Family forgets 3-year-old at rest stop and drives 93 miles, don't notice until they hear alert

*Full disclosure; everything I know about The Stranger I learned from Robert Smith.

I loved it in the early 90s when that song was criticized for being "anti-Arab."

Family leave toddler nearly 100 miles behind after 'forgetting her' while going on holiday



A French family drove almost a hundred miles before realising they had left their toddler behind in a motorway layby as they went on holiday, it has been reported.

The family were on their way to the French Riviera when they stopped off for a rest at a service station, The Guardian reported.

After driving off more than 150km (93 miles) the parents heard an appeal on the car radio for parents of a missing child and suddenly realised their error.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/family-leave-toddler-nearly-100-miles-behind-after-forgetting-to-take-her-on-holiday-10447884.html

We never got far away before we discovered that one was missing, thank goodness. My mother used to take us to the State of Texas each year, she'd invite all the neighbor kids to go along, usually had a another mother to help look after everyone, but my little sister always got lost at the fair. She was the one who liked to wander off, looking at things. We still tease her about this.


We had friends who had a large family too and they were on their way to Anchorage, Alaska, driving up the Alaska highway and let one of their kids at a rest stop. Didn't miss him, but the Mounted Police stopped them to tell them they'd left their son about 100 miles back.

That was a long time ago, I would be so afraid if I left a child alone now, so much more evil in the world.

The difference between now and then is that the evil is reported non stop while the actual crime rates have been falling for decades now. Ignorance is bliss as they say and back in the old days we were mostly ignorant of what was going on not that it wasn't happening.

I would be willing to bet that the incidence rate has also gone down over the years not up.

99.8% of the children who go missing do come home.
Nearly 90% of missing children have simply misunderstood directions or miscommunicated their plans, are lost, or have run away.
9% are kidnapped by a family member in a custody dispute.
3% are abducted by non-family members, usually during the commission of a crime such as robbery or sexual assault. The kidnapper is often someone the child knows.
Only about 100 children (a fraction of 1%) are kidnapped each year in the stereotypical stranger abductions you hear about in the news.
About half of these 100 children come home.

oh never mind.

wouldn't be very helpful finding parents, especially in a scenario like this.

Neither of my two sons could have given police useful information at that age, and if they were on a trip, the little one probably has only a vague idea of where they are going. She's not going to know the license of the car, and probably couldn't say what kind it is, other than maybe the color.

I wandered away from home when my teenage aunt was babysitting me and told me I could go play outside (unfenced yard - hooooboy, did my mom resent her for that!) I wandered around the neighborhood, always aware of where my house was supposed to be. When I started walking home though, I got tired and hungry so sat on the curb to rest. Then a thunderstorm came up. As it started raining and thundering and lightning (oh how I was scared of thunderstorms!), I started crying. I was certain I knew where my house was, but I was just frozen with fear. Some stranger came up to me and asked me if I was lost and where I lived. I got in the car with him (!!) and he drove around for a bit. He kept asking me questions like, "what color is your house? What color is your parent's car? Are there trees in front of your house?" trying to figure out where I lived. I couldn't answer ANYTHING...and I was a VERY articulate 3 year old, I had been speaking in full sentences since I was 1. I remember just being SO scared of what would happen to me because I knew I wasn't supposed to get in that car, but I felt like I had no choice...and so I couldn't put my thoughts into words because I was so traumatized. Luckily the guy who picked me up was a 'good guy' ...and when he saw a very pregnant, soaking wet crazy lady running around the neighborhood he stopped and handed me back to my mom. Let's just say I wasn't much help for that poor guy.

My kids hardly spoke at all until they were 3. They would've been even less help.

But as for those parents...WTF? If I was so absentminded as to forget my 3 year old, I would've noticed after 2 minutes when it was wayyyyy too quiet, LOL. But I had really rambunctious 3 year olds. Let me just say the 'terrible twos' had NOTHING on the threes.

I was terrified my kids would be the same, and they were, but they never got that far away from us until their later teens, although one of my kids as a toddler once dashed into a hospital elevator just as the door closed, forcing me to race down the stairs in hot pursuit.

Our youngest, in my family tradition, once vanished in Boston, but not more than ten terrifying minutes.

Oh, and Washington D.C, as a younger teen... that was longer, but less than an hour.



One of my brothers lost himself when he was four years old and was picked up by the county sheriff. My brother was standing alongside the highway thumb up trying to hitch a ride. My brother is still like that sometimes.

Another sibling of mine was supposedly staying with a friend in San Francisco when she and her fifteen and sixteen year old friends decided to go on an impromptu road trip to Canada. Canada wisely did not let them enter, but my sister and her friends took a few pictures of themselves flirting with the cute Canadian border guards. My sister was showing me the photos when my mom unexpectedly stepped in, saw one of the Canadian border photos of my sister, and a quarter of my mom's hair turned gray instantly, just then.

My great aunt got herself lost in San Francisco a couple of weeks after the Great Earthquake. She recalled she had a marvelous time, playing with the "colored" kids, in her words, until the adults notified the police who returned her home. I don't think my great aunt's mom, my great grandma, ever forgave her for that

My grandma, born after the earthquake, was the "good girl" of the family and my great aunt was the "bad girl" after that.

"Bad girl" great aunt had many fine stories of her adventures and lived well past a century, outliving her "good girl" sister by thirty years. Perhaps it's true only the good die young?

My own dear mother still doesn't know some of my own stories, but then again, I don't know some of hers.

Considering they have 3 children, not 30.
How someone can be so absent minded that they didn't notice 3 year old is not in the car is beyond my understanding.

...wandered away when he was about that age. The police quizzed him, and according to Joe he had no last name, his mother's name was Mommy, his father's name was Daddy, and our house was painted black.

I think it was after that harrowing episode that our mother got us our little ID bracelets with our first and last names and our street address engraved on them.

I ordered two metal dog tags from Hartz for my daughter, one with our info on it, and another with my parents' info for when we were visiting. I still have them on the blue ribbon she wore.

such as my whole real name (not just Momma, Momma, Momma, Momma), our address... the color of our apartment building, the names of our friends and things like that. I made a game of it.

She's never got lost yet, and travels the world on her own, and even living on her own since she was 16, with me helicoptering nearby for the first couple years of course. Smart kid and very independent. At 18 she moved to Paris and at 21 moved to Los Angeles.... she's a vagabond like me, looking for her next adventure.