Horrible, I hope it turned out all right for everyone. I also hope she didn’t exceed her husband’s Leaving Country Maximum Limit. Also, I assumed that all communications were to be in English?
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I’m guessing “Home Alone: Riyadh” is the darkest sequel.
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There should have been no sequels.
Forgetting your kid once is plausible, but more than once?
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First pitch: it’s like a mash-up of Home Alone, The Terminal, Hugo and Die Hard 2!
Back-up pitch: it’s like a mash-up of Home Alone, The Terminal, Hugo and CHUD!
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It could be worse. Might have left the kid on top of the plane.
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When i was a kid my parents left me at a restaurant and didn’t realize for a couple hours. In my case they both drove separately and thought the other one had me. This is pre-cell phones of course and they went shopping after in different places. I was the only one who knew what happened and fortunately there was a couple who my parent chatted with before dinner who I went up to and told the situation. They took me home and had to wait around until one of my parents reached home and could answer the phone!
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OMG, I don’t think I thanked my mother enough for that! 
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More obligatory Simpsons:
Except, the opposite.
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Kevin’s an asshole. I’d leave him behind…
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If someone’s kid is an asshole at 8 years old, then the parents have no one to blame but themselves.
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Now, some people may suggest this is a sign of a bad mother.
My take is that it must be a very well-behaved baby.
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I’ll give someone odds if they’re willing to bet that there wasn’t a chemical involved in this story. Poor kid.
Oh, so you’ve seen the movie? 
Unfortunately true in real life.
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Leaving the whole baby thing behind, I was under the impression that all pilot-to-air traffic controller conversation had to be in English, even when both speak the same local language. But I guess that might not be correct.
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This is why there needs to be child version of renting a car. Go to the airport, drop your kid off, get on the plane, get a rental kid at the other end. Sure, it’s an expense. But cheaper than taking your own kid on vacation.
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Unfortunately, this is not going to help the cause of Saudi women fighting for control of their children. Saudi law overwhelmingly favors the rights fathers over mothers. Saudi woman are trying to get those laws changed. This incident, however isolated, will be used against them to show irresponsibility. Very unfortunate timing.
Call me stubborn, but I’m not ready to give 8-yar old Donald T a pass. 
It’s habit forming.
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My mother used to think she forgot us, but we were either playing quietly on the floor of the back seat of the car (this was ye olde uncarseated times) or just somewhere else, being quiet. Poor woman…
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Dear all, I came here to read your personal stories and takes on this particular story, and I am not at all disappointed. Excellent work.
Also, I was once lost as a kid, on a family hiking tour, in the woods. I can mostly remember the feeling when I realised my family forgot me.
I brought up the subject with my parents much later, and they basically had forgotten about that episode. Which was kind of… anticlimactic? IDK how to phrase this.
Maybe it was overwritten by the experience of my mother visiting Berlin for the first time, and forgetting a sibling of mine at the bus station while entering a bus.
Just FTR, the bus driver refused to stop before the next official stop. By that time, my sibling had, of course, moved on…
That story still makes my mother go very pale at the very thought when someone mentions it.
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