Mom's ingenious 'looking loudly' method to find lost kid is already a hit among parents

Imagine a mom shopping with her toddler. She turns around for a moment, only to find her child missing. Moments later, she discovers them in a toy store, captivated by the colorful displays. Research shows that toddlers often wander off, drawn by bright colors or unusual sounds, as they explore their surroundings and assert their independence. For them, it’s an adventure; for parents, it's a heart-stopping moment. While wandering is a natural behavior, parents can use certain tricks to find their kids faster. Krista Piper (@krista.piper), a mom from Ohio, shared a viral “looking loudly” hack on TikTok that's helping parents everywhere.

 In March 2023, Krista, a wedding photographer and BookToker, posted a video about an incident at the Center for Science & Industry (COSI) in Columbus. She was there with a friend and her children when her daughter Lily wandered off and went missing. “I lost my 3-year-old today in a play place and thank god for TikTok,” she wrote, explaining that she had learned the hack from another TikTok video about a year earlier.

She said that she had never lost any of her kids in the 7 years, and that time the unexpected had happened. “The play place has a lot of little nooks and crannies, and she was going back and forth between one of the barns,” Krista said in the video, adding that she was talking to another mom just when her toddler dawdled away. “She was probably missing for about a minute or a minute and a half, but for me, it felt like an eternity,” she said.

When she couldn’t find Lily, Krista, at first, thought that she might have gone to some water table or something because the kid loved the water. But she wasn’t there either. “At that point, I am starting to panic,” she recalled. “So I started calling her name. And, a little bulb went on in my head. I remembered a TikTok that I had seen, probably a year ago.”

She said she had watched the video of a mom who had lost her kid at a grocery store and instead of yelling out his name, she was yelling out her kid’s description, what her child was wearing, and she was able to find her kid way faster. “So that’s what I did. I stopped calling her name. And I started ‘Little girl, pink shirt, Minnie Mouse!’ I am sure people thought I was a little crazy.” Soon, she heard that, behind her, other moms were repeating the same phrase, “Little girl, pink shirt, Minnie Mouse.” At last, someone heard the description and pointed the mom toward her kid. Her video has been viewed by 697,000 people and shared nearly 8,000 times with 69,000 likes.

At the end of the video, she advised parents, “If you ever lose your child, or dog or anything, yell out their description and raise your voice. I found my kid really fast this way.” One reason why her method worked was, that instead of expecting the child to respond to her name being called, the method directed other people, mostly adults, to track down the child.

People congratulated Krista and many shared similar personal experiences of losing their kids in places like Walmart and Disney. “I am so glad you found her so quickly! My son jets away so quickly. At Barnes and Noble, they did a code Adam and locked the store down because my son,” commented @msvaljohnson. @m4ngel1xz shared another wonderful trick to find a missing kid, “My mom always told us (we were 3) that if we got lost to go to a specific place in the site. For example, the entrance, or bathroom. My dad just whistled us.”

Later that day, Krista decided to share her experience in a TikTok so other parents could also get some help from the “looking loudly” method. "I knew I wanted to at least tell parents, 'Hey, this is what you do,' just because I knew that I had seen that TikTok over a year ago and that is what helped me on that day. So I wanted to let more parents know, just in case they hadn't seen that TikTok," the 35-year-old mom told Good Morning America.

According to GMA, COSI thanked Krista in a statement, "As an institution that celebrates lifelong learning, we are grateful for Krista being vulnerable and posting her experience, sharing knowledge that may be of assistance or value to other families. It is through this exchange of experience that we can all participate in our educational and inspirational ecosystem, all the while ensuring a safe, secure, and enriching experience for us all."

You can follow Krista Piper on TikTok and Instagram for more videos related to lifestyle and books.