An Aussie mother has revealed how she found her son who went missing in a mart after learning a clever hack on TikTok.
She said her two-year-old boy Nathan disappeared during a trip to her local Kmart.
Distraught, the mother asked a friend to alert the mart staff to the missing boy while she continued looking for him. She remembered a TikTok video shared by US parenting blogger Jess Martini.
In the viral video, Martini advises parents to “start shouting (the child’s) description while you’re looking for them.” Resultantly, other shoppers or people nearby will realise a child is missing and will also look out for them.
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The loud attention may also scare off a kidnapper in the case of a child abduction.
The mother said the blogger’s TikTok advice was crucial in helping her find her son. “Today I lost my two-year-old for 10 minutes in Kmart,” she wrote in a Facebook post. “It was the scariest 10 minutes of my life. To all parents out there, if your child goes missing, do not search in silence or just call out their name.
“Shout out loud and clear. Say they’re missing, give a description and repeat, repeat, repeat. Everyone will be on alert, and if someone is trying to take off with your kid, it will decrease the chances of them getting away.”
She said she walked around the store screaming: “I’m missing a little boy, he’s wearing a yellow shirt and has brown hair. He’s two years old and his name is Nathan.”
Fellow shoppers immediately joined in the search, helping to look for the missing boy. Minutes later little Nathan was found and reunited with his mother.
