Losing your child is every parent’s nightmare. A mother shares the trick that allowed her to easily find her daughter after losing sight of her in an amusement park.
When Victoria Marie Lees went to Disney World with her five children, ages 5 to 11, she had the same fear many parents have: losing one of them in the crowd. So to prevent that risk, this mom set up a system to help her find her kids more easily, which helped when her daughter went missing. The family spent several days at the park, located in Orlando, Florida, the mother explains in an essay for Business Insider. Every day, Victoria Marie Lees did the same thing: she bought a large helium-filled balloon at the park entrance for each of her children, then attached it to her backpack. “Instinctively, I was counting balloons all day long.”she recalls. As she was getting off a ride, she counted five balloons. Then, as the family was taking an escalator, she counted them again. There were only four left…
Victoria Marie Lees remembers screaming for her husband’s attention, then looking around for a balloon. She then saw her daughter was still on the platform at the exit of the ride.I screamed my child’s name as I fought through the crowds of people on the escalator, trying to get down. I kept screaming, pushing people out of the way to get to the platform before my daughter was swallowed up by the crowd on the next train. People let me through, and a train had arrived by that time. As I ran to my daughter, a lady pushed people around a little girl who was tied to a balloon and crying, so I could get to her in time. I think the balloon really saved the day that time.”says the mother.
She therefore urges all parents to use the balloon method. While this is a good idea in principle, there are still some drawbacks to this technique. Balloons can burst, fly away, the child can detach them or put down their backpack… Other techniques can help reassure: putting a GPS tracker around their neck or in their belongings, but there is also a risk that they will remove it. So we should not rely solely on this. Victoria Marie Lees recommends dressing children in clearly visible colours and always holding their hand in a crowd (or, in the case of the youngest, putting them in a stroller).
It is also recommended to tell your children to contact a member of staff if they are lost and to agree on a meeting point at the beginning of the day, if possible somewhere that is not crowded. By the way, be aware that at Disneyland Paris, there are two Rendez-vous Enfants Perdus, one in each park.