When do you call the cops if a child is missing?

I would begin a search and call the police. Better safe than sorry.

Where would you begin a search in a large city?

Do you know the route she comes home? Do you know some places she hangs out? Do you know her friends and where they live? @wundayatta These would be the places I would start.

edit: Didn’t realize the part that said she was home. Next time make sure she doesn’t leave without you knowing.

Ahead of time, I would set up a more stringent check in. No hanging out with friends without telling you! I would have expected a call within half an hour of when she should have been home after the half day.

And, do you have numbers for friends she is okay to hang with? I would have been calling friends a half hour after she was due. If I still didn’t know where she was, I would call the cops two hours after she was to check in. But the first thing they would ask is “has she done this before? Does she always check in?”

I know that, when I give my child the first cell phone, the trade off for it will be that, including the “call or text back withing x minutes,” that I will get the top three best friends numbers and I will be able to call them without being called a snoop if I can’t get in touch.

Once I had exhausted the personal contacts, police can’t really do anything I believe before the 24 hour mark. Unfortunately, the less we contact them before than, the better they are able to do their jobs generally.

I would also get your kids one of those extra battery packs, and tell them if the cell dies, they are to plug that in and call you first thing.

Sorry – I know most of these are “preventative” rather than regarding the police – but I feel like there are a few things that should be run through before the police are called (although I know the panic that can be caused by not knowing what’s up with your kids).

The police are likely to defer acting in the case of a teenager but it doesn’t hurt to make the report. They like happy endings as much as anybody when the situation turns out ok. I’m glad yours did. How long is she grounded for not calling?

@wundayatta Wow! I know your heart must’ve been in your throat. Glad she is home. Didn’t any of her friends have a working cell phone? Make sure you have their numbers programmed into your phone from now on.

I don’t think we’ll ground her, but she does have to give us a list of all the friends she hangs out with and their phone numbers. The problem is that her friends are all new, since this is her first year in HS. As for routes and hangouts, if you don’t live in a large city, it may be hard to imagine how little sense it makes to go searching. She could get off at any subway stop. She could be hanging out at any of hundreds of places downtown.

I think we will encourage her to make better use of her intelligence and ask a friend for a damn phone if hers isn’t working.

This happened to me.

My daughter was living with me while she finished her senior year of high school in a new town (for her). She’s always been friendly, so she made new friends easily, but I didn’t know them all, not so much from ‘lack of interest’ as from ‘trust in her judgment’.

But I was a bit concerned one Friday night during the school year when she wasn’t home by 2 AM and I hadn’t heard from her, and I didn’t know where she had gone, and the friends of hers that I did call didn’t know where she was. She didn’t have a boyfriend then, so that wasn’t an issue.

I called the police. They made inquiries of their own—I have no idea how they did it or how they could find out so easily what I couldn’t find at all—but she was home within an hour. No muss, no fuss, and we had a serious conversation that if she wanted me to continue to trust her judgment, then she had to give me information on which to base a judgment, and we had no further problems in this area.

On the other hand, when I was her age I routinely stayed out until 3 and 4 AM and my parents didn’t know, and didn’t wait up, either. Times change, I guess.

@wundayatta My heart just skipped a beat when I read of your ordeal. Please accept my sympathy.

I would call the police within the hour she was expected home.

@wundayatta : Well, there’s my aerobic workout for the day! Heart rate waaaay up! Good ideas from all, especially about getting her friends #s. She may be reluctant to divulge them, (I know mine was) but if it’s a condition of continued independance, she might comply.

I’m so glad she made it home safely! One preventative measure to make sure this doesn’t happen again would be to have her memorize your phone number. That way if her phone is lost, dead, or not working, she will still be able to get in touch. Personally, I have several numbers memorized of people I could contact in an emergency. The brain is the best tool for genuinely important information (like how to tell those who care about you where you are).

I think in some jurisdictions the 24-hour standard is waived for missing minors, so it certainly doesn’t hurt to call law enforcement if one believes that a child is missing.

Absolutely insist that she call you if she is not coming home when expected. It is common courtesy and only right that she learn how to treat all people, including her parents. If her phone is broken, have her use a friend’s phone.

As parents, we all have to go through this stage of independence, and fear on parent’s part, but teaching basic respect here will help not just for now but for the future.

I understand you are relieved that she came home. However, if I were you, I would make it clear that next time, she either uses a friend’s phone, figures out some other way to get in touch, or she does not go, or if she does and you don’t hear from her she is grounded.

I am remembering how I was as a teen, and I think some of what she may be trying is “training the parents.” Get away with something once, make excuses, and then do it again, until it becomes acceptable and expected.

She has been suitably chastised. I hope we didn’t overdo it. Somehow, I seem to be getting more of the blame for our reaction. I don’t expect this will happen again.

At 14 years of age I knew the phone numbers of every friend they had (home phone number). My kids didn’t have cell phones at 14 but I know times have changed.
However they knew they were never allowed to go to anyones home who I did not vet first. Making a random decision to just hang out without tell me first would’ve been a grounding for about a month. She could’ve borrowed anyones phone to call you. I am sure by now she knows several phone numbers she could call to get approval. She didn’t call because she probably knew you would say no or she cares more about what her friends think and was afraid to look like a baby.
I would sit down and talk to her and explain that you need to know for her safety where she is at all times. Especially since you are in a new place.
I’m sure her new friends will understand.
Police won’t really do anything unless it was something like she called you and said she was on her way home and she didn’t arrive.
I believe there are trackers now for cell phones and what I would do is make sure her phone is charging every night and make sure she takes it to school.

Perhaps “Santa” could bring her one of those emergency chargers for cell phones to keep in the backpack. I would give this one as a free pass, but if it happens again, this is a groundable situation. There is no excuse for not calling from the friend’s house.

They don’t go to each other’s homes. They hang out downtown, often at a Gelato place.

She said she didn’t call because she didn’t think she was late. Normally she gets home around 4 (although she didn’t get home until 4:20 today), and always calls when she gets home.

Today was a half day and I guess her expectation was that she would hang out with friends (which she has done before on half days) and be home at 4 or so. My wife, I think, expected she would go home after school, since it was only a half day, and she hadn’t told us she wanted to be with friends.

Really, she just didn’t see things from our perspective. She didn’t think it was necessary to call because she’d been out other times with friends, which was cool with us.

The reason why it was a half day was that report cards had been given out yesterday, and they scheduled time for parents to talk to teachers if they wanted to, about report cards. We couldn’t go because we work, and anyway, we didn’t think it necessary to talk to anyone, except maybe her Spanish teacher, who gave her a B. If not for that B, she probably would be a straight A student. So she’s a good kid and she studies really hard, and is motivated by the idea of getting into a very good college.

This really isn’t a groundable offense. She’s never been in this situation before, and she didn’t think she needed to call. She knows differently now, and I am quite sure she won’t make this mistake again.

It is possible that she was a bit angry with us, because she seemed to expect we would give her something, like money, for a good report card. But both of us are from families that never paid for good grades. She thought maybe we’d take her out for dinner, and perhaps we will (it means I don’t have to cook). I gather that a lot of her friends get some kind of compensation for good report cards, which bothers me, since I don’t think that’s what should motivate kids to study. For us, knowledge is its own reward.

Generally, you and I see things from different sides of the fence and I tend to get snippy with you, so I will try to keep my nice hat on.

Did I miss something in parenting 101? She seems irritated because of a lack of compensation for grades? W, you do compensate her, just not monetarily. We don’t pay for grades in our house, rewards come in different manners. In fact, I would be a bit annoyed by her annoyance. I think that and her lack of common courtesy, meaning she could not spare 3 minutes to say she was safe and hanging with friends, is grounds for a reminder of checks and balances in the household.

I know you put a lot of thought into how you raise your children, but never underestimate the ability of a 14 year old child to show the lack of good reasoning and/or common sense. Even the best child has that ability from time-to-time.

No. She doesn’t get any monetary compensation. We give her a lot of praise and approval for her work, but the truth is she does it for herself so she can get inyo a good college.

As to the lack of courtesy, if she hasn’t gotten the message, then I have no idea how she’s getting the grades.

It sounds like you could tell a story or two about your daughter.

It’s really good to see you here, Chris. And despite your snippiness, I hold you in very high regard.

Oh. Which version of parenting 101 did you take? I hope it wasn’t the one with the new math! ;-)

Common courtesy and good grades don’t always go hand-in-hand. Just like our well-behaved daughters will make mistakes, like the one your daughter made today.

Mine made that mistake,too. She was out with friends and missed her curfew. She compounded the problem with the lack of a call. Considering we know the places they flock to, my husband grabbed the “spare” mobile phone and started to make the rounds. He found her at the pizza place, walked in, handed her the phone, kissed her on the head and told her to call home.

He resisted the urge to fuss at her, because we all make mistakes. She did call me, apologized and told me she was heading home. I told her to bring her friends, but make sure parents were called!

My daughter was truly missing once, when she was 5. We have pretty set rules and expect our children to let us know where they are. It isn’t a leash, it’s “just in case”, something I hope you never have to know or use.

She’ll be 17 really soon. She’s a good kid. Just like I’m certain your daughter is, too.