So, a lot of the stuff I’ve been read­ing about child safety sug­gests that your kid should have some sort of ID on him or her. That is, a photo with some basic con­tact infor­ma­tion on the back. That way, if they get lost, or (God for­bid) hurt, some­one can get hold of us. Tar­get gave us some stick­ers and safety info with a recent photo order. They sug­gest the whole recent photo, CD, info, etc. route we’ve already taken. But they also sug­gest, in the case of evac­u­a­tion or emer­gency, giv­ing your kids an index card with their basic info on it. If you get sep­a­rated, they say, that info will help bring you back together.

So, I thought, what about hav­ing them always carry that info around? Like a kid ID card.

Ini­tially, I was a bit leery about it because of the stranger-anxiety thing. You know, you don’t put your kid’s first name on his jer­sey so strangers can’t call it out and act all chummy. But really, if my kid’s been (God for­bid) abducted, an ID card isn’t going to make much of a difference.

Then I thought, how para­noid do I have to be to make my five-year-old carry (what is essen­tially) photo ID? Not like I had any iden­ti­fy­ing any­thing with me when I was grow­ing up. Not like my kids are ever any­place with­out an adult. And where would he carry it? He would leave his shoes at home (and he has) if we didn’t remind him to put them on (and we didn’t, that one time). And then, the two year-old? What would we do, stick a FedEx return sticker on his back every time he leaves the house?

But the thought of them alone, with a (nice) stranger… scared… cry­ing… just one para­noid par­ent away from hav­ing phone and address at hand… the five year-old can prob­a­bly mem­o­rize our phone num­ber, but the two year-old can’t.

So, what do you think? Kid ID, or phone num­ber tattoo?