In a big shop
You looked at something for a moment and now you cannot see your grown-up anywhere.
What do you do first?
Step 1: What Would You Do?
There is often more than one good answer. Pick one and see what happens.
Nobody has come
You have stood still and shouted and nobody has come. There is a person at a till.
What do you do?
Step 2: What That Was
The name for what you just worked out.
Stop where you are. If you both walk about looking, you keep missing each other.
Shout
Shout their actual name, not "Mum". Lots of people are Mum. Only one is their name.
Who to ask
Somebody working there — a till, a uniform, a desk. Or a grown-up with children. Not somebody who comes up to you.
Never go anywhere
You never leave with somebody to go and look. You stay where you are.
Step 3: Try It
These ones do have right answers.
The Lost Plan
Tap them in order.
You have lost your grown-up in a big shop.
- 1Look around from that spot
- 2Shout their name
- 3Ask somebody who works there
- 4Stop where you are
Step 4: Quick Check
Two questions, then you are done.
Question 1 of 2
Somebody you do not know says "come with me, I will help you find your mum". What do you do?
Question 2 of 2
Why shout their name instead of "Mum"?
Step 5: Your Life Mission
Something to do away from the screen. Nobody is checking.
Learn the number
- Learn one grown-up’s phone number by heart.
- Say it to somebody today.
- Say it again tomorrow.
Why: A number you know is help you can get anywhere, from anybody.
For a grown-up: Make it a song or a rhyme. And agree a meeting point every time you arrive somewhere big — it takes ten seconds and it works.
Step 6: What You Learned
- Stop. Do not walk about.
- Shout their real name.
- Ask somebody working there. Never go anywhere with anybody.
For the grown-up
Deciding what somebody looks like is beyond young children, which is why this lesson specifies role — staff, a uniform, a till — rather than trustworthiness.
A grown-up with children is the standard second choice and it is deliberate: they are statistically safer and much more likely to help properly.
Agree a meeting point when you arrive somewhere large, and rehearse the plan calmly. A child who has practiced it does it; a child who has been warned freezes.
Teaching your phone number as a song or rhyme works well, and it is the single most useful thing they can carry.