When our Son Got Lost

We've just returned from a two week holiday, and I'm writing up a travelogue, but I wanted to talk about one incident in a separate post.  Namely my son getting lost at the Grand Canyon.

We had gone into the gift shop to buy a few essentials like sunblock, and I was browsing for souvenirs.  My husband left us to it, since he was going to bring the car around from a car park two miles away.  Once I was ready to make my purchases, I found myself having to wait.  My daughter was fussing and needing to be held, while my son was wandering around the store.  I wasn't hugely happy with the latter, but it was better than the former: he wasn't actually hurting anything and he was at least entertaining himself.  It seemed like it would be giving myself too much stress to try and make him stay by me.

By the time I paid, I was aware that I hadn't seen him for awhile, but I was convinced he'd got absorbed in something within the shop and was hoping it wasn't mischief.  I called him, and my daughter echoed me, but we got no answer.  Walking around the (small!) gift shop, I found his hat left in the toy section which was a pretty nasty moment (not to mention his bright orange hat was one of the easiest ways to spot him). 

What actually happened was that my son lost track of me and came to the conclusion that I must have left the shop without him.  He went out and headed back up towards the trail we'd just walked down.  Thankfully, he either stopped some women or they stopped him, and he told them where he had last seen me.  They caught up with me just as I was about to report his disappearance to some lodge staff.

While I managed to stay calm throughout, I have rarely been so relieved. 

We all sat down on a quiet bench for a chat, to recover and (more practically) to apply sunblock.  I told him I would never have left the shop without him, so next time he should wait where he is.  I also told him that he did the right thing to tell another Mummy what had happened.  I've heard that children can get confused about who is a policeman or other official in uniform, so your best bet is to tell them to approach a mother if lost.  It's still not foolproof, but chances are pretty good that whoever they identify as a mother is not going to be interested in child-snatching.

Mostly though, I'm just so grateful that he remembered where we had been and was able to communicate that.  I'm sure that the chances of him coming to actual harm were pretty slim, but the chances of me personally finding him on the trail would have been virtually nil.  I had my daughter slowing me down and no real clue as to which way he'd gone.  We could have been separated for much longer before staff and bystanders reunited us and even that level of trauma just doesn't bear thinking about.  However rationally I could tell myself that he was probably fine and in no danger, there was always that awful niggle at the back of my mind that I couldn't be sure.  For my son's part, he was shaken enough by the experience as it was.