Well, at least she didn't really leave. I can't imagine sitting in a closet waiting to see if my kid would panic. But, I know my DS would, because he did. He's 10 and we're trying to get him to be a bit more independent, so we will leave him for short periods....like, when my husband drives me to work...he's gone for about 20 minutes. Or I'll go to the grocery store, which takes about 30 minutes. He's fine if he knows where we are and he has our phone numbers so he can call. The problem is that when he panics, he forgets he can call. So I told him one day I was going to the store, he said ok, and I left. I came back and could hear him screaming from the street. I opened the door and he was pacing from the stairs, across the hallway, to the living room, and back. He saw me and FLEW at me and hugged me and I asked him what happened and he said he didn't know where I was. It had not registered when I told him where I was going, so he completely freaked out. So now we have to ask him where we're going after we've told him, and we got a whiteboard where we can write it down so he can see it if he forgets.
And I may have told this story before, but I don't know. When I was 3, I was sick and my mom needed to go to town to get groceries. We lived on a ranch about 40 miles from town, so it wasn't exactly a quick trip. Normally, my mom took us with her, but because we were sick, she couldn't do that. She asked my dad if he was going to head out to do chores or if he would be home. He told her he'd wait to do chores. So she left. She came back to an empty house and assumed that my dad had changed his mind and taken us with him....she was a bit miffed as it wasn't good for us. But then my dad came home with my brother and of course, I was not with them. My mom asked where I was and my dad said he had decided he needed to do the chores and I hadn't wanted to go with him, so he left me home....alone....at 3.
I did not, of course, remember the circumstances that led to me being home alone, I just remembered looking out the window and I knew they had told me where they were, but I couldn't remember if I was supposed to meet them somewhere or if I was supposed to stay put, I couldn't remember where they were, when they'd be home....I saw a pickup out in the pastures, but I was pretty sure it wasn't OUR pickup and it was really far so I knew by the time I walked there, it would be gone, and I'd have to walk all the way back, and I didn't want to get in trouble if I wasn't supposed to leave the house. So I went and crawled into my bed and pulled the covers over my head because I was scared and didn't want anyone bad to be able to find me. I thought I had dreamed it because my mom would NEVER have left me home alone that young and my dad never watched us.
Now, I was a tiny little thing....I was 3 and wearing 18 month old clothing, so with the covers up over my head, I was pretty much invisible...there wasn't much of a bump under the covers. So when my dad showed up without me, my mom called every neighbor and friend to find out if I had been spotted walking through the pastures of any of the neighboring ranches, or on the roads there, etc. She had a whole search party out looking on the buttes for me. Anything could have happened....bitten by a rattle snake, trampled by cattle, dragged off by a coyote, fallen down one of the buttes, etc... So when no one could find me, she was livid with my father and devastated and scared. Something possessed her to check my room one more time, and that's where I was found, sound asleep with the covers pulled up over me. Needless to say, she was relieved, and never left us in our father's care again until mandated by the courts after the divorce. But she would magically show up in places where we were....people would call her to tell her the babysitter left us at the pool alone again, and she'd come and "visit" us. (My father was supposed to have us during the summers) It probably explains her over-protectiveness of me in particular as I got older.
Great for them, but not for us!
