Getting 'Lost'

Meg has this habit of running way ahead of us when we're walking, say, at the mall. So we decided to 'teach her a lesson' the other day when we were at South Shore Plaza. She had run so far ahead without so much as turning back to see if we were still behind her, so we decided to quickly pop into a shop to get ourselves out of her sight. From the shop, we saw her suddenly realise we weren't with her anymore. She ran back, past the shop we were in and retraced our path. I followed her to make sure I had a visual on her and after she'd run a little way, she suddenly stopped when she couldn't see us anywhere and started wailing like there's no tomorrow. You should've seen the expression on her face...it was the choking kind of crying that is hard to stop. The poor thing must have really thought she'd lost her mummy and daddy forever.
I felt bad when I saw how she'd reacted and decided that it was quite a mean way to teach her the lesson. It took me quite a while to calm her down. I had to keep hugging and reassuring her and at the same time tell her not to run ahead, ever. Yen missed all the drama cos he decided to browse the store! He was quite upset he'd missed a 'good show'! Heh.
It got me thinking how we are everything in this world to our children and how kids who have lost their parents must feel. So I guess we do have to look after ourselves for our kids' sakes. It would be tough and sad for them to go through life without the love of their parents.