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View Full Version : Do you carry your child's documentation when you travel?



tigalig
06-06-2005, 06:18 PM
There was a story involving a local FL family last year where they were stopped and asked to deboard (is that a word?) the plane because their daughter kept yelling, "mommy," and the other passengers were concerned that child had been kidnapped! Everything ended up fine, but the family missed their flight and I think they threatened to sue. Needless to say, it rattled alot of families in our area and since then, I carry our children's certificate of foreign birth everywhere. Living in the south has it benefits, but being a multi-racial family is not something that we take lightly around here.

So . . . the birth certificates were soaked and now I'm looking for an alternative means to carry their identification, including certificates of citizenship and possibly passports when we travel long distances. I was thinking of shrinking their birth certificates on a copier and laminating them, together with their COC and even SSN cards. Does anyone else do this? I hate to be this paranoid, but my dh and I were already "profiled" one time and that was when it was just the two of us. I'm not looking forward to experience the same inquiries due to our children's races. Any thoughts?

icunurse
06-06-2005, 07:28 PM
While we have adopted domestically, our son doesn't look like us. Our son is too young to cause any problems right now, but we've discussed what we'd like to do in the future. Rather than carry around important documentation, we always carry the latest pic in our wallet and, eventually, a family picture. I would think that by having an older pic, too, that common sense would say that the kid's with us. (Honestly, almost any kid could be seen as potentially "kidnapped" if they're not the spitting image of the parent that they're with.) I would worry more about losing documentation with a SSN, etc than I would about a repeat of the FL incident.
Traci
~Connor's Mom~
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malie
06-07-2005, 08:25 AM
Honestly it doesn't hurt to get a passport for your child and since a passport is something that is used for travel it makes the most sense. Just want to point out that unless there was another incident, the family you are talking about was stopped in PA on the way to their older daughters graduation so it's not an issue of place in the country where you live really but more likely the people who are on the plane with you

I would not carry bc or COC or the SSN cards. If you do a lot of air travel anyway a passport is a good picture id to have.

emmiem
06-07-2005, 08:51 AM
We have three children, two who were adopted internationally. We just carry their US passports. I don't worry about it so much. There are so many families where the children don't look like the parents anyway.
Michele

hjdong
06-11-2005, 12:15 PM
I would suggest, if you're concerned about it, carrying their immunization record, maybe with a picture of the three of you on it, and an insurance card. It would be enough information to convince people that this is your child but would be easily replace-able. DH is Chinese so DS looks enough like him that we're never questioned.