IN an experiment for a TV programme, more than 600 people walked past an apparently lost child. Only a grandmother was concerned enough to stop and ask if she was all right.

I think that was exceptional.

As a remarkably careless mother with remarkably inquisitive children, I was always losing my sons.

We once left one on a train.

If the boys got lost, I always told them to stay just where they were and I would find them, otherwise we would all spend hours going round in circles. So once I found Senior Son standing ramrod straight in the middle of Queen’s Arcade in Darlington refusing the help of the small crowd of well-meaning folk by saying: “Mummy says I must. Just. Stay. HERE.” More than 25 years on, Smaller Son still remembers the kindness of strangers.

I always approach lost-looking children. Most parents have been as relieved and grateful as I was all those years ago.

Only one exception: I once found a girl about three-years-old wandering alone in the car park at what was then Safeway. I’d taken her to the shop entrance when her mother came charging out of the store, and grabbed the child, saying, “I told you not to talk to people” and literally dragged her back to the car, her toes scraping the ground.

There’s always one...

But that’s no need for the rest of us to give up. And whatever TV programmes say, I think most of us would still do the decent thing.