Child Safety Does Your Dog Have More Identification Than Your Child

Child Safety- Does Your Dog Have More Identification Than Your Child?

Take a moment and think about it. When you consider the fact that, as adults, we would never consider leaving the house without our id. We spend thousands on home and car alarms, we are even protecting our family pets with microchips; however, our most cherished possessions, our children, leave home without any identification.

Here are some questions:

- Have you taken the time to record your child’s fingerprints, gather a hair sample for DNA purposes, record all his/her specific identification, including specific identifying features and a photograph of your child in a Child ID kit? If so, is it up to date?

- In the event of a motor vehicle accident, in which you have been rendered unconscious, do the emergency medical professionals have a quick way of accessing your child’s specific medical history, including your child’s blood type, medical provider, allergies, any medications they may be taking at the time, or, even your family’s doctor’s name and phone number?

- If you were on vacation with your children and they became lost or separated from you, or worse, arrived at a hospital, unconscious, as a John Doe, how or who would notify you and how would they know to do so?

- Do you or your husband, for that matter; carry your child’s specific identification,
this should include an up to date picture?

- Do you, as responsible parents, take the time to talk with your children about child safety?

- If you became separated from your child in a crowd, would someone be able to contact you directly, or even know who your child was?

If your answer was no or I don’t know, don’t worry, you are not alone. The sad fact of the matter is that children do not carry identification; if they did they would likely loose it!

Given today’s world, it’s becoming a necessity for children to carry identification. This fact was clearly illustrated through recent tragic natural disasters such as the tsunami, hurricane Katrina and the earthquake in Pakistan. With each of these disasters, we’ve witnessed far too many unidentified children.


When thinking of child identification, often, fingerprints and hair samples are the first things that enter our mind. There are far too many companies that profess to provide your child with identification.
Let me inform you that 99.9% of those companies are passive in nature.

Fingerprints, DNA information, pictures and even dental records will and are only ever used after the fact. Passive information. Think of it as locking the barn after the horse gets away. It’s unfortunate that as parents, we feel that we have done all possible to protect our children by having recorded this information. This is the first step, and a very important step in the safety of your child; however, as a parent, the only time you ever want to look at your child’s identification kit is and should be when you update it. This is a very important step towards safeguarding against the unthinkable. Few people are aware that children’s fingerprints are actually changing for the first 4-5 years of their life; therefore, it is imperative that this information be updated at least once a year, and every 6 months for the first three years of a child’s life.

When looking for a child identification provider, keep in mind the old adage “ An once of prevention far outweighs a pound of cure”. If all the company provides you with are a fingerprint kit, keep looking! One such proactive provider of child safety and identification is Child ID Labels.

The purpose of this article is not to alarm you but to inform you, as we are all aware, information is a powerful tool. If, in reading this, you took a moment to think about your child’s safety, please email this article to as many people as you know and encourage them to do the same. Your children are, after all, your most valuable possessions as well as our future.

BONUS : Childcare - The Dilemma Facing Most Young Families

In our modern society most families have both parents working. In single parent families the lone parent has no option but to work. But...who looks after the kids?

Parents looking for day care for their children have very few options;

1.) Stay at home and look after the kids
2.) Work when your partner is home to look after the kids (Now there's a recipe for a short relationship!)
3.) Put the children into a crèche, kindergarten or playgroup during working hours
4.) Find a live-in Nanny
5.) Find a childminder
6.) Hit on brothers, sisters and parents to look after the children

Staying at home with the kids sounds a good idea at first, but then you soon find that you can't afford the most basic luxury items that your kids want. "Other kids have them why can't I?" is the usual refrain. Adults also need other adult conversation that is not about kids, and work is the place where this is most easily found.

I know people who have tried option 2, with one partner working days and the other nights. Don't even go there. Love life? Forget it, your relationship will soon be in tatters.

Crèche, kindergarten and playgroup child supervision is very expensive. Many parents find that over half of their wages go in paying the childcare fees for the week. Governments are increasingly coming to realise that they have to do something to give tax breaks to parents to go some way to paying their child day care fees. Otherwise nobody will have kids and who is going to pay the pensions of all those retired government employees and politicians.

Live-in Nanny? Well au pair then. Au pairs can still be found, but are notoriously unreliable, and with bad cases in the press this option is fading away to zero for most parents.

Childminders look after your kids in the childminder's home. All you have to do is drop them off and pick them up again. Finding a childminder with a similar outlook to your own on child rearing is difficult. Problems also arise when the childminder is sick or wants to have a vacation. The largest childminder problems come to the fore when your child is ill. "She's ill is she? Sorry you can't leave her here then until she's better again" is basically what you will hear.

Finding relatives to look after your kids may be difficult, unless you have a turn and turn about arrangement that allows both sets of parents the opportunity for paid employment.

To sum up - Don't have kids until you have ten years' of pay in the bank to live on until you can go out to work again.