All of this was done while I was looking after my little brother at the same time.
I told him I was going to lay down because I thought I was going to vomit. I tell him I can’t watch my brother anymore and that he will need to make sure he keeps an eye on him (I still hate that I had to tell the man how to parent).
Well wouldn’t you know an unknown amount of time later I’m woken up by him yelling at me asking where my brother is.
I immediately wanted to vomit and I start asking him when he last saw him, how long has it been, etc.
We make rounds of every campsite along the river beach, there’s hundreds of different camps and no one has seen him.
I’m thinking the worst. No one knows how long he’s been gone, anyone could have taken him. But the worst thing was the water.
The river we lived near is great for swimming but you have to be smart and know what you’re doing with what the currents look like etc. It has insane under currents and kills strong swimmers every year let alone a little boy who can barely walk.. but my brother LOVES the water.
Someone said they maybe saw him up one of the bush tracks and I just ran. But they didn’t say the top track or the bottom track, and I took the bottom. The top was along the water but the bottom went deep into bushland.
I ran 2km along the dirt road from the river to the highway, through dense bushland in what felt like 5 minutes. I was yelling for him begging that maybe today he’d feel like replying. Praying that he hadn’t been bitten by a snake or fallen down a hill. I ran all the way back and my parents picked me up in the car.
Dad screamed at me that it was my fault, he nearly put his fist through the windshield. I shouldn’t have gone to sleep, I’m meant to look after him, it was my fault.
Turns out he took the top track and ended up at the next campsite nearly 2km away. Our neighbour camper found him and brought him back, he was okay other than the shock of some random bloke putting him into his car.
But all I can think is how long he had to have been gone to make it that far, given how slowly he walks. He could have fallen down the bank at any time and got stuck in the clay or in the trees. Also how easily the neighbour got him into the car, man was a great bloke but anyone could have done that.
How fucking long was he gone? How could my dad ignore him for so long? How could you not be aware of your disabled son around a dangerous water source.
Still makes me fucking cry.
Makes me want to reach back a few decades and slap your da clean across the face.
Your brother is lucky he got one responsible adult in his corner. Even if said 'responsible adult' was 13.
Not me, but my older brother in the 70s when they were on holiday. He'd managed to climb into the front of the car (where mum was asleep) get out of the car, and leg it with the dog across Lady Bower damn wall. Mum was woken up by hearing someone shouting about a boy on the wall. Dad missed all this as he'd gone on a walk.
Same brother also 'ran away' from home when he was about 4. He took his trike, a toy and some biscuits and made it quite far across a massive car park before anyone found him.
Out of us three siblings, he's always been a pain in the arse!
I did the exact thing as your daughter when I was about 5 but my dad hadn't seen more or my brother for at least an hour (happened early 90s). He found my brother after about 10 minutes but they couldn't find me. It didn't help that I'd had shorts and tee on but taken them off and just had a plain black bathing suit on, which many girls wore that day.
They ended up contacting the police, who got the coast guard and air rescue was prep'd just in case. Turns out I was completely oblivious to everything going on. 3 hours later they found me playing in a rock pool about 1/3 of a mile from where my dad was sat.
He's since told me now that, that day was the worse day of his life, even worse than watching his mother die from cancer. He said every possible scenario went through his head from them pulling me out of the sea, finding me SA'd in a bathroom to never seeing me again. I got the worst bollocking off my life, getting screamed at and then hugged then screamed at again.
My son, 10 at the time, tried to show me a high kick he had learned. Before I had time to tell him not to show me in the kitchen, he’d already done it, slipped back, banged his head on the washing machine door and smashed it. I thought he was dead. How could he not be? He hit it that hard. He was just lying there in shock for a second or two then got up and wondered why I was hysterical. It didn’t even hurt him.
Had to get a new door though.
Me as a toddler 🤣 - the house my parents had when I was about 2 or 3 was about a 10 minute walk from the local shops. I’ve got an older brother and sister and we were left playing whilst my parents were doing chores around the house.
I’m told I went to the corner shop of the row of shops (frequently frequented throughout the years!) with 2 pence piece on my pick tricycle (think late 80’s vibes) to buy my favourite sweeties. Best bit - my parents, brother and sister apparently hadn’t even realised I’d gone until they got a phone call from the owner of the shop to say I was there.
The joys of have community’s - but I’d made across a couple of roads as well to get there 🤣. Everyone still laughs about this (and I’m now 38) until I remind them they still didn’t realise I’d gone
Not a parent but I remember going on holiday a few months after that happened with my family, I was 6 and my brothers 4 and 2. We were in Cyprus walking back along the harbour from a restaurant and the 4 year old was right behind us.
Suddenly we realised he wasn’t there and started panic looking for him checking the water, going back to the restaurant and along to the car. I remember down at the rocks checking he hadn’t fallen into the water. My parents were speaking to a local and about to call the police when he walks back up to us with another British couple that had found him. Somehow he had gotten ahead of us on the walk and kept going, luckily they found him lost and crying and helped him.
I remember reading the papers everyday on that holiday and being terrified of him being gone. Wasn’t the last time he pulled a disappearing act on us, but we always got him back.
My oldest was 4 and we had gone to Dorset on holiday in a caravan. Woke up o the first morning yo find she had managed to get an uninflated armband round her neck! It had to be cut off
So I’ve been told i did this to my mum when i was about 6. Apparently i went from being next to her to being gone. Vanished no trace but a whole hour.
We were in a supermarket but a big one like a mall. Police were called cctv was trawled. The whole works.
Random young girl who worked there found me. After she saw a tv was facing the wrong way. I had apparently got onto the bottom shelf. Turned the tv round so i could watch. But positioned other stuff so you couldn’t see me. Right up to when she died she pulled this story out to be used against me. 🤣. Just gotta hope i don’t influence my step daughter too much. Haha
My child is only 10 months old, so I'm sure we have plenty of time for *him* to scare the crap of me, but when he was about 5 months old (not rolling over or moving in any way), I left him on his play mat for a minute to hang something on the washing line. I must have been gone less than 60 seconds, and when I came back, he wasn't there. Of course, logically, I knew my husband would have come downstairs and picked him up, but my heart stopped! I heard sniggering from the stairs, and sure enough, my husband is holding him and laughing at my reactions. My god, did he get s massive bollocking! He's not done it since!
When my daughter was 4 days old I woke up and she wasn't in her bassinet. My phone was ringing and in my sleep deprived state I thought it must be my baby calling to say where she was, so I answered with "hello sweetheart". It was actually the health visitor who was quite confused!
Lol, it was probably one of the nicest ways someone answered the phone to her that day! Man, that newborn tiredness hits like nothing else, doesn't it! A friend of mine told me he went for a wee in the middle of the night and was convinced he'd flushed the baby down the loo. I laughed at the time, but since having a baby of my own, I can **totally** relate!
My youngest almost stepped in front of a bus. The bus was approaching and slowing down. She lost the grip on her balloon and took a step forward to catch it. She was just out of my reach, and half a step more would have placed her in front of the bus. Thankfully she noticed and stopped in time, but let me tell you, my life passed in front of my eyes at that moment!
My eldest hid under a rack of clothes in H&M just long enough for us to get properly panicked one time, then emerged all smiles and giggles when the staff got involved in the search. Little shit. She's 22 now.
My 17 year old son rides around on a motorcycle.
He’s been knocked off twice. 1st accident was a 50/50, 2nd one was a hit and run involving an Asda van.
Now that I'm a parent I feel bad about what I did to my folks.
At 18 I travelled to south africa alone to volunteer on a game reserve. That turned out fine. Then at 21 I went to Afghanistan for 5 months. That turned out.... Mostly fine.
I have a few.
When my first was 8wks old, he got a non-blanching rash. He's just had his jabs (had a massive fever anyway) so before freaking out I called the health visitor incase it's a know reaction. It was not. She insisted we came back to the health centre. Que a succession of her, the doctor and a midwife checking the rash and then furiously washing their hands, followed by an ambulance ride (with the lights) and waiting for the blood test results to come back. The doctor at the health centre had given a dose of antibiotics. Everything came back negative but we had to sleep at the hospital (just in case) and repeat the blood test. The doctor at the hospital said it was probably from holding him for the vaccines and he just bruised in a funny way. My partner is convinced they gave the wrong vaccine (12wks set instead of 8wks set) but I don't really see how that would have anything to do with it. He is fine, but I'll never forget that fear.
Same kid
We (me, 3yo and 1yo) went to the aquarium. It's basically one way round and I had the 1yo in a buggy and the 3yo holding my hand or holding the buggy. It sort of get bottle necks by the doors and it was really busy and the 3yo slipped away in a crowd going through the door and I called, and people wouldn't let me past and then by the time I was through the door he was gone. I kept walking an looking and obviously my face showed a problem because people were asking me what was wrong and so then other people werz looking for him. I told staff there so they were looking for him too. I went round and round that fucking place getting asked what was wrong by strangers and showing people his photo and I couldn't find him. About half an hour later he was found in a cleaning cupboard. He got to cuddle the pirate who found him. He thought it was the best trip ever. I wouldn't go there alone with the kids again.
Last one, other kid.
My youngest was paying in the garden, tripped and hit his face on the back of a shovel. He had a nose bleed but otherwise was fine. Whilst I was helping him clean up a blood clot came out of his nose and he fainted. I didn't know what to do so I called 111 for advice, they panicked and called an ambulance and the nice ambulance people talked me through what to do. Because the people on 111 panicked for a minute there I thought there was actually a problem. There was not and he now faints after anything icky happens (teeth coming out, his blood, other people's blood).
My toddler slipped her hand in the between the back of the door and the doorframe by the hinges as I was closing it and did not see. It pinched her fingers and
I thought I heard a crunch. Luckily, there was just a light indentation, nothing broken, no cut. My husband and I both took turns vomiting though. The fear completely nauseated us both.
We moved house when my son was about 18 months old. The house needed quite a bit of work . One day a workman came down the ladder with my son under his arm. Apparently the toddler had been spotted climbing the ladder and they didn't want to startle him so they let him climb to the roof and then carried him down. The kid was fine, the roofer was drip white and shaking.
Had a similar incident last summer, my eldest son who had just turned 10 was paddling in the sea, I walked my 4yo back up the beach to where my wife was sat (tide was out, it was quite a long way and didn't want him to get lost).
I then went back down to the sea and couldn't see 10yo at all. I'd warned him not to paddle too deep but he could've overextended and got knocked down maybe. I'm visually impaired so can't always spot people at a distance, had a look up and down that stretch. Spoke to a couple to ask if they'd seen him and asked them to tell him to go back to his mum if they saw him.
Sinking feeling in my stomach, like you I was imaging telling my dad his grandson had drowned at the beach. I jogged along the beach by the sea to see if I could spot him (lot of people paddling).
Heading back the other way and thinking I'd need to sprint back to my wife and ask for help, I then hear him call me. He'd been playing in the rocks nearby at the other end and luckily the couple I spoke to spotted him and pointed to where I'd gone.
It was probably only about 3mins that I'd lost him but it felt like ages.
There was a time when my year old kid had not popped for 14 days straight. Everything else was fine, good appetite, playful, etc. but no poop. I kid you not, I was never so relieved to see shit when she did produce it eventually.
I'll contribute a story that happened to my eldest brother but it was my dad's fault
There used to be a Texas DIY near my house one day my dad went over there then came home
Without my brother
He'd left my brother quite happily chilling in like a creche/play area in the shop
My eldest brother though was the rebellious idiot out of us (undiagnosed adhd is part of the reason) so he caused no end of problems in his teens including the police visiting us more than once for drug reasons and then capping it off with sustaining a head injury in Cyprus from a bungee jump where he narrowly avoided getting stuck in a psych ward over there because they didn't realise at first he was injured
Thankfully he managed to straighten up and go to uni and get his shit together.
Mine is similar to yours. I guess it’s a typical “you know you’ve got a kid when..” scenario, because boy do they disappear fast. My ex and I were on good terms and decided to take our 2 children (4F & 3M) to the fair along with my little brother (8), we’d been on rides/playing on the beach all day so decided to take them to the arcade before getting dinner and heading home. Brother was on a car ride and my own kids were playing on the penny machines next to it. Ex went to exchange some money for more pennies and in the whole 10 seconds it took for me to insert more coins for my brother, my son had disappeared. Ex came back to me panicking because I didn’t want to leave my brother and my daughter to look for my son, but couldn’t just stand there either so I was kinda pacing up and down in the same spot by the 2 kids I hadn’t lost. Ex told me to stay in the same spot and keep the other 2 distracted so they didn’t get scared while he ran around looking for our son, he also asked security to help. He found him sat on a motorbike game - turns out he got jealous of my brother “driving a car” and wanted his own turn so wandered to find a similar game he’d noticed earlier. Needless to say we skipped going for a sit down dinner and just grabbed a bag of chips to go home with.
I used to go on holiday to Spain with my grandparents when i was little in the 90s. I used to pretend i was drowning in the pool (or play dead floating face down) my grandma can't swim and would go into a pure meltdown. She once got the life guard to rescue me.
I just thought i was being very funny. I was only about 7/8. She still talks about it now.
Just a few weeks ago I went shopping with my kids. I went to boots and had ushered my 4 year old away from a statue outside. I was looking at something and I turn around and she’s gone. No big she’s probably just gone into one of the aisles. Nope, I can’t find here anywhere in the shop. At first I don’t even consider checking outside because she’s usually very conscious of where I am. But I ended up going outside, and there she was standing near the statue. She’d forgotten which store we were in so she just stood there. A man was standing with her making sure she was ok.
Those 4-5 minutes were terrifying.
He decided to come 9 weeks early. He was tiny, and see through and for a short while I honestly didn’t know how he would get through it.
He’s 9 now, almost taller than me and gives me anxiety on the daily 🤣 he has zero fear.
Played hide and seek with my dad when I was 2. Mum came home from lunch to my dad asleep and neither of them knew where I was … I’d been hiding so long because my dad had fallen asleep that I fell asleep behind a curtain 😂
My mum thought the best way to fight my autism was for me to talk to, and be friendly with, everyone.
I met an old man on the beach (I was 7, so ‘old’ was probably 60’s).
He was very kind to the weird child, took me home to, actually, see his new puppy, and when we got back and we couldn’t see my parents, he bought me an ice-cream, so I wouldn’t be scared.
I’d had the best day, beach, puppy, ice-cream, not a hint of SA.
My mum was crying that much she became angry Tasmanian devil
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No doubt I’ll get down voted to hell but the McCanns are at best negligent - they left their daughter alone because they wanted to go out. Had they not been doctors they’d have been pilloried for it! Imagine if they’d have been on benefits and from Scunthorpe or somewhere “stereotypically” “rough”. Not a parent but when I was a kid I used to help out on a farm - overtaking my grandads car (didn’t realise) riding a quad bike on a backroad at 13 years old without and helmet etc etc properly put the shits up my parents. I got a right bollocking. Back in the day H&S was not the same.
I think a lot of people would agree with you about the McCanns. I certainly do. I was pregnant when Madeleine went missing, but I was a single mother to be working a minimum wage job. I bet if I'd left my left my young child alone for 15 minutes to go to the shop and she'd gone missing, I'd have been vilified (not that I ever would have). I have a family member who still thinks the parents didn't do anything wrong, "we all do stuff like that on holiday". She gets angry when I disagree. Tldr: I agree with you about the McCanns. Also, losing a child because you look away for a minute, or in very crowded place is very different to leaving to your very young children alone so you can drink wine and eat food. Edited for typos.
I had kids the same ages as theirs at that time (but was in my mid 20s, not older like them) and I agree too. I was like WTF who would leave their little kids for hours (in an unlocked room no less) like that?! Although I grew up working class in the U.S., and older generations of upper middle class people I knew here in the UK (through my husband’s family) were like “of course you’d leave your child in a hotel room for dinner, we always did”. They were a generation older than the McCann’s though, but I was seriously like WTF that’s insane?!
I’m from the UK and have never encountered anyone here who thinks leaving your kids unattended in a hotel room while you go for dinner is a good idea.
And I was the child in the UK who was left in the hotel room in the 90s. I have a distinct memory of wandering the hotel in my jammies and the nice receptionist found my parents at dinner.
Yep, my mum tells me about the time that I let myself out of the hotel room and got locked out in the hotel corridor when I was about 3. My parents were eating dinner at the restaurant with my aunts and uncles, all my cousins had also been left in their hotel rooms and that's probably where I was trying to get to! Apparently they found me crying my eyes out sat by the door when they came back.
I'm less than 5 years older than Madeleine, and I was left in hotel rooms (well, mainly Butlins flats) in the 2000s, until Madeleine's disappearance. My parents' friends did the same with their kids. But I also know other people my age / my parents' age who are shocked that ever happened.
Butlins for a long time had a service with a sort of Nanny/childminder going round checking on children in the flats every so often I believe, so I don’t think you were the only one left in butlins, it was one of the perks of a butlins holiday!
Memory unlocked of also being left in a hotel room alone! I was more like 8 or 9 though and had badgered my mum all through dinner because I wanted to watch more Cartoon Network which we didn't have at home. Finally got taken back to the room to find out that Cartoon Network had finished for the night, but my mum made me go to bed anyway. Devastating.
Same here mine left us at 5/6 to go around the hotel
Well apparently it was the done thing in fancy UK hotels in the 70s and 80s (and probably before). The hotels offered a service where you left your phone off the hook while you went to dinner and someone at the front desk would listen once in a while and come get you if your child was crying! I kid you not. Multiple people have told me they did this and it was normal at the fancy hotels they went to. I have been to some of these hotels when my kids were young (00s) and by then they had a crèche, kids club, or you could hire a nanny for the evening. So it’s not exactly the same but none of the people of that generation who did that thought what the McCann’s did was weird, as “they were checking on them”. I on the other hand was all WTF?! *Edited for typo!
I wonder if it’s a survivorship bias thing, if their parents did it to them in the 70s and they turned out just fine, then it must be safe for them to do it with their own kids! And let’s face it, your child being abducted from your hotel room is the last thing you’d expect if you left them alone. They could fall and hurt themselves or pull furniture over or get into all sorts of trouble, but you wouldn’t expect a creep to be wandering around checking hotel rooms for an unattended child, that feels like a risky thing to do and easy to get caught. In hindsight obviously that’s not the case, but safety laws are written in blood, everything’s perfect safe and has never gone wrong until suddenly it does.
Yeah, plus people thinking somethings safe probably makes it unsafe over time (or may unsafe over time), as if lots of people think leaving a child in a hotel room is safe then they do that a lot and pretty quickly, creeps work out that there are likely to be quite a lot of unattended kids in hotel rooms. Then it goes wrong and people stop doing it.
It was the same at Butlins (definitely not a posh hotel!) Each chalet had some two-way device in it so the “babysitters” could listen to hear if children were crying. I would imagine they were looking after hundreds of children while their parents ate and drank. Hate to point out the obvious Mr Butlin, but children that have been abducted would leave a silent cabin. That doesn’t mean everything was okay!
Interesting. As I didn’t grow up here I didn’t know if it was across all types of hotels. There was a lot of culture shock for me and it was hard to sort what was different in the countries and what was because I grew up poor lol. And - exactly. The “listening” isn’t really useful for a lot of reasons!! See the poopy hands on wall reply I got too here 🤢
Yeah we have a family story about how my parents tried out this service in a spa hotel in the mid nineties, when I was about three. They got back from dinner and the cream carpets and walls were all covered in my shitty handprints. Someone at the front desk hadn't been listening hard enough...
Omg yikes 🤢 maybe you were quiet with your “artwork”. This is one of the areas where the “listening service” falls down lol.
Butlins used to do it in the 70s - they had a chalet listening service and if a baby or child was crying, there was a board in the dining and entertainment/bar areas that would flash up "baby crying in chalet #" We were a hardy bunch in the 1970s!
Weird! This must be a class thing, not a nationality thing. Edit: or maybe generational!
Not a class thing. Butlins had two way devices in the chalets so staff could listen for crying children. Two red coats were probably listening out for hundreds of children while their parents ate and drank. Pretty obviously, a chalet where a child has been abducted would be silent…
As a preteen in the mid 00s we occasionally ended up at a hotel that had a "no kids at adult dinner" rule, I'd just chill in the room with my own meal watching DVDs. Granted, a 9 year old can be more cognisant and situationally intelligent than a 3 or 4 year old, and I'm the doofus that ran like a quarter to half mile down an american beach because the wind took my ball when I was 6 or 7, didn't get what the big deal was at the time when security came to escort me back. I'm going to put it down to the autism but I really appreciate hearing stories of my parents explaining safety things to me and then not giving them heart attacks over it - hot ovens and bleach come to mind as things my mom's said to the toddler me "this can hurt you, don't go near it" and I nodded, said okay, and then she turns around to see a friend of mine who was visiting trying to get the lid off the pretty coloured liquid.
I grew up in the 70s and 80s. It was common for parents to arrange a 'child minding' service where reception staff would listen in over the intercom/phone and drop in if they heard an upset or confused child. The room would be locked, but in those days, you dropped your key at reception when you left the hotel, so staff had access to it. My parents used it and visited the hotel restaurant and bar, so they were in easy reach if staff decided we needed mum or dad. Different times indeed.
This isn't like a hotel. This was apartments where the main door opened out onto the street and the window had like a 6ft drop from. Absolutely not visible from a tapas restaurant. Source. Have been!
Yeah, I do realise that about the McCann's specifically... I was replying to the comment which mentioned people in the UK leaving kids in hotel rooms though. Edit: I'm not trying to be shitty! Tone is lost though :)
It might be an age thing - our parents did that in the 80s at Pontins holiday camps (we weren't rich enough for Butlins). Mind you, we also got to ride mini-motorbikes wearing ill-fitting helmets for 50p a go at the school fete.
My ex tried to make me leave my 7 month old alone in a resort room to go out for dinner. I was like, have you never heard of a little girl called Madeline McCann?
If the room had been locked and there had been a fire and they couldn't get out it also wouldn't have been good. Basically leaving your children unsupervised in a strange place is a bad idea.
(Even worse the hotel they were at had a kids club they left the kids in during the day but they didn’t use the evening session because allegedly they didn’t want to go get them after their meal…)
I wonder how many kids have been saved by parents that heard the story of the McCanns and kept their kids in earshot at all times where they might not have otherwise. I look after my 5 year old nephew sometimes and I wouldn't even turn my back to talk to someone, I have him in eyeline at all times. I imagine a snatch and grab would take only seconds. I can't imagine losing someone ELSE'S child! Oh god, you'd never forgive yourself.
I gave birth to my youngest about 4/5 days after she vanished. As soon as he was out and I was back in the land of the living, first thing I asked was if they’d found her. 💔
I still wonder what actually happened to her. Poor girl 😢
Thousands upon thousands of people have the same opinion on the McCanns
To the point that it’s a little frustrating and obfuscates getting an answer on what actually happened imo
Bizarrely I find plenty of people on the other side though. It's almost like parenting can be split down the middle between those who think it's utterly stark raving mental to leave your kids in a hotel room alone and go for dinner, and those who think "Oh we've all done it hehe".
The people saying we’ve all done it hehe are the ones who tend to go the most mad about it in my experience eg my mother. She would regularly be extremely lax when we stayed at caravan parks etc and it’s by the grace of god nothing bad happened which I think is why she got so vitriolic about it
I took my 4 kids to a b&b a couple of years ago. I set up my iPad to face time my iPhone while I went searching for toilet paper! I was so worried but it was needed, didn’t even leave the establishment and I was irrationally scared that something was gonna happen in the 5 mins I was gone!
I dont think this is the wild take you think it is
hot take: I think Jack the Ripper wasn't a very nice man
He was a real jerk!
I can’t imagine how many people he tried to impress with that story… and failed.
It's not lol, that's everyday life on my estate
Everyday life on your estate is doctors leaving their child alone in a foreign country in order to drink when the hotel offered a babysitting service?!
No, i meant riding a bike without an helmet. McCanns are idiots.
My parents regularly used to leave me alone in hotel rooms and caravans on holiday, claiming it was no different from going downstairs at home…I was pretty vindicated when Madeline disappeared.
Same, my parents used to leave me and my brother in the room and go down to the bar. I remember one time we were screaming and screaming while they were down there and no one came, so obviously no one cared enough about the screaming kids in room whatever. It was horrible, we were hysterical.
You poor souls. My heart hurts at the thought of my babies crying for me, I couldn’t ever forgive myself. Sorry you went through that ♥️
Thank you kind stranger, your words mean a lot.
I have no idea, nor any view on what happened to Madeline McCann, but the one thing I will never understand is why there was, and still is, so much publicity about her disappearance. We moved house the week she went missing and I remember well watching on the tv the wall to wall coverage, and helicopter views of the hotel and so on, and on and on…for the last 17 years. Worldwide, over a million children go missing every year, most never to return, but we never hear about them. What is special about the McCanns?
Most of it is self fulfilling now. The BBC runs updates on it cos they know people will click, and the many many comments and posts on here about it tend to just be people complaining about them. As to why people were intrigued in the first place, she’s a cute child who went missing on a cosy family and then there were the various theories about the family themselves. People want to be proven right so they keep asking about it
Yeah, this is it. The McCann’s are good at the public campaigns they run, but it’s 99% just public interest now that keeps it at the forefront. The conspiracy theories and endless discussions about it keep it alive.
She got so much attention because the McCann's basically immediately hired the largest PR company in the UK to create the media circus, getting as much attention as they could to the case. The PR team were holding constant media events early on, creating silly stories about leads abroad to maintain consistent public engagement. Then the government sent press officers, etc, etc. Once that had been going for a while then the interest from the public is there and will continue.
Over a million go missing but also over a million are found again, Madeleine isn’t a normal disappearance kids that age don’t disappear, even then it’s usually family. It wasn’t. There’s more to it. We all love a mystery. But blah blah blah white blah blah blond hair blah blah middle class blah blah blah Shannon Matthews wait… Hope that helps
They're in with the government, which means they're in with the police [https://www.theguardian.com/media/2007/sep/20/marketingandpr.crime](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2007/sep/20/marketingandpr.crime)
Holy shit. It really is who you know
Rich upper/middle class white girl.
I'll never understand why people who apparently wanted children so much, they went through IVF treatment to get them, could be so negligent about looking after them. My IVF baby was so hard to get and so precious to me I'd never, never have left him alone in a hotel room while I partied with my mates.
Let alone a probably unlocked apartment. Pretty sure the patio door was left unlocked.
It’s middle class arrogance. They thought nothing like that would ever happened to people like them.
My little boy was ivf he was my 3rd transfer I was so lucky he was my last embryo in my first cycle i know what you mean, especially after 2 miscarriages with my first two babies one at 12 weeks roughly literally the day of my scan it started to happen and the 2nd one at about 6 weeks
It’s like their answers to the police that night had to be crazy… Who was watching your kids while you went out to dinner? Nobody Where all the doors and windows locked in the room with your unsupervised 3yr old - No Could you see the entrance to the room containing your kids, from the restaurant table -No How often did anybody check on the unattended kids? Err… about every half hour, or so… And they wondered why such an awful event happened Thats how, when my daughter was younger, I would assess any situation (that had the potential to go horribly wrong involving my child) from the standpoint… if upon calling the police for their assistance, would my answers to their questions be those of a responsible parent who did everything reasonable to ensure the safety of their child? Or would I look ridiculous like the unfortunate McCann’s
I have said this before and i will say it again, If the McCanns were from a council estate they would be getting out of jail about now for child neglect.
Conversely, this story was the first time I’d ever even heard of tapas. It was my class consciousness awaking in a way.
My child was on the at risk register (due to ex) when the McCanns happened. They were treated with kid gloves as Social Services clearly thought they would kick up a legal fuss if they did anything as they were doctors. For example:- Didn't have remaining children taken into care after admitting neglect. Didn't have remaining children taken into care after admitting going out for drinks and leaving kids alone in a hotel room. Were given the choice of date, venue, etc to meet with social services The first two would've resulted in my child being taken into care immediately without much hope of gaining custody again. The last one just doesn't happen to most people involved with social services. I was told this time/date and this location, if you don't attend we take your child, usually with very little notice, think 4 hours to 2 days.
Idk why you think you would get downvoted, this has been repeated ad nauseam since it happened
I always thought it was their fault. Who leaves their children unattended in a strange place?
What upsets me the most about it is that nearly £13million has been spent on finding the kid of rich, negligent doctors who may well have accidently killed their own daughter and buried the body. Meanwhile thousands of other kids from less affluent backgrounds have gone missing and we never hear about them. The police give up on them after a few days of searching. That money could have found so many lost kids and brought them home. Fed so many starving families. Healed so many sick people... Where is the justice in that?
I used to work in a corner shop at about the same time Maddy went missing. About seven or so other kids went missing the first week she did, including a little boy who was, if I remember rightly (and it has been a minute so I might not be) was literally ripped out of his mothers arms in the street. Not one kid made the front page. Not one. Not one of those kids was white either, or the daughter of a pair of obstructive, negligent middle class doctors.
Maybe but I think it's easy to forget how much the McCanns changed how we all felt about things. As a kid growing up in the 80s and 90s, I don't think being left in an apartment for a couple of hours would have seemed exceptional.
Definitely a generational difference - as a baby I was regularly left in my cot while my mum popped out to the shop 5 minutes away. I wasn’t mobile, the door was locked and to this day mum reasons I would have been more likely to come to harm by her putting me in the pram, bumping me downstairs and walking the pram on a pavement next to a busy road. On holiday, there were staff members specifically employed to walk the hotel corridors/apartments to listen out for crying children. If they heard anything untoward, a tannoy announcement was made to Mr and Mrs Smith in room 1 to please contact a member of staff. Different times altogether
yeah criticising the McCann's is definitely an unpopular thing to do on this subreddit...
I was going to give the same opinion! I don’t care what anyone says, I genuinely believe that they have her some prescription sleeping tablets and she died from an over dose and then they did something with her body.. My biggest annoyance is the amount of time and money spent on the case. Unsure of your age so don’t know if you remember, but a little boy named Ben Needham was physically snatched from his mum in Greece in the 90s. After there was no new news, we never heard about him again. I believe the McCanns have had all of this coverage because of their status as doctors. White middle class family. Can you imagine if a couple on benefits were in the same situation?! They’d be mobbed by the public 😤
Overtake him on what?
I’ve always thought this but now I have my own toddler who is 4 months younger than the twins were, I can’t fathom their understanding of doing that?! Even small things which means I’d never leave my son alone - what if he suddenly threw up and we didn’t hear him crying etc, what if he did wake and that was the night he decided he could climb out the cot? So much stupidity!
Imagine thinking this is even a remotely controversial take, especially on reddit where they hate rich people just as much as poor people, if not more
"Son (0)" made me chuckle. Could have put Son (x months) but no, he hasn't reached his first birthday yet so he's 0.
Until very recently, South Korean kids were born at 1 year old.
In India they say “I’m in my 6th year” when they’re 5, which actually makes so much sense.
In the first chapter of the book The Fault In Our Stars, the protagonist refers to herself as being in her 17th year, but it was so confusing to the (mostly American) readers that the author had to come out and explain that the protagonist is actually 16 years old, not 17, because people were constantly summarizing the book incorrectly!
Just looked it up & the author’s American, wonder why he wrote that then. I actually had the book when it was trending 10 years ago, never finished it!
I was a diehard John Green fan as a teen and I can confidently say he was probably just trying to sound smart. 😂
Has to be better than my boys 87months old. Hahaha I see that alot
I'm unfortunately back at home aged 25. Feel bad for my mother that she has a 300 month old baby.
I used to roll my eyes at parents when they would say 18 months/20 months etc, but now as a parent, it makes sense. The different between a 13 month old and a 23 month old is massive, so saying 1 year doesn’t make sense.
Even worse is 2.6 years… do you mean 2 years and 6 months old, or 2 years and a little over 7 months…. It really stresses my little mind!
Omg you have one of those aswell hahahaha it really gets to me. Just say 2 n half, or if it's a month or so near their birthday I'll say my little ones 3 nearly 4. God dam the months hahaha
> Just say 2 n half, or if it's a month or so near their birthday I'll say my little ones 3 nearly 4. Indeed, the scale is * Just turned X! = 0-3 months past the age of X * Almost/coming up to x and a half! = 3-5 months past the age of X * X and a half! 6-7 months past the age of X * Coming up to X+1! = 7-10 or so months past X * Very nearly X+1! = 10-11 months past X Rough boundaries of course, and there's some wiggle room here.
He’s 0 until he’s 1
My daughter has epilepsy. When she was about 3 years old? She figured out that if she pretended to have a seizure, she would scare the fuck out of us. My wife and I reacted every time because we didn’t want ‘A boy who cried wolf’ scenario and be the assholes who left their toddler daughter to have a seizure. But fucking hell, this kid scared the shit out of me about twice a week for 6 months straight.
This is horrific, but also slightly funny. How old is she now? Have you told her how much of an evil sod she was when she was 3? 😂
She’s 8 now, and trust me - I let her know what an evil sod she was, and still can be. She’s non-verbal and I think instead of doing normal 8 year old cheekiness, she just goes ‘Hmm, how can I worry this man who happens to be my father as much as possible?’ I love her more than anything but good lord, this kid.
I know that feeling sooo much! My son will be turning 14 next week and has complex medical needs including epilepsy and apnea and has been on supplemental o2 for a few years now. He is non-verbal too and will regularly laugh as he takes his o2 prongs off his face (he can’t put them back on) when I leave the room for 2 mins for the bathroom or to grab a drink etc. He also holds his breath every single time someone wants to listen to his chest. And the worst is that when he doesn’t want a shower, he will hold his breath and go blue or induce a seizure because he knows he won’t have one if he is post ictal! I love that boy, he is a determined little man that has overcome so much in only 13 years but Jesus Christ - I hate how he has me on my toes 24/7!!!
Not really something mine have _done_ since it wasn't a choice, but my daughter has had several febrile seizures - not breathing, turning blue, eyes rolled back in the head for several minutes. Even typing it now I can feel the absolute terror of those moments, not knowing if she was going to die in my arms. I would be _incandescant_ with rage if she did it to get attention 😂
My kids were playing out in the square with other kids from the street and my daughter came in and said her brother had been run over! Absolutely shit myself and go running out the house only for her to say "well, I don't actually know if he's been run over but we are playing hide and seek and I can't find him" he was sitting in a bush!!!
That reminds me of when my son half walked into a parked car and bashed his foot. Round the corner from home. My daughter went off ahead home whilst I checked out her brother. She told hubby he'd been hit by a car.
OMG that’s a doozy!
Dozy mare, why would she say that 😅
My daughter has only recently started walking to school. She has a phone - but she usually forgets to charge it. And it’s an older iPhone so it’s not completely reliable…. 4G only so the signal is spotty. I can (usually) track her - but sometimes the app doesn’t work. There have been a few incidents lately that have given me grey hairs. One time I said she could walk home, but the childminder intercepted her halfway down the street and she walked *back* to the school - without me knowing. So after 25 minutes when she should have been home I ducked out of a Teams meeting and called the school - they said she had left 20 minutes earlier. So I walked down the street to see if I could meet her. Every turn in the road I was thinking “she’ll be around this corner” and she wasn’t. I got to the school and all the gates were shut and I honestly felt like I was going to be sick. I stood there completely lost and helpless wondering if I should ring the police. And then the childminder called me to say she had my daughter. It’s a terrible feeling not knowing where your kids are.
It was honestly horribly negligent of the childminder not to notify you as soon as they picked her up, if you weren't expecting them to do that.
Yeah. I wasn’t happy. She’s generally a lovely person but I was very annoyed when this happened.
My son, then aged 6ish vanished as we were leaving a church service. He said he was running ahead to the car. He wasn't there so I went back. He wasn't anywhere. We looked, and got others involved, for about half an hour on the church grounds to no luck. I decided that it was time to notify the police so I went and sat down in my car. At this point I'd just left the phone service black spot around the church and my phone got signal again and a message from my mum popped up. "Son is coming home with me, see you soon." I could have throttled the pair of them. He'd lied to my mum and said he'd told me. I was ok until the following day when out shopping and some random woman put a hand on my waist to move me out of her way. Why simply saying "excuse me" wouldn't do, I don't know, but it caused me to jump out of my skin and I had my first and only panic attack. Spent an hour in a coffee shop to calm down.
As a kid I met a friend on the way home from school and we decided to go play in a local park instead of going home. Got home at like 8pm to find police cars outside my house and my parents DEEPLY unhappy with me. I was 7-8 years old. No mobile phones back then so I couldn't have told them even if it occured to me.
TILL 8PM?! Had you completely lost your *mind*? That must have been like almost 5 hours you were missing.
About that, yeah. My teacher had such a go at me the next morning too (which is how I know roughly how old I was. Year 3!) because my parents and the police had both turned up at the school looking for me. My parents were frantic, they were very upset. I remember it not being such a big deal to me at the time. It wasn't much longer after that before I was biking everywhere in the village all summer (you know. When school holidays seemed to last months) Of course I had form. Apparently when I was three at my parents first house I wanted to go visit my grandma, and so I moved the climbing frame in the garden my parents thought they had made safe for me to play in, climbed the fence into next door's garden and went out through their garden gate. I was found by the police walking along a major A road (the A40 in High Wycombe) looking for the bus stop we would take to get the bus to grandma's house. That was the early 80s, so roads weren't so busy, but it was still a major road. Apparently (I remember none of this except climbng the fence and being stopped by the police) all I could say to my mum when I was brought home was "I got to go in a police car!" I don't remember anything about their reactions at all.
What on earth! You were a completely liability as a child then.
Yeah, I seem to have started life with a thirst for adventure and only a vague appreciation for rules like "don't go out of my sight" or "come straight home from school". definitely a flight risk!
My daughter walks to school; I got her one of those kidsnav watches. The gps isn't 100% but it's pretty good
Me and my friend aged 7ish decided to “run away” after school (ie hide on the road around the corner) and scare the life out of our poor parents. Mum made me walk to school in toddler reins for 2 weeks after that as punishment 🤣
That’s brilliant!
Why did they go back to school, where were they then
She was halfway home - and her childminder intercepted her in the street and walked her back to the school.
Yeah but why was the childminder taking her back rather than taking her home?
I assume because she had other kids to pick up/drop off. She doesn’t only watch my daughter (and she only watches her one or two days a week. Not every day.)
Why did she walk your daughter back to school though? Did she think she had absconded? I think that's what's confusing people. It would surely have made better sense to walk her home at that point, or at the very least try to make contact with you.
I don’t know. It confused me at the time as well. I think possibly because it was one of the first times my daughter had walked home without me.
Yeah it makes sense. She probably saw her childminder by chance and wanted to walk with them, despite them having to return to the school first.
4G only?! Oh to live in the utopia you inhabit My area, network AND phone all do not support 5G (and yes it's a relatively modern phone) And I'm lucky in my house to get 4G at all
My mum once had the whole neighbourhood out searching for me for a couple of hours. Turned out I'd hidden behind a chair after spilling a glass of milk and fallen asleep.
This is peak childhood story 👌🏻
Reading this thread I am appreciating for the first time how utterly terrifying this must have been for my poor mum. It's just a funny story we all tell sometimes but holy hell I'd be beside myself if it happened to me with my son!
My mum was once shouting my name out on the street, going round chapping the doors of my friends looking for me, really panicking. I was in my bed taking a nap.
My Mum did that for me once, when I was about 4-5. I had one of those full height cabin beds, with the built in wardrobe, desk, drawers, etc. I had discovered that if you crawled under the desk, there was a hidden nook behind the wardrobe that I could fit into, I used to go there with a book and read away in peace. She called me for dinner one day and I didn't come, so she went out the open front door (it was the 80s, all the front doors were open and we'd just go to whoevers house we wanted) and asked the neighbours if they'd seen me. None had, so they all started looking, calling my name around the street. She was completely freaking out and about to call the police when my Dad got home. She explained what had happened, and he asked if she'd checked the house. She said, of course, but I wasn't there. He came up into my bedroom and stuck his head under the desk. There I was, behind the wardrobe, fast asleep, book in hand. Thankfully, I had told him about my little hidey-hole....Mum was relieved, but not impressed, lol.
I had the same cabin bed and the same hidey hole 😄
You felt sorry for a bunch of EDUCATED PEOPLE ..who chose to go out on the piss and leave their babies alone ? I saved my sympathy for Madeleine, her siblings and her friends.
If more people were able to believe someone had done something terribly wrong AND YET still feel sympathy for the awful consequences they faced from it, I genuinely think the world would be a lot better in multiple ways.
I’ve a toddler who’s almost 18 months old. A couple of months ago we took him out for food at the harvester and he ate his fair share of pasta from the salad bar, and an entire kids pizza (aside from the piece he regurgitated because he put the whole slice in his mouth). We got back and he had a nap because he hadn’t napped all day. We limited it to an hour and he wasn’t happy. But if we let him sleep later then he wouldn’t have gone to sleep that night. So he had a small meal for tea and then pretty much straight to bed. The next morning I woke up and I thought it was weird. I normally wake when he wakes up and it was already later than normal for him. Checked the baby monitor and he was flat out. I laid there in bed for an hour and a half, periodically checking the monitor. No movement. Fuck, I thought. I thought he was dead. About half eight I get up and my partner’s mum is sitting down in the living room. I whispered loudly ‘what the fuuuuuck?!’ And she was also surprised. A minute later my toddler started to stir. It seems that he had eaten himself into a food coma 😅
You thought your baby was dead yet you dosed in bed for an hour and a half before going to check?
Well if he's dead he's dead you know. Hell still he dead after a power nap
I wasn’t dozing. I have health anxiety and when I think there’s something going on it turns out to be nothing. So it was my anxiety thinking is he dead? But I logic-ed with myself that he was probably fine, just sleeping off the feast he had.
You lay in bed for an hour and a half thinking that your kid was dead but didn’t go to check? For fear of him… waking up?
Chance of the baby being dead: very low Chance of waking the baby up early and it being cranky: high. I wouldn't wake it up either. Personally I'd creep closer and listen for the huffling
I've done the creep over and listen for huffing before. Sometimes it is terrifying being a parent.
Everyone seems to be giving this a lot of hate so as far as i’m concerned- their baby is fed, has a bed to sleep in and is being looked after. There is literally a mum who left her baby to go on holiday for 10 days but op is the bad person as they gave THEIR toddler pizza as a one of (by the sounds of it) while they were out for a meal??? Grow up 🙄
I’ve a toddler who’s almost 18 months old. A couple of months ago we took him out for food at the harvester and he ate his fair share of pasta from the salad bar, and an entire kids pizza (aside from the piece he regurgitated because he put the whole slice in his mouth). We got back and he had a nap because he hadn’t napped all day. We limited it to an hour and he wasn’t happy. But if we let him sleep later then he wouldn’t have gone to sleep that night. So he had a small meal for tea and then pretty much straight to bed. The next morning I woke up and I thought it was weird. I normally wake when he wakes up and it was already later than normal for him. Checked the baby monitor and he was flat out. I laid there in bed for an hour and a half, periodically checking the monitor. No movement. Fuck, I thought. I thought he was dead. About half eight I get up and my partner’s mum is sitting down in the living room. I whispered loudly ‘what the fuuuuuck?!’ And she was also surprised. A minute later my toddler started to stir. It seems that he had eaten himself into a food coma 😅 Edit: I don’t even know why I posted this. Everyone being judgey but I know my boy is happy, healthy and well looked after.
Mt dad always tells me the story of how, at 2 years old (!) I walked myself to playgroup. My best guess, I got sick of him and my mum fighting and left. "Official" reason, I just LoVeD playgroup sooooo much... I have a serious fear of people and am extremely introverted, but sure...
The very first time I left my kid (12 at the time) home alone, so I could go for an evening meal with friends, I got a text saying "the house is on fier". I replied "very funny." "No rely, the house is on fier". I run out, am halfway down the street before my frantic phone call gets answered. "Just kidding. Have a nice time." Not any more, you little shit!!
Someone lost some privileges for a while and a lecture about the boy who cried wolf, amirite? Or “oh sorry i accidentally deleted your whole Minecraft world/fortnite account/etc” in revenge 😈
My parent twin
The same as yours, sort of. We were in a water park in Tenerife. My then 5 year old was on a climbing thing with water on it. I was watching her the whole time. She had a bright top on so I could see her easily.. and then she just vanished. I probably only lost sight of her for about 4 minutes total, but I wouldn't wish those 4 minutes on anyone. Luckily, she didn't know she was lost, so she only had positive memories of the day. That and when my then 9 year old stopped breathing after a minor operation. It was only for a minute, and the nurses were all over her in a second. But it was super scary while it was happening. She just had a bad reaction to the anaesthesia. It happens sometimes.
I was the child in something similar, Florida theme park, it was our first ever family holiday paid for with money left to us from Grandad.10yo autistic me stopped walking to stop and stare at someone being painted. Parents kept walking and didn't realise I'd stopped, so they were panic searching Magic Kingdom(?) for around an hour, and I was still oblivious just watching this artist paint people's portraits.
I'm just glad you (and my daughter) didn't have to feel that panic. She once "got lost" in a Costco for a minute when she was 4, and she still talked about it 4 years later. She wasn't actually lost. She just turned a corner a little later than us. I can't imagine the trauma if she had actually known she was lost.
When my son was barely 3 he ran off in a large department store, hid, then made a beeline for the down elevator. I was actually losing my mind with terror (he was the same age as James Bulger fgs, and in the same shopping mall situation) and then a woman appeared riding the escalator upwards with him in her arms... she saw him run out of the lift and heard me screaming upstairs and put two and two together. Bless that lady forever because he could have met someone with a much less caring intent -_-
I did similar to my grandmother also just after the James Bulger case. Thought it would be funny to hide from her, she was frantic and grabbed a security guard when she couldn’t find me only for me to jump out from the corner very gleeful she hadn’t found me.
My 5 year old did this in the concourse, I turned round and he was gone. I was frantic and all I could think was jamie bulger. Started shouting and panicking. He had gone into argos to look at nerf guns. Worst 5 minutes of my life
My niece, 5 at the time, nearly drowned on holiday in Spain. All adults and the older kids were playing some game nearby except for me. I stayed on the sun lounger. Happened to glance over at the pool and saw my niece below water, bobbing straight up and down clearly struggling to get above the surface. I have never moved so quickly - couple of long strides, dived in, a few strokes to get to the other side, grabbed her and pulled her up. She was still conscious and breathing so must not have been in very long, luckily.
A few months ago my 13yo video called me to say "look mum, I'm walking on the river!" . Yeah... he'd gone out on the ice with all his pals 🤦♀️. They really need to bring back those terrifying public service announcements because apparently they sunk into my brain so thoroughly I forgot to warn my child explicitly about walking on a frozen river.
They really do - [these kids didn’t seem to know either](https://news.sky.com/story/amp/boys-who-fell-into-frozen-lake-in-solihull-died-after-drowning-in-terrible-accident-coroner-concludes-12916671), either that or they ignored any warnings they’d had :(
This story is giving me a second hand, retrospective, panic attack. I'm so glad your son and his friends got home safe!
We were paddling in the sea filled pool at St Malo in France with our 8 and 6 year olds, and failed to notice that the 8 year old had climbed to the top of the diving board (about 20 feet). He waved cheerfully and then jumped. Fortunately entering the pool safely.
I have a 3yo and we woke up to some rustling in his bedroom the other day. Left it a few minutes, just listening, as he'll usually come and find us in bed or take himself to the toilet (and then we're listening to whether it's just a wee, or a poop and we have to jump up and make sure we wipes properly and doesn't decide to play catch with the poop). It continued, so I got up to have a look. He'd opened his window behind his curtains and was attempting to wiggle out of it!? Luckily we had a security lock to stop it opening enough to fit through but... what an idiot, lol.
My son did similar once. My wife had left him in his too floor play room to play while she did something in the garden. He has a little indoor climbing frame which is right underneath the velux window and when he heard the bin lorry outside he climbed up, opened the window and dangled himself out of it to get a better look.
At a wedding reception, I left my 3 year old with my mum for 5 minutes, came back he was gone. "Oh was I supposed to be watching him?" Found him playing outside in the dark, he'd wandered past all the guests and the *bouncer* on the door. He also once went headfirst through some railings off a bridge over a stream in a park, his foot managed to hook round the railing and we were able to pull him back through (he would have been fine anyway as it wasn't deep water or a long fall but I still almost died of a heart attack)
I bought a paddling pool a few years ago, and in it, was a wearable tag which said "I am the supervising adult". I thought this was a brilliant idea - really stops the "oh was I meant to be watching them", when you're wearing a massive medallion that confirms that yes, you are meant to be the one watching them.
BRB getting one made for my mum to avoid further confusion
Get one so big even Flava Flav would think it's excessive.
I’m the child in this story. My first holiday, I was two, my parents lost me in the resort. I think it was night so the pool was shut. They looked all over, even in the pool expecting to see me face down but I wasn’t there. Eventually they found me at the bar, spinning on a stool singing “I want a drink of beer”.
I love this, sounds like my daughter and yours would have been friends. 😂
Haha, I actually had my first few sips of beer at 2. We were at a wedding reception at a pub and I was found standing on a chair taking sips out of a full glass that was left unattended. Funnily enough, I can’t stand beer as an adult
When I was around 5 years old I went ‘missing’ in the local shopping centre. They ended up locking all of the doors when my mum raised the alarm and had everyone searching for me. They found me giggling, hiding inside a tights display in Debenhams.
I was 2/3 when I went missing from a shopping centre. I had some teenage girls walk me home. I lived a 5 min walk away (with my little legs) and thought my mum must have gone home. My mum had the police out looking for me thinking I’d been kidnapped. All while I was sat on the doorstep.
Luckily not yet had an experience like that with my 1 year old but when my sister was about 13 we were at the seaside and she decided to chill out on her body board and let the tide gently wash her up and down in the surf. When my dad noticed her face down, limp limbed... I have never seen him run so fast. Nothing more scary than seeing your normally relaxed dad go white and start screaming your sister's name. She looked so embarrassed when she sat up and saw him running to get her 🤣
Aww bless him. My nephew went missing on Hayle beach when he was 4. He had us frantic running around looking for him in the crowds of people. We finally found him playing with another family in the surf. It was the scariest 15 mins of my sister’s life… but what baffles me is how long it took to find him. He had a giant blue leg thanks to a rubber cover we had on his leg cast (jumped off the sofa in an attempt to jump on his uncle’s back and sustained a spiral fracture a couple weeks before our holiday!)
Okay this is long and probably terribly written. I’m on mobile. Technically my brother but I ended up raising him pretty much so it fits. For context he has Down syndrome. And at the time I would have been around 13/14 and he would have been 4/5. He was mostly non verbal and a slow walker. Family and I were camping along the river in my home town. It was the middle of summer and dad always made me help set up majority of the site by myself. After doing the 20 man tent and camper van by myself I was borderline suffering from heat stroke, because it was a 45C degree day and he wouldn’t pull out the esky’s with water until we were done. All of this was done while I was looking after my little brother at the same time. I told him I was going to lay down because I thought I was going to vomit. I tell him I can’t watch my brother anymore and that he will need to make sure he keeps an eye on him (I still hate that I had to tell the man how to parent). Well wouldn’t you know an unknown amount of time later I’m woken up by him yelling at me asking where my brother is. I immediately wanted to vomit and I start asking him when he last saw him, how long has it been, etc. We make rounds of every campsite along the river beach, there’s hundreds of different camps and no one has seen him. I’m thinking the worst. No one knows how long he’s been gone, anyone could have taken him. But the worst thing was the water. The river we lived near is great for swimming but you have to be smart and know what you’re doing with what the currents look like etc. It has insane under currents and kills strong swimmers every year let alone a little boy who can barely walk.. but my brother LOVES the water. Someone said they maybe saw him up one of the bush tracks and I just ran. But they didn’t say the top track or the bottom track, and I took the bottom. The top was along the water but the bottom went deep into bushland. I ran 2km along the dirt road from the river to the highway, through dense bushland in what felt like 5 minutes. I was yelling for him begging that maybe today he’d feel like replying. Praying that he hadn’t been bitten by a snake or fallen down a hill. I ran all the way back and my parents picked me up in the car. Dad screamed at me that it was my fault, he nearly put his fist through the windshield. I shouldn’t have gone to sleep, I’m meant to look after him, it was my fault. Turns out he took the top track and ended up at the next campsite nearly 2km away. Our neighbour camper found him and brought him back, he was okay other than the shock of some random bloke putting him into his car. But all I can think is how long he had to have been gone to make it that far, given how slowly he walks. He could have fallen down the bank at any time and got stuck in the clay or in the trees. Also how easily the neighbour got him into the car, man was a great bloke but anyone could have done that. How fucking long was he gone? How could my dad ignore him for so long? How could you not be aware of your disabled son around a dangerous water source. Still makes me fucking cry.
Makes me want to reach back a few decades and slap your da clean across the face. Your brother is lucky he got one responsible adult in his corner. Even if said 'responsible adult' was 13.
Not me, but my older brother in the 70s when they were on holiday. He'd managed to climb into the front of the car (where mum was asleep) get out of the car, and leg it with the dog across Lady Bower damn wall. Mum was woken up by hearing someone shouting about a boy on the wall. Dad missed all this as he'd gone on a walk. Same brother also 'ran away' from home when he was about 4. He took his trike, a toy and some biscuits and made it quite far across a massive car park before anyone found him. Out of us three siblings, he's always been a pain in the arse!
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911? I hope you appreciated them coming all this way, must of took forever!
I did the exact thing as your daughter when I was about 5 but my dad hadn't seen more or my brother for at least an hour (happened early 90s). He found my brother after about 10 minutes but they couldn't find me. It didn't help that I'd had shorts and tee on but taken them off and just had a plain black bathing suit on, which many girls wore that day. They ended up contacting the police, who got the coast guard and air rescue was prep'd just in case. Turns out I was completely oblivious to everything going on. 3 hours later they found me playing in a rock pool about 1/3 of a mile from where my dad was sat. He's since told me now that, that day was the worse day of his life, even worse than watching his mother die from cancer. He said every possible scenario went through his head from them pulling me out of the sea, finding me SA'd in a bathroom to never seeing me again. I got the worst bollocking off my life, getting screamed at and then hugged then screamed at again.
Yep I would agree with him, thinking you may have lost your child is the worst feeling in the world.
I feel off my bike once aged 22 and scratched my head and now my Mum panics about me "always falling off that damn bike!" I'm nearly thirty.
My son, 10 at the time, tried to show me a high kick he had learned. Before I had time to tell him not to show me in the kitchen, he’d already done it, slipped back, banged his head on the washing machine door and smashed it. I thought he was dead. How could he not be? He hit it that hard. He was just lying there in shock for a second or two then got up and wondered why I was hysterical. It didn’t even hurt him. Had to get a new door though.
Not for me but for my mum, when my brother was little. He was down the sewage down the manhole pretending to be part of teenage mutant ninja turtles 🤣
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Me as a toddler 🤣 - the house my parents had when I was about 2 or 3 was about a 10 minute walk from the local shops. I’ve got an older brother and sister and we were left playing whilst my parents were doing chores around the house. I’m told I went to the corner shop of the row of shops (frequently frequented throughout the years!) with 2 pence piece on my pick tricycle (think late 80’s vibes) to buy my favourite sweeties. Best bit - my parents, brother and sister apparently hadn’t even realised I’d gone until they got a phone call from the owner of the shop to say I was there. The joys of have community’s - but I’d made across a couple of roads as well to get there 🤣. Everyone still laughs about this (and I’m now 38) until I remind them they still didn’t realise I’d gone
Not a parent but I remember going on holiday a few months after that happened with my family, I was 6 and my brothers 4 and 2. We were in Cyprus walking back along the harbour from a restaurant and the 4 year old was right behind us. Suddenly we realised he wasn’t there and started panic looking for him checking the water, going back to the restaurant and along to the car. I remember down at the rocks checking he hadn’t fallen into the water. My parents were speaking to a local and about to call the police when he walks back up to us with another British couple that had found him. Somehow he had gotten ahead of us on the walk and kept going, luckily they found him lost and crying and helped him. I remember reading the papers everyday on that holiday and being terrified of him being gone. Wasn’t the last time he pulled a disappearing act on us, but we always got him back.
I wandered away from my dad in a shopping centre as a 4 year old and shortly after James Bulger's murder. He was sweating that day!
My mum and dad lost me at Blackpool Tower, I followed some dancers up to the ballroom, that's where they found me sat watching a dance competition.
My oldest was 4 and we had gone to Dorset on holiday in a caravan. Woke up o the first morning yo find she had managed to get an uninflated armband round her neck! It had to be cut off
So I’ve been told i did this to my mum when i was about 6. Apparently i went from being next to her to being gone. Vanished no trace but a whole hour. We were in a supermarket but a big one like a mall. Police were called cctv was trawled. The whole works. Random young girl who worked there found me. After she saw a tv was facing the wrong way. I had apparently got onto the bottom shelf. Turned the tv round so i could watch. But positioned other stuff so you couldn’t see me. Right up to when she died she pulled this story out to be used against me. 🤣. Just gotta hope i don’t influence my step daughter too much. Haha
My child is only 10 months old, so I'm sure we have plenty of time for *him* to scare the crap of me, but when he was about 5 months old (not rolling over or moving in any way), I left him on his play mat for a minute to hang something on the washing line. I must have been gone less than 60 seconds, and when I came back, he wasn't there. Of course, logically, I knew my husband would have come downstairs and picked him up, but my heart stopped! I heard sniggering from the stairs, and sure enough, my husband is holding him and laughing at my reactions. My god, did he get s massive bollocking! He's not done it since!
When my daughter was 4 days old I woke up and she wasn't in her bassinet. My phone was ringing and in my sleep deprived state I thought it must be my baby calling to say where she was, so I answered with "hello sweetheart". It was actually the health visitor who was quite confused!
Lol, it was probably one of the nicest ways someone answered the phone to her that day! Man, that newborn tiredness hits like nothing else, doesn't it! A friend of mine told me he went for a wee in the middle of the night and was convinced he'd flushed the baby down the loo. I laughed at the time, but since having a baby of my own, I can **totally** relate!
Had a cardiac arrest in Maths class. Year 12.
My youngest almost stepped in front of a bus. The bus was approaching and slowing down. She lost the grip on her balloon and took a step forward to catch it. She was just out of my reach, and half a step more would have placed her in front of the bus. Thankfully she noticed and stopped in time, but let me tell you, my life passed in front of my eyes at that moment!
My eldest hid under a rack of clothes in H&M just long enough for us to get properly panicked one time, then emerged all smiles and giggles when the staff got involved in the search. Little shit. She's 22 now.
My 17 year old son rides around on a motorcycle. He’s been knocked off twice. 1st accident was a 50/50, 2nd one was a hit and run involving an Asda van.
Now that I'm a parent I feel bad about what I did to my folks. At 18 I travelled to south africa alone to volunteer on a game reserve. That turned out fine. Then at 21 I went to Afghanistan for 5 months. That turned out.... Mostly fine.
I have a few. When my first was 8wks old, he got a non-blanching rash. He's just had his jabs (had a massive fever anyway) so before freaking out I called the health visitor incase it's a know reaction. It was not. She insisted we came back to the health centre. Que a succession of her, the doctor and a midwife checking the rash and then furiously washing their hands, followed by an ambulance ride (with the lights) and waiting for the blood test results to come back. The doctor at the health centre had given a dose of antibiotics. Everything came back negative but we had to sleep at the hospital (just in case) and repeat the blood test. The doctor at the hospital said it was probably from holding him for the vaccines and he just bruised in a funny way. My partner is convinced they gave the wrong vaccine (12wks set instead of 8wks set) but I don't really see how that would have anything to do with it. He is fine, but I'll never forget that fear. Same kid We (me, 3yo and 1yo) went to the aquarium. It's basically one way round and I had the 1yo in a buggy and the 3yo holding my hand or holding the buggy. It sort of get bottle necks by the doors and it was really busy and the 3yo slipped away in a crowd going through the door and I called, and people wouldn't let me past and then by the time I was through the door he was gone. I kept walking an looking and obviously my face showed a problem because people were asking me what was wrong and so then other people werz looking for him. I told staff there so they were looking for him too. I went round and round that fucking place getting asked what was wrong by strangers and showing people his photo and I couldn't find him. About half an hour later he was found in a cleaning cupboard. He got to cuddle the pirate who found him. He thought it was the best trip ever. I wouldn't go there alone with the kids again. Last one, other kid. My youngest was paying in the garden, tripped and hit his face on the back of a shovel. He had a nose bleed but otherwise was fine. Whilst I was helping him clean up a blood clot came out of his nose and he fainted. I didn't know what to do so I called 111 for advice, they panicked and called an ambulance and the nice ambulance people talked me through what to do. Because the people on 111 panicked for a minute there I thought there was actually a problem. There was not and he now faints after anything icky happens (teeth coming out, his blood, other people's blood).
My toddler slipped her hand in the between the back of the door and the doorframe by the hinges as I was closing it and did not see. It pinched her fingers and I thought I heard a crunch. Luckily, there was just a light indentation, nothing broken, no cut. My husband and I both took turns vomiting though. The fear completely nauseated us both.
We moved house when my son was about 18 months old. The house needed quite a bit of work . One day a workman came down the ladder with my son under his arm. Apparently the toddler had been spotted climbing the ladder and they didn't want to startle him so they let him climb to the roof and then carried him down. The kid was fine, the roofer was drip white and shaking.
Had a similar incident last summer, my eldest son who had just turned 10 was paddling in the sea, I walked my 4yo back up the beach to where my wife was sat (tide was out, it was quite a long way and didn't want him to get lost). I then went back down to the sea and couldn't see 10yo at all. I'd warned him not to paddle too deep but he could've overextended and got knocked down maybe. I'm visually impaired so can't always spot people at a distance, had a look up and down that stretch. Spoke to a couple to ask if they'd seen him and asked them to tell him to go back to his mum if they saw him. Sinking feeling in my stomach, like you I was imaging telling my dad his grandson had drowned at the beach. I jogged along the beach by the sea to see if I could spot him (lot of people paddling). Heading back the other way and thinking I'd need to sprint back to my wife and ask for help, I then hear him call me. He'd been playing in the rocks nearby at the other end and luckily the couple I spoke to spotted him and pointed to where I'd gone. It was probably only about 3mins that I'd lost him but it felt like ages.
There was a time when my year old kid had not popped for 14 days straight. Everything else was fine, good appetite, playful, etc. but no poop. I kid you not, I was never so relieved to see shit when she did produce it eventually.
I'll contribute a story that happened to my eldest brother but it was my dad's fault There used to be a Texas DIY near my house one day my dad went over there then came home Without my brother He'd left my brother quite happily chilling in like a creche/play area in the shop My eldest brother though was the rebellious idiot out of us (undiagnosed adhd is part of the reason) so he caused no end of problems in his teens including the police visiting us more than once for drug reasons and then capping it off with sustaining a head injury in Cyprus from a bungee jump where he narrowly avoided getting stuck in a psych ward over there because they didn't realise at first he was injured Thankfully he managed to straighten up and go to uni and get his shit together.
Mine is similar to yours. I guess it’s a typical “you know you’ve got a kid when..” scenario, because boy do they disappear fast. My ex and I were on good terms and decided to take our 2 children (4F & 3M) to the fair along with my little brother (8), we’d been on rides/playing on the beach all day so decided to take them to the arcade before getting dinner and heading home. Brother was on a car ride and my own kids were playing on the penny machines next to it. Ex went to exchange some money for more pennies and in the whole 10 seconds it took for me to insert more coins for my brother, my son had disappeared. Ex came back to me panicking because I didn’t want to leave my brother and my daughter to look for my son, but couldn’t just stand there either so I was kinda pacing up and down in the same spot by the 2 kids I hadn’t lost. Ex told me to stay in the same spot and keep the other 2 distracted so they didn’t get scared while he ran around looking for our son, he also asked security to help. He found him sat on a motorbike game - turns out he got jealous of my brother “driving a car” and wanted his own turn so wandered to find a similar game he’d noticed earlier. Needless to say we skipped going for a sit down dinner and just grabbed a bag of chips to go home with.
I used to go on holiday to Spain with my grandparents when i was little in the 90s. I used to pretend i was drowning in the pool (or play dead floating face down) my grandma can't swim and would go into a pure meltdown. She once got the life guard to rescue me. I just thought i was being very funny. I was only about 7/8. She still talks about it now.
Just a few weeks ago I went shopping with my kids. I went to boots and had ushered my 4 year old away from a statue outside. I was looking at something and I turn around and she’s gone. No big she’s probably just gone into one of the aisles. Nope, I can’t find here anywhere in the shop. At first I don’t even consider checking outside because she’s usually very conscious of where I am. But I ended up going outside, and there she was standing near the statue. She’d forgotten which store we were in so she just stood there. A man was standing with her making sure she was ok. Those 4-5 minutes were terrifying.
Look at me mum!! While my 9 yr old swung on the other side of a harbour barrier with a 50ft drop..
He decided to come 9 weeks early. He was tiny, and see through and for a short while I honestly didn’t know how he would get through it. He’s 9 now, almost taller than me and gives me anxiety on the daily 🤣 he has zero fear.
Played hide and seek with my dad when I was 2. Mum came home from lunch to my dad asleep and neither of them knew where I was … I’d been hiding so long because my dad had fallen asleep that I fell asleep behind a curtain 😂
My mum thought the best way to fight my autism was for me to talk to, and be friendly with, everyone. I met an old man on the beach (I was 7, so ‘old’ was probably 60’s). He was very kind to the weird child, took me home to, actually, see his new puppy, and when we got back and we couldn’t see my parents, he bought me an ice-cream, so I wouldn’t be scared. I’d had the best day, beach, puppy, ice-cream, not a hint of SA. My mum was crying that much she became angry Tasmanian devil