A mother taught her 3-year-old to dial the police helpline in a fun game; it turned out to save her life when she actually collapsed
Most of us think of toddlers as the ones who need looking after and to be taken care of, and not the ones who come to the rescue. But sometimes even small children do something so surprising and quick-witted that it seems extraordinary.One such incident happened when a three-year-old remembered exactly what he’d been taught and acted on it without hesitation, in a moment of real danger.A 3-year-old James called the police helpline after his mother collapsedA video doing rounds on social media shows the recording between the police and the little baby, who dialed the police helpline when his mother collapsed.In the video, he is heard greeting the police officer on the helpline and, when asked to hand over the phone to his mother or father. On being asked whether his mother is awake, he replies in the negative.The operator over the call asked him, “is she awake? Can you wake her up?”, to which he says ‘no’. After a couple of minutes, his mother wakes up and tells him over the phone, “I had passed out!”
A normal day that suddenly wasn’t
Georgia, 28, was at home in Doncaster looking after her three-year-old son James and her five-month-old daughter, Elodie. According to a BBC report, she’d been feeling unwell all day, and while putting baby Elodie down for a nap, she suddenly lost consciousness. James, who had been playing with a train set with her moments earlier, was left alone with his sleeping baby sister and his unresponsive mum.
How a museum family outing helped him learn this
During a family outing to the National Emergency Services Museum in Sheffield, Georgia had shown him how to dial 999. As she explained to the BBC, the museum has an interactive section where children can use magnetic numbers to practise dialling both 999 and 101, and she’d seen it as a chance to prepare him for exactly this kind of situation. That small, playful lesson turned out to matter far more than she ever expected.
A mother’s relief, and a message for other parents
When Georgia came round, she was “an absolute mess,” but grateful that James had known exactly what to do. Doctors later diagnosed her collapse as postural hypotension combined with dehydration. South Yorkshire Police officers who responded later returned to present James with a toy police helicopter, delighting the “police-obsessed” toddler. Georgia has since said she hopes other parents will consider having similar conversations with their children, however young, about what to do in an emergency.
