While the initial reaction to losing a child is sheer panic, one mom tells fellow parents to stay calm and follow a proven strategy, which reunited her with her toddler who disappeared in a “huge” indoor play area.

Krista Piper, a mom of two young children, shared a TikTok clip explaining how she quickly found her three-year-old daughter Lily, who went on an adventure, out of sight.

Taking her eyes off Lily for a moment while speaking to the mother of the boy her son was playing with, Piper – a wedding photographer – says, “all of a sudden, I don’t know where my three-year-old is.”

Instinctively, the frantic mom, who lives in Columbus, Ohio, starts running through the large space, looking for her tiny little girl in all the wrong places.

“I end up going the opposite direction of where she actually ended up, because I thought I didn’t see her go past me…She wasn’t down there so at that point I’m starting to panic,” Piper says, adding she then grabbed Lily’s older brother, and started shouting her daughter’s name.

“Yes [it’s] a kid’s play space but they can still get out, she’s like a little ninja, she gets everywhere,” the mom says, adding there’s “a lot of nooks and crannies” for kids to hide.

That was when “a little lightbulb” went off in her head.

Looking loudly

Piper recalled watching a TikTok video shared by another mother, who used the ‘looking loudly’ technique to locate her missing son in a large grocery store.

Instead of shouting the boy’s name, the mom in the older clip loudly described the clothes he was wearing that day, allowing other people to assist in the search.

“So that is what I did. I stopped calling out her name, and I started yelling, ‘little girl, pink shirt, pink Minnie Mouse shirt!’ I’m sure people thought that I was a little crazy…”

And then, all around her, she heard other moms repeating her descriptors.

Not long after, “another mom said, ‘little girl, pink shirt Minnie Mouse?’”

And Piper was reunited with Lily.

Holding back her tears, the mom continues, “she was probably only missing for like a minute, to maybe a minute and a half, but for me it felt like eternity.”

On reflection, Piper says she could have also added identifying factors, like Lily’s age or hair color, but at the time, she spat out what was on the top of her mind.

‘Call to action’

Parents jumped into the comments section, praising Piper for spreading the word on the ‘looking loudly’ strategy, which is far more effective than simply shouting out a child’s name.

One parent shares, “As a mom if I hear someone yelling a name probably don’t think much of it but yelling a description is like a call to action to moms!”

A second offers, “I wish I knew about it when my son disappeared in a Walmart last spring. luckily, we found him quickly, but terrifying!”

A third netizen writes, “Yes! Yelling their name doesn’t help because no one knows what Sally looks like, but they can pick out a three-year-old in a pink shirt and blue jeans.”

Meanwhile, another mom shares it’s a tactic that will also help children find their parents.

“I lost my son in Legoland, and he told a lady I was fat had a lot pimples, and she spotted me from across the room. Humbled me quick.”

Urging parents to remember this proven method of finding a lost child or pet, Piper adds, “If you ever lose your child, or dog or anything, yell out their description, raise your voice. You know, I probably looked like a crazy person, but it got the job done.”