Lost & Found

This article addresses a big internal debate I have even though my kids are only 2 1/2 and 6 months old! Watching kids in the neighborhood, which I think of as a safe place, I wonder at what age I will allow mine to ride their bike around the loop on their own! There are go-carts making laps and dirt bikes that I've even seen crossing the highway with girls on the back! I hope they have a lot of friends to grow up with and I know they'll want to just go off to a friend's house, but how do you check in and know that's where they are? Cell phones do make a big difference in this equation, though.


My youngest brother was always disappearing when we were little. I guess since he was the youngest of 4, he was always tagging along to our events and left to entertain himself. I clearly remember one time mom sent us all out on our bikes with our friends on their bikes looking for him. We searched forever, calling him, checking friends houses. We finally found him curled up under a table on the front porch. naked. He'd apparently been looking for mom to come help him with his bath and had gotten frustrated and fallen asleep! While we were out having a neighborhood-wide search party.

Also, I remember he would hide in the clothes racks at stores - intentionally. And one time we found him hiding under a table on the patio out the back of a Baskin-Robins. We had been looking and calling all around that strip mall and didn't even know there was a back patio, it was elevated above the rest of the stores on that side.

The biggest scare hands down, though, was when he got lost at Epcot. It was dark, right after the fireworks show, the park was closing, so it was mass exodus. The crowd was all headed in one direction and we were desperately trying to locate this tiny little boy in its midst. It was a big fear, even for me, I truly felt we had lost him for good and had a sinking feeling. But, fortunately, someone found him and stood him up on a booth that was closing, but under a bright spotlight and my cousin saw him.

Much like the time my sister got lost at a local festival we go to yearly in my grandparents town. Both of my parents thought the other one had her and then we get back to my grandparents house and no one does. They found her at the sheriffs office, eating an ice cream!

It's just such a hard thing to balance - letting go enough to give them independence, but still keeping them safe.