I'm glad she made it home.
It's easy to get lost sometimes, for anyone, but when it's a young difficult child it can be really scary.
With easy child's wedding, we had to all travel to Newcastle, north a few hours, to stay in a motel near where easy child & SIL1 were living at the time. We'd booked the motel out (apart from some road workers who used the motel as accommodation for a long-term job doing roadwork on the highway). Different people were arriving at different times and we used our mobile phones a lot.
difficult child 1 & daughter in law were driving up from Sydney. Now, Newcastle is built around the shores of a very long, narrow lake which runs north-south. When the highway gets to a certain point about half an hour south of Newcastle (but still all bush, no buildings or towns) the road splits. Both roads say "Newcastle". If you're travelling further north (say, interstate to Brisbane) then you stay on the main highway, which runs on the west side of the lake. But we were staying near the denser part of Newcastle, on the east side.
At 8 pm I got a text from difficult child 1. "We're leaving Sydney now."
I texted back - "When you get to Doyalson, take the Belmont exit. It goes left, then crosses under the highway to head east."
Wouldn't you know - he took the east road, which turned out to be the one that heads west.
At 10 pm he rang me, frustrated. "OK, where are you guys? We've just reached the river to the north of Newcastle, where we head further north to Brisbane. We haven't seen Belmont anywhere."
I talked to him, found out he had not only taken the wrong road but continued on it for an hour longer than he should have. I talked him through a different route back and told him to call me in half an hour to let me know where he was - we would fine-tune his drive back to us. I told him to head due east until he got to the Newcastle CBD (lots of tall buildings, container terminal, harbour). Then head south. Stop if he got to Belmont and call me.
Half an hour later I rang him. He still hadn't reached Belmont, but it sounded like he was driving towards us through the denser suburbs.
I don't know what happened after that, but working it out later we realised he had once more taken the west road, not the east. He had failed to go right in to the CBD, and so had followed the broader highway south to Sydney.
Yep, he got almost all the way back to Sydney!
Finally we worked it out - I made sure that as they drove north again, I was actually on the phone to daughter in law as they reached and navigated the Doyalson turnoff. As it was, he nearly made the same mistake again.
By this time difficult child 1 was almost incandescent with rage, I am amazed daughter in law was letting him drive. Once we knew he was on the correct road, I talked him in. I knew the landmarks well - you reach the outer edges of civilisation, you come to a big bridge (the mouth of the lake, as it happens) and we were five minutes north of the bridge.
It was midnight. I was wearing red Snoopy pyjamas and standing out on a busy highway, flagging down the kids in their car while talking on my phone with the last remnants of battery. I was so glad the road workers had booked in to our motel - "OK, son, I'm standing in the driveway of the motel wearing red pyjamas and there's a dirty great yellow bulldozer behind me!"
The one good thought to hold on to - when they come through an experience like tat and finally find their way to you, they have won. It may have been ah arrowing experience, but they will remember it and also remember that they won through. THAT is the victory and that is the best lesson learned, to help them stay calmer next time it happens.
And oh yes, there will be a next time!
Marg
