Escapee Children

Anyone taking their kids out to places where there are a lot of people and a lot to see will appreciate the difficulty of keeping track of them, even when you only have one child.

The worst one for separating himself from the group is Patrick who charges on ahead with complete disregard for where the rest of the family are. At the zoo recently he would flit from one cage to the next, doubling back and getting distracted by first one animal and then another:

“Ooh look, spider monkey – cute, oh there’s a huge owl, ooh, a bar to hang on like the monkeys, ooh zebras up there.....,”

and he’s off.

He’s dressed in bright red which makes him easier to spot, but my catchphrase of the day is still “where’s Patrick?”

It is hard, especially when the children want me to look at the animals too...or not to look at them, in the case of the monkeys, whose genitalia were on prominent display.

“Oh my gosh!” says Emilia prudishly turning away in disgust “I wish they would put on underpants!”

I simply can’t keep up with them all, as different things spark their interest. Patrick is always so focused on what he wants to do in these situations. He once boarded an aeroplane without us.

We had all just come off the shuttle bus and were standing on the tarmac, waiting to go up the steps to the plane, when we noticed Patrick was missing.

The bus pulled away and Mark ran alongside to check we hadn’t left him on board. He wasn’t there. He had definitely been with us then, so where was he now? We scanned the crowd of passengers, no Patrick.

Then I spotted him, almost at the top of the steps to the plane, on the far side. We shouted for him but he was oblivious. We finally got the attention of the adult who had blocked our view of him and mimed an explanation that the boy beside him belonged to us, and could he point him back in our direction.

As Patrick suddenly saw us all frantically waving at him from far away at the back of the queue, he sheepishly retraced his steps and joined us.

It should come as no surprise to me that I lose the children on occasion when we’re out and about, as I find it hard to keep tabs on their whereabouts when we’re in the house .

Rachel particularly has a long history of just popping next door, when she takes it into her head that she wants to play with the boys who live there. She isn’t very good at telling me when she does it, so often I’d have no idea until I’d get a text or shout over the wall from my neighbour; “she’s here!”

This can sometimes feel very odd, as I believe I can hear her playing upstairs, yet she is apparently in an entirely different house.

The time I really decided that I needed to keep a tighter rein on our daughter was when she started making early morning house calls.

One weekend morning, I stirred at the sound of the front door being slammed, my sleep fuddled brain took no notice, assuming it must be Mark going to work, despite the fact he was still slumbering in bed beside me. The next thing I know the doorbell goes. I leap out of bed, wondering who on earth rings the doorbell at 6.45 in the morning, only to discover it is my neighbour Adam returning Rachel.

“We thought maybe after breakfast might be better” he says. She had woken them all up knocking at their front door.

“I am so, so sorry,” I said “we were all asleep, we didn’t realise she’d got out!”

She was barely 3 at the time and only just grown to the point at which she could even reach the front door latch. I made more effort to keep her in after that, but summer proved tricky. Despite being confined to the garden by two gates, she would just climb over one and under another in order to visit her friends.

She has got slightly better, at least she announces her intention to go visiting now and by the time she has got her coat on I have cottoned on to the fact she is leaving the house.

Rachel’s bids for freedom started very early. I remember another mum telling me about how she had lost her child, she was slightly younger than Rachel and just crawling.

“I found her at the top of the stairs” she said “I did not even know she could climb stairs yet.”

“It happens so quickly doesn’t it,” I empathised “I lost Rachel the other day too.”

“Where did you find her?” my friend asked.

“Oh,” I said nonchalantly, “she was up the road, at number 3.”

We live at number 10, and she was 18 months old.

I did not take offence when my sister made me a Little Bo Peep birthday cake that year.