Many parents will know the gut-wrenching feeling of looking down in a park, supermarket or shopping mall and not seeing their child alongside them as expected.
But one Aussie mum of a two-year-old boy has revealed how a trick she learned on TikTok saved her from the "scariest" 10 minutes of her life, after her son went missing.
According to Kidspot, the woman wrote on Facebook about the moment she realised her toddler was no longer with her while she was shopping with friends at Kmart.
"One friend ran to the entry immediately and alerted the staff member to not let a boy of his description leave the store. Even if he was with an adult. Another friend searched the area he was last seen," she wrote.
The mother says she began "frantically" looking for him in the aisles, shouting his name while looking after racks.
But then she remembered a trick from another parent she'd seen on TikTok, advising to "screw the stares" and start calling out a detailed description of her son.
"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," the mum says she began shouting while running through the store.
She says she noted an "instantaneous" change in the people around her.
"I had every adult around me on alert. They all threw aside what they were looking at and started searching too," she wrote.
Her son was eventually spotted by a man who recognised Nathan after his description, and who called out that he had found him.
"I turned back the way I came and there he was."
The woman says she expressed "a thousand thankyous to the man".
"If I hadn't have been calling out, that man would have had no clue that I was looking for Nathan. Nate would have walked past him and he wouldn't have blinked," she said.
It's a reminder to other parents that if their child goes missing, "do not search in silence".
"Shout out loud and clear," the woman ended her post.
"Say that 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."
