Nancy Cameron mix-up stirs scorn and sympathy for PM David and Samantha Cameron. He thought their daughter was with her after a pub visit; she thought she was with him. Photograph: Kieran Doherty/AFP/Getty Images A Number 10 spokesman said David and Samantha Cameron had been "distraught" after realising they had left behind their eight-year-old daughter after visiting a pub near Chequers two months ago. Downing Street said the Camerons had been having Sunday lunch with two other families before the mix-up. When the prime minister left the pub with his bodyguards in one car, he believed their daughter Nancy was with his wife and their two other children in a different car. Mrs Cameron, meanwhile, thought her eldest daughter was with her father. The mistake was discovered only when they got back to Chequers. Downing Street, which refused to comment on whether Cameron had had any alcohol during the trip to the Plough Inn in Cadsden, initially claimed that the prime minister dashed to the pub to pick up Nancy, who had been left in the pub toilets. No 10 later confirmed that it was Mrs Cameron who had collected her. The incident emerged on a day when the government launched a scheme to turn around the lives of 120,000 "troubled" families, providing critics with an easy target. But it was an all too familiar scenario for many parents, eliciting scorn and outbursts of empathy in roughly equal measure. A "Plough insider" told the Sun it was frightening that the prime minister could forget "something so important as his own daughter," but others were more understanding. Dr Clare Gerada, chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that something similar had happened just after the birth of her son. New baby, three weeks old. Dining out with my husband in Galway," she recalled. Left the restaurant and, a few seconds later, up the road comes a waitress screaming at us and suddenly we realised we'd left him under the table. Shock. Horror. [In] our defence, we were absolutely exhausted and he was a new baby. James Delingpole, writing on the Telegraph website, took the events at the Plough as proof that the Camerons were as normal and fallible as any other parents. "Have I ever accidentally left any of my offspring behind in playgrounds/beaches/pubs/casinos/abattoirs/brothels?" he asked. Quite possibly. I really can't remember but if I ever did the process would have gone something like this: massive panic. Huge bollocking from the wife. Mad dash to retrieve child/children. Relief all round. But hey, nobody died. The Guardian's Tim Dowling went a little further and confessed to leaving his baby daughter in a fishmonger's through an unlikely combination of sleep deprivation and over-excitement at the purchase of two dozen goose barnacles. "Having three children is a logistical nightmare," he admitted. It's easy to lose track of one, especially when you try to divide the labours of parenting. My only advice is: do a headcount every hour or so, and always check the top of your car before you set off. One mother who prefaced her post on the Guardian website by stating "I can't stand David Cameron" said it could happen to anyone. I left my two-week-old baby in a pram outside of the chemist ... Walked home about 20 mins away, made a cup of tea, then sat there thinking I had forgotten something; sitting puzzling over what it was for the next five or so mins, then with horror realised I had left my precious bundle uptown somewhere! I ran back to town starting with the last place I had shopped at, there he was, sleeping beautifully in his pram none the wiser to his mummy having forgotten about him. A commenter on the Daily Mail website was also keen to point out that the Camerons had made a simple and very common mistake. "It is a normal thing for a child to wander off and a parent not to notice," she said. I see it everyday working in a shop. If anything it shows they make the same mistakes we all do. Others chose to use Nancy Cameron's temporary absence as a springboard from some light political satire. "I blame computer games," wrote one poster on the Times website. One minute you're playing Fruit Ninja, the next the country is in ruin, the Iranians have the bomb, and the nipper is the new darts champion down the local ...  Another was blunter still: "Now if Cameron could only pull off the same trick with Nick Clegg ..." But perhaps the most damning criticism of all came from Chris Driver, of Nantwich, who emailed the BBC with a plaintive observation: "Dear Today. What hope for the economy if our prime minister can't count to three?