History Main / StrayingBaby

* This drives the crisis near the end of the ''Creator/StudioGhibli'' film ''Anime/MyNeighborTotoro'', when 4-year-old Mei gets lost after trying to go alone to visit her mother in the hospital.

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!!Examples

* This is how Yusuke Urameshi [[DeadToBeginWith starts out dead]] in ''Manga/YuYuHakusho''. A five-year-old was playing with his ball by a busy road, Yusuke warns him off, kid doesn't listen and loses his ball in the road, goes after it, and Yusuke dives in front of a car to save him and gets hit.
* Minami's triplet sisters in ''Manga/ACentaursLife'' have a reputation as troublemakers that began when they managed to wander twenty ''kilometers'' from home within five hours of taking their first steps. Their sister can only wonder "How?!"

* Happens in a one-off scene in ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamWing''. A baby on a pier nearly falls off as it chases a butterfly while Treize Kushrenada holds back the mother from rescuing it to prove a point about human nature and taking risks: the baby turns back at the last second and begins to walk.
* In a chapter of the Japanese-only ''{{Franchise/Neptunia}}'' manga, Neptune had to watch over her sister, Uni, Rom and Ram after they were accidentally [[FountainOfYouth transformed into babies]]. At one point, as Neptune was just finished calming Nepgear down, she notices Uni straying away, [[ChasingAButterfly distracted by some balloons]]. She [[SubvertedTrope soon catches up with her]], but then she notices Rom and Ram [[DoubleSubversion end up accidentally straying even further away]] when the baby carriage they were in ends up rolling down a slope. [[BadlyBatteredBabysitter Poor Neptune had a hard time catching up with them.]]

[[folder:Fanfic]]
* In ''Literature/HarryPotter'', Dumbledore leaves a 15 month old Harry on the doorstep overnight with a letter. Harry doesn't get up and walk away in canon. In fanfiction, sometimes he does, and even more often, the fact that he could have is discussed to cast Dumbledore as senile or untrustworthy.
** Of course, Harry was asleep at the time.

* This ends with the worst possible outcome in ''WesternAnimation/{{Tarzan}}''; Kerchak and Kala's child wanders away from its sleeping parents, and is promptly caught and killed by Sabor.
* It's PlayedForDrama in ''WesternAnimation/TheRugratsMovie'', where the babies get stranded in the forest. The parents actually notice this time and are terrified.

* In Creator/LoisMcMasterBujold's ''Literature/VorkosiganSaga'', Miles Vorkosigan learned to walk relatively late, but still young enough that they don't expect any sense. (Given they find him riding a horse when he doesn't know how to ride, probably right.)
* In Creator/NeilGaiman's ''Literature/TheGraveyardBook'', the assassin is shocked to find that Bod was capable of crawling away while he killed the rest of the family and sets out to hunt for him.

* In a ''Literature/GoodDogCarl'' book, the baby's mother and her friend leave the baby with Carl, a Rottweiler and another dog while they have tea. The three wander off and have adventures, returning just in time for the women to find them.

* ''Series/{{CSINY}}'''s 'Unspoken': Danny and Lindsay are at a political rally with Lucy, who's somewhere between four and five (a time skip and mild SoapOperaRapidAgingSyndrome make it hard to pinpoint exactly) and she wanders off. Lindsay panics, looks for her, and finds her just in time to be able to dive for cover with her when someone starts shooting.

[[folder: Music]]

[[folder:Newspaper Comics]]
* All three children born to Darryl and Wanda [=MacPherson=] in ComicStrip/BabyBlues exhibit this tendency. Firstborn Zoe tended to stray like a hazard-seeking robot. Hamlet tended to ''roll'' around the house, going much further and faster than crawling. Third baby Wren has learned to ''climb''; it frightened Wanda horribly to discover tiny Wren atop an eight-foot tall bookcase.
[[/folder]]

* If their mother is killed, wounded and hospitalized, or otherwise separated from them, babies in ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress'' will wander around the fortress without regard to safety. Civilian alerts don't work; babies ignore them, so there's no way to prevent them from crawling out to say hi to the besieging goblin army or whatever else is trying to kill everyone.
* In ''VideoGame/TheStanleyParable,'' Stanley is assigned to keep a suicidal baby from beelining into a lit fireplace (in actual fact, a cardboard cutout of a baby on a track). If you fail, the LemonyNarrator scolds you quite stringently for it.

* ''Webcomic/KevinAndKell''

* Maggie in ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' is prone to this, although she's [[BadassAdorable more capable of taking care of herself]] than other examples. One NoodleIncident involving her wandering off ends up with her winning a beauty pagent tiara & sceptre. Another time, she somehow manages to drive the family car across town before crashing it into the wall of the local prison, and when a stressed out Marge goes on vacation, Maggie sets out to find her (although she's ultimately satisfied with an anthropomorphic ice cream cone on the roof of an ice cream parlor). And in one of the first episodes she wanders into a cave full of bears, [[FluffyTamer who fall in love with her after she gives one of them a pacifier]].
* ''{{WesternAnimation/Arthur}}'': four year old DW has wandered off a few times. Once when they visited the WhiteHouse the President himself finds her (she says her ''family'' is lost, not her). In another episode she wanders away from her mother as Mom is waylayed by a client while out shopping; DW manages to coincidentally get back to her mother just as the conversation finishes.
* The 1958 ''WesternAnimation/TomAndJerry'' cartoon ''Tot Watchers'' has Tom and Jerry work together to save a wandering infant from the hazards of a construction site. The teenage babysitter is too busy nattering on the phone to notice anything amiss.

* In the Looney Tunes short "Goo Goo Goliath", the stork delivers a baby intended for "Mr. and Mrs. Giant" at the top of the beanstalk. But the stork was drunk, so he just drops it off at a promising-looking suburban home. The baby grows to a height of 42 feet while still just an infant. And one day, when the parents accidentally leave a backyard gate open, the giant baby wanders off.
* One episode of ''WesternAnimation/LittleDracula'' had the hero's toddler sister climb out the chimney and wander into the attic. The kids soon end up there too, along with Garlic and his thugs who invade to try and kidnap Dracula's son.
* Mai's little brother in ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'' is prone to wandering off.
* In ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'', Pinkie Pie faces a babysitter's worst nightmare when she tucks the foals Pound and Pumpkin Cake in their crib for a nap, looks away for second, and discovers they are missing. Turns out both foals are manifesting their powers: Pound can fly and WallCrawl with his wings, and Pumpkin can apparently phase through objects.
* ''WesternAnimation/MegaBabies'' has plenty of this, sometimes with disastrous results.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/BoJackHorseman'' episode "Surprise", the main characters are hiding in Mr. Peanutbutter and Pickles's house and trying not to get caught. So of course baby Ruthie wanders off, and the rest of the cast have to juggle handling her ''and'' not being found out.

** The 2002 [[ChristmasEpisode Chrismas storyline]], "[[https://www.kevinandkell.com/2002/kk1209.html A Christmas for Coney]]", had Coney the baby carnivorous rabbit chase a mouse into someone else's Christmas tree and end up on an adventure all across Domain.