So I'm at the part where you have to find your kid in the mall and I get right next to him yell for him and no matter what I do he won't pay attention WTF am I supposed to do?  sorry if its stupid or simple but I'm lost.

NVM got it reloaded the save seems it glitched before because after i reloaded my save the scene triggered

haha this happened to me too.  felt like an idiot standing there yelling at the kid, than I pressed L2 and he said something about the clown.  After talking with the clown went back and started yelling at the kid again, saw the prompt to look down at the first floor and BAM the kid teleported down there.  Definitely killed the drama for that scene.

There's a few glitches in the game that are like that, and it is indeed frustrating. I expect it to be patched in the near future though.