A four-year-old boy in northern Tasmania has helped save his mother's life by making a triple-0 call, just a day after she taught him how.
When Wendy Cocker had a seizure and lost consciousness just over a week ago at her Launceston home, her son Monty knew just what to do.
"I wasn't feeling very well and I tried to contact my husband initially and as I did I went into a seizure," Ms Cocker said.
"The phone call I made to him went straight through to voice message.
"After that, within a couple of minutes, Monty made a triple-0 call and that's pretty much all I remember.
"And then I came to and it was all happening, the ambulance was there."
Ms Cocker, a registered nurse, had taught Monty how to make a triple-0 call just a day before the incident.
"I'd been to Agfest with the school and we'd visited the ambulance station as part of our checklist of places that we needed to go and I came home and thought, 'Gee I really need to teach Monty how to do it,'" she said.
"Having seizures, I do need to let him know how to do it."
She sat down with him and talked him through the process of calling triple-0 from a mobile phone, from both an unlocked and locked phone.
He quickly put his practice to the test.
Monty presented with certificate of appreciation
In a recording of the triple-0 call, Monty told operators that "mummy fell over".
He also told them that he was four years old and that his "dog always woofs at people".
His mother said she was "so proud of him".
"He's my little hero; he certainly has saved the day," she said.
"He's super special; he's a very smart little boy.
"His grandma came around, she was like, 'Where's the superhero?' and he said, 'Oh I'm not a superhero, I'm just a hero.'"
Monty was reunited with the paramedic crews who responded to the emergency call and presented with a certificate of appreciation.
Intensive care paramedic Danielle Masters said he handled the stressful situation extremely well.
"When we got inside, we saw little Monty; he met us there and he was on the phone to our comms and we walked in and found his mum on the floor and he said she'd fallen over," she said.
She praised Monty for his actions.
"I've worked here for 15 years and this is the first time a four-year-old has made a call to an ambulance," she said.
"I was actually amazed with how he actually knew that that was something that he needed to call an ambulance for, and then actually know how to call an ambulance.
"Then when we got there, he was just so calm and he'd just followed all the instructions that the comms had told him to, which I thought was really amazing.
"He was able to answer all of our questions and tell us what had happened and we eventually figured out his mum may have had a seizure."
Ms Master said she would use the experience as a lesson for her own children.
"I've got a four-year-old as well and I went home that night and I said to him, 'Do you know how to call an ambulance?' and thought about steps to go through to teach them to do that.
"Probably the most important thing is how to actually use the phone to get into the screen to press the numbers."
