During said research I came across the Legoland affiliated "Model Mom Mary" blog and this article: Five Safety Measures for Visiting a Theme Park.
Model Mom Mary describes a personal experience we all fear. She is obviously a regular at Legoland, but her 2-year-old daughter still managed to disappear for a brief time while they were there recently. This prompted her to write the article and share the following 5 Safety Measures
1) Have a photo of the child from that day so you can show people who are helping you look what the child looks like that day. This one is easy nowadays with the prevalence of smart phones.
2) Pin a piece of paper on the inside of your child’s clothes or write with sharpie on their stomach their name and all of your contact information.
3) Set an easily accessible meeting spot first thing upon entering the Park.
4) Introduce your kids to an employee upon entering the Park so that they can identify a safe person to approach for help if they are lost.
5) Wear bright colors. No need to bring back the 80’s with matching day-glo tees but bright, primary colors are much easier to spot in a crowd.
She also points out that the best thing you can do is tell a park employee. Of course it's good because they can help you look but they can also radio to all other employees and have the front gate locked if need be.
Those exact same 5 tips can be found on multiple websites geared toward child safety and I think they're great for use with children who are able to effectively communicate with grownups and remember things like phone numbers or where we decided to meet. Knowing, however, that my toddler does not yet fall into that category of children, I was instead inspired to use the knowledge I have of my child to come up with my own ideas and plan for keeping him safe.
I really liked the part about putting our contact info on his person somewhere. For some reason I wasn't loving the idea of writing on Alexander in permanent marker (maybe it's just the OCD in me thinking it wouldn't look nice, what can I say?) It also occurred to me that pinning a piece of paper inside his clothes could turn into an immediate fail the second he started playing in any water (which is his favorite thing to do). So I took the basic concept and left off the specifics and decided instead to make little fabric tags to sew into the clothes he would be wearing at the parks.
Originally I was planning on sewing the tags on the inside of his collar where the sizing tag usually would be. Then I decided that if he wanders away and is actually noticed by a helpful adult, I wanted them to be able to find my cell phone number without having to look for it. One, they might not think to look for it at all; Two, if my son is missing from me, the 15+ seconds it would take a thoughtful person to look for some sort of ID, is 15+ more seconds that my phone is not ringing to tell me he is safe. Outside of right sleeve it is!
Slight side bar: I have read that putting a child's name too large, say on the back of their shirt (jersey style) isn't a good idea because then a "non-helpful" person could possibly use the information to act familiar with the child and lead them away with out them protesting. Alexander doesn't come when people call his name anyway so I wasn't overly worried about that but it was still a consideration. I wasn't planning on making huge tags but the thought did influence me to go even smaller.
There are lots of products out there that can serve this purpose if your child gets lost but I made these out of what I had at home. I typed up Alexander's name and both my husband's and my cell phone numbers in Corel in 10pt Arial font (nothing fancy, easy to read). I made it so 10 tags would print on one sheet so I'd have extras and printed them out on HP Iron-on Transfer Paper. I cut them out and ironed them onto some plain white fabric. One more round of cutting, then I sewed them on the sleeves quick quick like a bunny with my sewing machine.
To finish I'll share what happened while we were in Legoland. While Kevin sat with the baby at some tables nearby, I took Alexander to play in Hideaways (a huge jungle gym type play area). Alexander thought it was one of the best things ever and I was having a good time, too, watching him and climbing and sliding after him. Well, there was a climbing section that I was too big to follow him into and he got to it and started going down before I could stop him. I whirled around and shot down the nearest slide, hoping to meet him at the bottom. Well the slide came out on a different level than the rope course so I had to run up the regular stairs trying to find him. He wasn't there. The park had employees stationed on all the levels so I turned around and told the nearest one that I couldn't find my son. She asked me what he was wearing and I told her it was a yellow shirt with black stripes with his name on a tag on the sleeve. Hair color? Blond! I got his shorts color wrong (I said green instead of blue) but that employee found him (happily playing and completely unaware that his mommy was lost; he certainly wasn't lost, he knew right where he was - on the slide, silly mommy) in 10 seconds flat.
I didn't know where he was for a total of about 1 minute but let me tell you, knowing he had one of these tags on his shirt kept me from going from zero to hysterical in those same 60 seconds. Mind you, the tag didn't actually help the girl find him but it kept me sane enough to ask for help in the first place. Definitely worth the 30 minutes spent making them before we left.
Repeated, simplified, four (maybe five) step process:
1 - Create in word processor or graphics program
2 - Print on Iron-on Transfer Paper (follow package instructions)
3 - Iron onto plain white broadcloth or other fabric of choice (also following Iron-on package instructions)
4 - Cut out individual labels and sew into clothing (precise location is up to you)
