‘I put my three-year-old to bed and then he ran away from home’

“I woke up, realised he wasn’t in his bed, or anywhere in the house… I went outside and it dawned on me: I might never see him again,” the terrified mum reveals.

A missing child has got to be one of the most terrifying of all terrifying parenting fears.

Whether they’re gone for a split second, for a few hours, or longer, panic washes over you and you jump to the worst possible conclusion: what if you never see your child again?

When I was four my grandma and great-aunt were babysitting me. I guess I tired them out because in the afternoon, they decided to take a nap.

I don’t remember what possessed me to open the front door of their house, walk down the stairs and cross the road to the park, but that’s exactly what I did.

When she woke to find I was missing, my grandma called the police and they found me, sliding down the slide.

“I looked both ways before I crossed the street,” I told them.

Eva’s story is different. Although it has a happy ending, her fear was next level because her little boy Archie disappeared from his bed in the middle of the night.

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Archie woke up in the night and wandered out of the house. Photo: iStock

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Mum realises three-year-old left house in the night

“The absolute worst feeling in the world: waking up, realising your child isn’t in his bed anymore,” she posted on Reddit.

“You check every room in the house and realise he is GONE. You go outside and immediately it dawns on you, he either has to cross the street or go into somebody’s house. You could literally never see him again.”

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Eva calmed herself down and thought for a minute. Where would Archie go?

“I found him about a block down from my house. Luckily I knew exactly where to go because he had been asking to walk to the playground all day, and we never got around to it.”

The little boy was in his underwear when he left because that’s what he’d worn to sleep, but another parent had found him and put some clothes on him.

“He also had a scrape on his knee. I was told he fell in the road.

“All I can think about is him on the ground by himself in the middle of the road and it's getting dark, and people drive so fast on that road."

The Reddit community was full of suggestions for how to avoid future escapes, and words of comfort for the shaken mum.

“What a scary thing to have gone through!” one person said. “You took some great precautions. Maybe order a cheap door security alarm for extra peace of mind.”

Another mum shared a similar story.

“This is exactly what happened to our son when he was three,” she said. “He woke up at 5:30am and unlocked all the doors and took off for the park.

“He was picked up by some neighbours who kept him safe and called the police. We woke up at 6 and realised he wasn’t in the house. We called the police and got him back within minutes.

“For the next two days, my husband and I would randomly burst into tears every time we thought about what could have happened.”

*Names have been changed

Originally published as ‘I put my three-year-old to bed and then he ran away from home’