A learning process
Frightening situation brings progressive change
It can happen in an instant – you avert your eyes for a moment and your child is gone.
“She was standing right next to me,” said Kristine Millard, of the day her four-year-old daughter suddenly went missing at the Truro Mall. “We turned to look at something and then all of a sudden I turned back and she was gone.”
Adding to the concern, Millard’s daughter Nova is autistic; she doesn’t have the capability to communicate the way most children do.
With two other children in tow, Millard, who had been shopping at a department store, felt a sudden sense of dread when her attempts to find Nova failed.
“My first thought was that she would just be looking at toys and I would see her in a few seconds in an aisle. I really didn’t think it would be that long until we could find her.”
But Nova was nowhere to be seen.
“Then it was panic. Because if she had gotten out into the mall, would she find an exit and go outside?” Millard asked herself.
“She doesn’t know road safety.
She doesn’t know car safety. So it was just more of a panic feeling, eventually. Like, I was just holding it together,” she said.
“It happened so fast. And you
never think it is going to happen.”
Meanwhile, Courtney Mills was working nearby in the stock room of the Rossi store when she happened upon a little girl hiding under a table.
Unaware of the frantic search, Mills spoke to the little girl and quickly established Nova could not communicate like most children her age.
Nova doesn’t normally take to strangers, but Courtney gained her trust and a few moments later, the pair came out of the stockroom, hand in hand.
Millard was impressed that Courtney was able to communicate with her and could coax her out.
Millard knows all too well how quickly a child with autism can wander away. “And if you don’t pick the right direction when you start looking, you might not find them. And it’s scary because she couldn’t communicate to go up to tell somebody, ‘I can’t find my parents’ or ‘I’m lost.’ Those kinds of phrases aren’t something she would know.”
Millard said the incident “felt like forever.” In reality it was about 10 minutes.
But it’s 10 minutes she never wants to endure again.