A mom used the ‘looking loudly’ method to find her missing three-year-old daughter.
Any parent’s worst nightmare is not being able to find their child.
And with young ones having a mind of their own, wanting to explore, and not understanding the dangers of running off, it can be terrifying.
For one mom, this is exactly what happened.
But she remembered a smart method to help her be reunited with her daughter.
Wedding photographer Krista Piper’s viral TikTok video, which has been viewed over 7,000 times, has been widely praised by parents.
One viewer writes: “This is such incredible advice and any parent’s worst nightmare!”
Another adds: “This is wonderful. It’s a great idea.”
“The thought of losing a child actually makes me never want to leave the house again, but this is such a good idea!” a third person responds.
“I did this, it works,” another parent confirms.
A fifth pens: “That’s genius. You’re such a great mom. Thank you for sharing this.”
Piper took her daughter and young son to a ‘huge’ indoor children’s play area.
She kept an eye on her children while they played and enjoyed themselves, but her attention slipped for a second when speaking to another parent.
To her horror, when she looked back at her children, her daughter was no longer there.
The mom instantly began to panic due to the many small ‘nooks and crannies’ in the play area.
Piper and her son began shouting the little girl’s name, Lily, at the top of their voices. As her daughter was nowhere to be seen, she was terrified.
In the video, the mom recalls: “Right after I started calling her name, a little light bulb went off in my head. I remembered a TikTok I’d seen probably over a year ago.”
Instead of shouting out her daughter’s name, she started calling out descriptions of Lily.
The mom recounts: “I stopped calling out her name. I started yelling ‘Little girl, pink shirt, pink Minnie Mouse shirt.’ I’m sure people thought that I was a little crazy.”
The public won’t know who Lily is, but they can help spot the child with the description being called out.
Luckily, the three-year-old was only missing for a minute and a half before she was reunited with her family.
Piper was incredibly grateful for the other parents’ help in finding her daughter, as they began repeating her descriptions.
The mom said she should have added descriptors such as Lily’s age or hair color, but the Minnie Mouse shirt was the first thing that came to mind.
“So if you ever lose your child, or dog, or anything, yell out their description, raise your voice,” Piper advises. “I probably looked like a crazy person, but it got the job done. I found my kid really fast.”
The clever tactic is known as the ‘looking loudly’ method, which allows people in the same area to all come together to find the child.