That Moment You Can't Find Your Child

I think every parent has been through this at some point, especially every parent with a child who likes to play hide and seek.

This weekend, our daughter went to Sunday School, as she always does. It's a usual thing at the end that she hides from us and we have to go looking. Usually, she hides in one of three places and the Sunday School helpers know where she is. After a couple of seconds playing, we 'find' her and off we go for cookies and juice.

Well, it didn't quite work out that way.

Nobody actually knew where she'd gone and she wasn't in one of her three usual places. Well, it didn't look like it.

So, we started to wonder if she'd gone to the toilet without anyone looking. When she wasn't there, we wondered if she'd gone into the hall for her cookies and drink, thinking that we were in there.

Nope, not in there either.

My mind started to go dark. The door to the car park was open. The door to the main road was open. Had she decided to go outside and play? Had she ran out into the road or had someone taken her? Maybe she'd fallen somewhere and knocked herself out or she was in trouble somewhere.

We searched high and low. We looked in each room, circled around the church three or four times each. And by this point had the Sunday School, our friends, and some others looking. Fear built and my mind continued to get darker and darker. I was certain that something had happened. My husband was ready to stop everyone in church. I was ready to pull out my phone to call the police, just as we heard "we've found her."

I can't explain the relief I felt. I ran straight to where the voices were calling and hugged her as tight as I could. Suddenly the adrenaline that kept my mind thinking and kept me looking left and I broke. It was only 5 minutes, but they were the worst 5 minutes since becoming a parent.

It turned out she was in one of her three usual spots. She's just managed to curl herself up so tightly that we hadn't seen her. She'd heard us calling but thought it was part of the game. Pleased with herself for successfully hiding, she couldn't understand why I was crying or why everyone was panicking.

There was no way that I could tell her off. All I could do was hold and hug her. It's not like she'd hidden like that to scare us on purpose. She had no idea.

We've learnt our lesson to make sure she's not curled herself up into a ball again. I think she's learnt to come out if she hears lots of people shouting for us and it looks like we can't actually find her. But more importantly, I've learnt just how my mum felt when I hide like that from her when I was 4.