Do You Know About ‘Safety Tat’?

It’s confession time. When our kids were small we sometimes experienced that common, overwhelming worry that they would be lost. Just disappear — in a department store, at the park, anywhere between school and home. It was probably just the place where we focused all our anxieties and fears about the scary things that could happen to those precious, fragile ones who counted on us to protect them, but it was frightening none-the-less.

The truth is, the panicky feeling that descended when we lost sight of them for a few seconds had been pretty much forgotten until we came upon Safety Tat, a company that provides temporary (but long-lasting) tattoos that imprint a phone number and other identifying information right on your kid’s body. The ad took us back almost immediately to that angst-ridden time.

We’re not really sure whether to recommend this product, but it is worth thinking about. Would we have worried less if we thought that a kind stranger could rescue our kids and then easily contact us as a result of that little tattoo? Or, would it have ramped up the attention on danger and clued the kids into the fact that mom was a bit wacko in the worry department? Hard to say.

You’ll have to be the one to decide whether this is something that would be helpful to your family … or not.

And one day we’ll tell you about the time Rachel lost her 11 year old somewhere between the Port of Cartagena, Colombia and the cruise ship they were boarding … or the time Ellen’s 7 year old made his way under the barbed wire fence in Israel and ended up standing on the other side, in a different country, next to Lebanese soldiers with guns in about 30 seconds flat. Oh my.