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Toddler experiences real life "Home Alone" situation

Categories: In the news, Weird but true

Many parents have nightmares about accidentally leaving their child somewhere but in the middle of a rush at the Vancouver Airport, one family actually did leave their 23-month-old son behind.

Jun Parreno, the little boy's father, was immigrating from the Philippines to Canada along his wife, young son and one set of the boy's grandparents. During a last-minute scramble to catch a connecting flight, little J.M. wandered off in the confusion. His father assumed the child was up ahead with the other adults racing for the gate and they assumed he was with his dad. Because the family's tickets had them spread all over the plane, the Parrenos weren't even aware J.M. was missing until airport staff approached them during the flight.

The very good news in all this is that Air Canada sounds like they are staffed with incredible, child-friendly employees with good investigative skills. When the toddler wandering between the security checkpoint and boarding gates was determined to be non-English speaking, they found a Tagalog-speaking agent who looked after the child. Air Canada even picked up the tab to fly Jun Parreno to Vancouver to collect his son and back to his final destination. ( If they don't make a heartwarming, Air Canada commercial out of this incident, marketing heads should roll! Skies don't get much friendlier than that!)

And because we're heading into warm weather and every summer there is at least one heartbreaking story about a child being left in a hot car that the adult didn't even know (or forgot) was there, this is a great reminder that you can never to too redundant when communicating with who is in charge of what kid. With four in our house , my husband and I break it down to Caveman-speak: "I have Michael and Scott. YOU HAVE Shelby. James is at a practice." And because there's generally a lot of commotion, the other person repeats it back so everyone is one the same page.

Better to talk slowly and state the obvious than to have that sick feeling of not knowing where your child is.

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