I’LL never forget the day I lost Harry.

We’d run out of nappies. The baby’s reflux had been bad, so we hadn’t made it out of the house that morning. I had no choice but brave the supermarket, with a seven-year-old, four-year-old twins and a tot.

We parked in a family space, a few feet from the store entrance. I ushered my eldest onto the pavement, followed by the twins. I thrust the baby into the sling, snatched my bag from the boot and nudged the doors shut with my hip. I turned to the kids. The headcount was short.

“Where’s Harry?”

Initial panic morphed into all-consuming terror. The search became more fervent and more irrational with every second of his absence. We looked in the car park. Under cars. In the store. In the bins. All the while, me shouting myself hoarse between wailing. The baby was startled and inconsolable, the other two terrified and confused.

It took an hour for someone to connect the dots. A lone four-year-old with wanderlust on a busy street. They’d managed to extract “Tesco” from him. He was brought back to me, sobbing in the supermarket foyer, on hold with the police.

Every parent will have their version of this story. We’ve all turned around to a missing child and felt our stomach drop. Losing a child is a universal fear.

In that moment of anguish, we imagine the worst. That we’ll never see our children again. We concoct a ghoulish Pied Piper who has lured them away. Though for how many of us is that ghoul the state? It’s seems ludicrous to posit such a big-brother myth, but it’s not quite as barmy as it sounds.

In August, Scotland’s Named Person legislation comes into force. The government wants Scotland to be “the best place in the world for children to grow up”, so by summer every child will have one. This is an official, usually a teacher, tasked with looking out for their well-being and happiness.

On paper it sounds virtuous enough, but where the state is tasked with this sort of social upkeep, there’s the opportunity for things to go too far.

This week, one story made me think again about the implications of Named Persons. A story from Norway, our unabashed social crush, gatekeepers of progressive welfare and wellbeing.

In November, child protection appeared unannounced at the Bondariu family home. Their daughters didn’t return from school that day, and their sons were taken. The next day four policemen came back for the baby. They lost their children because they occasionally smacked them – an illegal practice. The Norwegian mother and Romanian father have faced intrusive questioning about their religion. Their children have been split between three foster families, meaning an eight- hour round trip for visitation. They’ve been told the state are making the case to have the children permanently removed from their care. This is far from being a single story.

In Goodness Tyranny, Nina Witoszek, a research professor at the University of Oslo, paints a grim picture. She tells of a Polish family whose interdependent autistic twins who were taken and split up, thanks to a complaint of unproven domestic abuse.

Similarly, Indian couple Anurup and Sagarika Bhattacharya lost custody of their children, allegedly for feeding them with their hands and co-sleeping.

There are websites dedicated to telling the personal stories of Barnevernet, Norway's child protection service. Tapestries of human suffering at the hands of the state. Statistics show Norway’s emergency care orders are on the rise. Reuters reported the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry produced guidelines for staying under Barnevernet’s radar: no loud quarrelling, and to keep children from talking about their parents’ social affairs – parties could be deemed a damaging environment.

The problem with examining Barnevernet in the round is that it’s so shrouded in secrecy. Child protection demands confidentiality, so the state’s arguments are always missing. In this absence, they can be unfairly vilified. The parents can be recast as liars, telling their own tarted-up version of events. But there’s enough anecdotal evidence to suggest that something is going wrong in Norway. There’s a lot Scotland can learn from these perceived missteps.

The Scottish Government want to "get it right for every child", and that’s a positive thing. The problem is when that mandate is there, you create the ability to see things that aren’t there. You create the chance to get it wrong. We’ve experienced this first-hand.

I am not a perfect mother, nor have my children had a perfect upbringing so far. There are times when I shout or react with something other than the fabled patience of my gender. Given the choice, I wouldn’t have chosen divorce and mental illness as a backdrop to their childhood, but we’ve managed. My children are bright, doing well at school, and happy – despite not being incubated from adversity. There were a couple of years there where each day felt like we were fighting our way out of quicksand. But we’re alright. They’re alright.

The problem with Disney-esque ideals is they’re hard to live up to. And when the state decided they’re not being fully, we risk pushing problems into the shadows. We’d rather hide them than discuss them, for fear of honesty’s repercussions.

What chills me most is that by Norway’s standard, I was disadvantaged as a child. My children have been too. I and my children would likely both have ended up in the system. We’ve already had our brushes with it here.

When my twins were in nursery, I was summoned to a child welfare meeting at the school. It had come completely out of nowhere, to my mind. I was affronted, utterly consumed by the assertion I was doing anything wrong. Then I performed a 180 to being thankful my children’s teachers had their best interests at heart. But then I found myself in limbo, examining my parenting through the lens of the authorities, and it broke me. I was distraught. What if this spiralled? What if I was really doing it wrong? Was I a bad parent?

The catalyst for this intervention had been one of my boys falling asleep in class. Not school – but nursery. At age four, when both of my boys still took afternoon naps. This lethargy "symptom" was triangulated by them being skinny and pale. And it’s true – they’re a pair of milky-blonde, almost translucent little boys. The teachers were worried, and rightly so. There were red flags. But the accusations lost their weight in the presence of two tall, skinny and blindingly alabaster parents, eloquent enough to state their case.

When the meeting ended, the worry didn’t dissipate. I have previous, you see. Two bouts of perinatal psychosis, with long stints in hospital. I’ve recovered, but I know that blemish lurks somewhere on their file. I know that could be open to skewed interpretation. So I’m extra-vigilant, even now, two years on. We never leave the house unless we’re spotless. Tatty uniforms are not tolerated until the end of term. We always carry a hairbrush.

We all want what’s best for our children. We all want a society that puts children front and centre. But who should get to decide what’s best and right for every child? The parents or the state? And if it’s the state, what chance does anyone have of challenging it if things go wrong?

In this instance, when considering Named Person, I’m looking to our Nordic neighbours. Instead of a beacon of what could be, I’m seeing something I desperately don’t want. Scotland has to think hard about the implications of bringing the government into our family lives. And what could happen if that power is misused.