I am not going to lie.  I am blessed, I am blessed a thousand times over and I know it.  Two of my kids have Autism, but they are so high-functioning that people forget they have it.  I forget they have it.  So when a tendency pops up it takes me by surprise.  That said, I always have a plan B to try and prevent things from going wrong.

Whenever we go to Walt Disney World I always give my kids a lanyard and attach the fabulously decorated luggage tag that Disney so kindly supplies me with.  In this tag I have my child's name, my name, a phone number for everyone in the party, and any special instructions.  For instance my ten year old daughter will run and hide if she is scared or perceives that people are laughing at her.  It's hard to find her if she doesn't want to be found, so I think this is an important thing for someone to know if we get separated.

Parenting fail, I never do this when we go somewhere local.  For some reason I assume that I have zero risk of losing my kids in local places like the children's museum.  In March I turned my back for five seconds to hand a wallet to an employee for their lost and found.  When I turned around she was gone.  My eleven year old and eight year old stayed together and I frantically tried to search for her without losing sight of the main staircase.  It was the longest three minutes of my life, there wasn't even an employee around to enlist their help.  When my eleven year old started bouncing up and down, flapping his arms like a maniac the relief I felt was so sweet.

That night I wondered why I didn't have the kids wear their lanyards more often?  It's not often that I lose sight of them (in fact I have never needed them at Disney, ironic eh?), but why wouldn't I have them wear these beautiful, sanity saving items when we went to the park, the mall, children's museum?

That said, I did some research about what goes into these fabulous child identity kit's for missing kids.  These are simple things that you can do at home.  You can upload them to a family web site that is password protected, keep hard copies at home, in the car, etc....  But here is the general information you can expect a kit to contain:

• Important information:  Child's name, address, birthdate, allergies, birthmarks, medications, and anything else that will help authorities do their job.
• Detailed physical description:  Again birthmarks, scars, tattoo's...
• Fingerprint's!  You can take your child to get these done accurately, but if you can't afford it try following this video by CrimeScene.com.
• Recent photo of your child.  Update your photo every 6 months.  I always take photo's of my kids, on my phone and post them on Facebook (cough cough), to family members, everywhere you can think of.  So even if you update your child file every six months, be sure to take a picture of your kids in their outfit before y'all head out on your adventure.  If your child goes missing, you might not remember details about their outfit!