I thought little more about the parade until I got a heartwarming phone call from my wife yesterday morning. While she was dropping my son off at his classroom, one of the other moms came up to her and told my wife how much she thought of my son. She had just moved her slightly Autistic child to the school a couple of months ago and was impressed at how caring everyone was towards her son, my son especially. Her son is still involved with the scouts at his old school, and was marching with his old pack someplace else in the parade lineup. She told my wife that she and her son were behind a fire truck that just kept blowing its siren and horn and that all the noise was a little more than her child could handle.

Towards the end of the parade route we all started disbanding and moving off to the side of the street, and we suddenly had a mélange of scouts from different packs milling about the sidewalk. I lost sight of my son momentarily but had instituted a buddy rule at the beginning of the parade, so I wasn’t too worried. Sirens, lights, and marching bands added to the cacophony as we stood aside to let the large vehicles go by.

Little did I know that while I lost track of him my son saw his new classmate in the crowd and came up to him and held his hands over his classmates ears until the noise subsided. My son remembered his new classmate’s Autism, and how loud sounds affected him. I’m not sure if what he did helped, but the fact that he thought of someone’s anguish, in the middle of all the revelry, and even refrained from watching the sights to help someone else makes me proud of him. The child’s mother expressed her gratitude to my son, and my son took his place by my side, never once telling me about he had just done.

When kid’s are well behaved the parents can take the credit, but I don’t think compassion is something that can be taught. You either have it, or you don’t.

In my various travels online, and while listening to podcasts like Jumping Monkeys, I’ve been introduced to a few tools that can help ease the worrisome mind. I’ve no affiliation with the products mentioned below nor is this part of some referral program. I just care about our kids.

In very basic terms SafetyTat is a temporary tattoo that you would place on your child before they head out to the amusement park, beach or school field trip. If you’re like me you might even apply one before taking the kids to watch a movie though this might become expensive over time.

The folks behind SafetyTat have managed to make these little gems very attractive. They’re much more attractive than you might achieve with an Avery label and sharpie not to mention those Avery labels can’t hold up very well in water. The tattoos come in several different categories and designs and even include tats for medical alerts and special needs.

$20 gets you 30 SafetyTats.

The USB flash drive contains the database where your families information is stored. It also contains the software used to collect this information. The design of the application is such that none of the information gathered, or programs used for collection, are stored on a computer.

A username and password is required to access the application and the data is encrypted; however, I wasn’t able to determine the type of encryption being used. Once the data is collected you have the ability to produce several reports (ID Card, Missing Poster, Fingerprint Card, etc) containing just the information you do not want to be hunting around for if an actual emergency were to occur.

The identakey would also be useful in day to day life, not just in emergencies. Simply having all this information in one place may be all the incentive you need to pick one up.

The identakey is available through several online sources and a few brick and mortar. It looks like the going rate is $29.99 per key.

InstantAmber might be considered the online equivalent of identakey. With InstantAmber you gather and collect your families information online. The online model does create the opportunity to easily share the information with law enforcement. With this service there is even a password you set that is designed specifically for law enforcement. In the event of an emergency you would supply your email address and law enforcement password to an appropriate person, direct them to the InstantAmber site and they would have access to your information.

As with any online service, you need to be comfortable trusting them with your data and especially so in this case. Their site indicates the data is secure and encrypted.

This service runs $29.95/year per child.

There you have it. Three opportunities for you to be prepared when your children aren’t within arms reach.

The geek in me is considering collecting this data on my own USB drive within a TrueCrypt volume. If tech DIY is your kind of thing you might want to check out TrueCrypt yourself. Storing this same type of critical information in a spreadsheet, along with pictures, would seem to get the job done as well.

Have you taken the steps to gather your families information in one place, and if so what method did you use?

“They’re down to around 200 feet now.” I said.

“What kind of well are they digging?” My son interjected.

“Well, a water well of course. What other kinds of wells are there?” I said matter-of-factly.

My son said, with DUH intonation and attitude, “Wishing Wells!!!”

I laughed so hard I couldn’t catch a breath. He comes up with some good ones.

I’ve been working on a site redesign the last several weeks and have finally rolled it into production. If you view “D is for Dad” via a news reader it would be genuinely appreciated if you could click on through and maybe even leave a comment.

I’ve never been terribly fond of the traditional blog layout which introduces a lot of scrolling. With both Mike and I dabbling in the design world we wanted to bring as much information “above the fold” as possible and reduce the scrolling. We think this layout (Branford Magazine theme) accomplishes this.

We’ve also taken this opportunity to add a couple of items.

• The Mini Blog – (look over on the right side)
  We will use this space for those short bursts of inspiration that don’t warrant a full blog post. As of right now I am not including the mini blog posts in the main RSS feed for this site, but you are able to subscribe to the mini blog feed itself by adding the following to your reader:
  http://www.disfordad.com/category/mini-blog/feed/
• D is for Dad Flickr Group – (upper right corner)
  I’ve created a public group on Flickr for D is for Dad. While it is public I am moderating what is added to the group as those photos will appear in the upper right corner. You are encouraged to add a photo of your own to this group. Have fun with it!

We hope you enjoy the changes. Let us know what you think.