Mom Breaks Into Stranger’s House To Find Her Daughter Who Didn’t Answer The Phone For 20 Minutes During A Sleepover
She ignored three pit bulls in the search for her missing child.
CREATISTA | Shutterstock As a mother, you want to protect your child from all the evils in the world, but for many moms, the modern-day evils have emerged as the once popular childhood experience — the sleepover. Mom, Sara Buckley, is firmly in that camp. In a move that she described in her own words as "insane," Buckley broke into a stranger's home because she couldn't reach her daughter during a sleepover.
What might be considered extreme to some, the mom's reaction was perfectly logical to others. At the very least, the experience is a perfect representation of why kids and sleepovers have become a battleground of parental debate, almost as heated a topic as gentle parenting.
A mom broke into a stranger's house to find her daughter because she wasn't answering her phone.
Buckley took to TikTok to share her sleepover experience, and it was a wild ride. She started, “Well, it’s official. I’m insane. I’m going to tell you the most unhinged mother thing I have ever done in my life.” She told viewers that her family doesn’t do sleepovers because she doesn’t trust anybody with her kids. Her daughter is in Junior High School and has been to fewer than ten sleepovers in her life, with two of them occurring in the prior month.
After the last sleepover at a friend’s house, she was set to pick her daughter up around noon for a hair appointment that her daughter had really been looking forward to. Ten minutes before picking up the tween, she texted her and let her know she was on the way, but got no response.
Buckley didn’t think much of it and texted again when she got to her daughter’s friend's house to let her know she was outside waiting. Again, she got no response to the text or subsequent calls, but checked her kid's location and confirmed she was at the address.
After being unable to reach her daughter on the phone, the mom tracked her location, which indicated she was at her friend's house.
The worried mom then knocked on the front door and could hear someone saying “hello” from inside repeatedly, but not coming to the door. She continued to knock for five additional minutes before a neighbor approached to see what was going on.
Skeptical of the stranger pounding on the door, the neighbor asked Buckley if she even knew who lived at the home, and she was too frantic to recall their names. After giving him more information, he was less cautious and said he had not seen the neighbors and that their cars weren’t home.
She continued knocking, still hearing a voice responding from behind the door. Buckley then called her husband for “backup,” ran home to pick him up, and returned to the house. They both continued knocking to no avail, prompting her to call the police for assistance. Meanwhile, Buckley’s husband canvassed the neighborhood, trying to gather information on the people in the home.
The 911 operator told the frustrated mother that it was a non-emergency and put her on hold for five minutes while he transferred her to a person who would set up a "welfare check" for her daughter. While holding, it dawned on Buckley that the mysterious voice she heard from behind the door was actually a parrot talking, a detail that she called “the most unnecessarily ridiculous part of the story.”
As she hung up, redialed 911, and waited on the phone, her husband walked around the home yelling his daughter’s name, checking for a spare key before eventually deciding to pull out the water hose to spray the upstairs windows in the hopes of getting someone's attention.
At her wit's end, the mom broke into the house and found her daughter and her friends sound asleep.
With the 911 operator advising that the response would take 30 minutes, the scared parents decided to take matters into their own hands. Buckley jumped the fence into the backyard, unconcerned about the two pit bulls who were back there. Luckily, the back door was unlocked because had it not been, the protective parent said she would have launched a brick through the window.
Once inside the home, Buckley said, “Never in my life have I cared less for my physical safety.” This is a good thing since there was another pit bull hanging out there, although inside a crate.
Buckley and her husband ran upstairs and “started bursting into bedrooms and clearing them like the SWAT team” before finding their daughter safe and sound, sleeping peacefully in her friend’s room with two other teens. The confused girls were awakened by the parents standing over them. The ashamed dad rushed out of the room while Buckley stayed and yelled at them.
Relieved that her daughter was “still alive,” Buckley told her to get her belongings through tears, and they left out the front door as the parrot kept saying “hello” to anyone in the vicinity. In that video, there was no indication of how the parents of their daughter’s friend reacted to her busting into their home, but viewers really wanted an update, so Buckley obliged.
In that update, she shared that unbeknownst to her, the woman whose house she had broken into had been following her for some time and had seen her initial upload about the situation. The woman thanked her for not breaking the windows at her home and didn’t seem to be upset about the incident. But Buckley jokingly said she was “faking her death and moving out of the country” and clarified that she doesn’t believe the parents did anything wrong in the situation.
Parents really are more concerned about sleepovers than ever before, but that doesn't mean they should deny their kids the experience.
You definitely aren't under the false impression that the sleepover debate is something that seems to be rooted in modern parental concerns. Experts are seeing it too. According to clinical psychologist Mary Alvord, the uptick in fear started right around the pandemic lockdowns and has been exacerbated by social media. That doesn't mean parents shouldn't be concerned, however. It just explains why it's become a hot-button issue.
Alvord explained to the Washington Post, “It’s a delicate balance — you do not want to put your children in harm’s way,” she said. “On the other hand, you don’t want them to be afraid of risks that are important to move them further in life, like trying new things, tolerating some level of discomfort, pushing yourself outside your comfort zone.”
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Phyllis Fagell, a school counselor and author of "Middle School Matters: The 10 Key Skills Kids Need to Thrive in Middle School and Beyond – and How Parents Can Help" agrees with Alvord but takes the issue one step farther, explaining to USA Today that kids who don't get to experience activities like sleepovers are missing out on important opportunities to practice self-efficacy and adaptability, instead becoming risk-averse because of the overprotectiveness and fears imparted on them by their parents.
Fagell said, "As parents, I think if your decision not to have sleepovers comes from a place of fear, I would caution parents to pause and ask themselves, 'What is my anxiety?'" She went on to stress that if parents are making decisions about sleepovers from a place of anxiety, it models very unhealthy coping mechanisms for kids who will grow up to be adults who catastrophize even small inconveniences or fears.
The solution, according to the experts, is pretty simple, though. Teach your kids to trust their guts and teach them how to handle themselves when they feel uncomfortable. That could be as simple as calling mom and dad to come pick them up, or, in the case of Buckley's daughter, making sure her ringer is on so she can pick up the phone when they call.
NyRee Ausler is a writer from Seattle, Washington. She covers lifestyle, relationship, and human-interest stories that readers can relate to and that bring social issues to the forefront for discussion.
