Ways To Take Your Children's Fingerprints Without Scaring Them
For every parent who wishes to do everything possible to protect his or her children, it's important to consider ink fingerprinting. Getting your children's fingerprints on file means that if they're ever the victim of a crime, the police may be able to more quickly identify if your child has been in a certain area by dusting for his or her prints. And, in the worst-case scenario, the authorities can identify a body if they have access to the child's fingerprints. Law enforcement agencies can give you fingerprinting kits so that you can take the prints at home and keep them until they're ever needed. Here's how to talk to your child about this process.
Don't Paint A Scary Picture
There's a potentially serious reason that you're taking your child's fingerprints, but you want to be careful about explaining why you're doing so. An inquisitive child may ask why you're taking his or her prints, and you don't want to start talking about identification in the event of a kidnapping or something else that will terrify the child. This may be a time that it's good to be purposefully vague. Perhaps you could suggest that it's a precaution similar to getting needles at the doctor.
Get Everyone Involved
One way to make this process more fun and lower the potential of your child being scared is to fingerprint everyone in the family. Even if you don't formally take you and your spouse's fingerprints and keep them in the same manner as you're doing with your children, you can go through the process of taking the adults' fingerprints. For a child who might be uncertain, the fact that his or her parents are going through this process with him or her can quickly make it fun.
Make It A Game
Talk to your children about the unique nature of fingerprints, stressing the interesting fact that no two fingerprints are alike. In order to make the process of taking their fingerprints more fun, you can take each child's fingerprints with ink and then compare them. If you have two children, set the two fingerprint cards side by side and notice how their thumbs are different, for example. You may wish to look at the fingerprints or their children's actual fingers with a magnifying glass. Taking this approach instantly makes the activity more of a fun game, rather than something that might concern your children.
Contact a service, like Poway Livescan, for more help.