“My child is missing and I don't know if they're alive”
When a child goes missing, parents live between two answers: alive and coming back, or dead. Each phone call, sighting or news story can swing them from hope to dread in seconds. Ordinary grief has no place to start, because there is nothing certain to grieve, and some parents feel guilty for even thinking of it. Pauline Boss developed the idea of ambiguous loss from the 1970s, starting with interviews with wives of pilots missing in action in Vietnam and Southeast Asia, to describe a loss with no clear ending, where the person is gone and still held in the family's mind.
What to check first
The search and safety come first. If the child may be in danger now, emergency services come before anything else, and in the US and UK there are helplines that support families of missing people. It also helps to check the parent's own sleep, food and health, which tend to slip during a long search.
What could be going on
Ambiguous loss (Boss): Fits if you are caught between hoping and grieving, with no answer to settle either.
Hypervigilance: Check whether you're on alert all the time: every call, every news report, every knock.
Rumination and worry: Fits if your mind runs the same scenarios over and over: what happened, where they are.
Guilt: Check whether you keep going back to the last argument or the last time you saw them.
Telling them apart
Ambiguous loss (Boss): The child is gone and the loss has no ending. The parent may swing between hope and grief, and feel each is a betrayal of the other. Others may not know whether to offer comfort or encouragement.
Hypervigilance: The parent may be on watch all the time: phone never out of reach, a jolt at every unknown number, scanning faces in crowds. Sleep may come in pieces. The body may stay braced for news for months.
Rumination and worry: The mind may run scenarios: what happened, where the child is, whether someone has them. It feels like searching and seldom ends in an answer. Hours can go into it, most of all at night.
Guilt: The parent may keep going back to the last argument, a rule set, a sign missed, the last goodbye. They may feel they should have known or stopped it. With no answer to set against it, the guilt may grow heavier.
Questions to carry
- The last time hope and dread swung at once, what had I just seen or heard?
- Who knows how I am doing, apart from the search?
Also said as
- my son has been missing for weeks
- my daughter ran away and we can't find her
- how do i cope with a missing child
- not knowing if my child is dead or alive
- my teenager disappeared
- police stopped looking for my son
If your child may be in danger right now, call 911 or 999. In the US, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children answers 24 hours a day on 1-800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678). In the UK, Missing People's free helpline is 116 000, for families as well as people who are missing. If you have thoughts of ending your own life, in the US call or text 988, and in the UK, Samaritans are on 116 123. Elsewhere, findahelpline.com lists free, confidential helplines by country.