Toothprints

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A Toothprints dental ID takes only a few minutes. It’s comfortable for your child and gives you peace of mind. Hopefully, you’ll never need to use it.

As a parent, one of your greatest fears is that your child might get lost, of worse, be abducted. If such a situation were to occur, your prompt response – with photographs and other concrete means for tracking your child and making identification – is paramount. A pediatric dentist developed Toothprints bite impressions as a way of safeguarding his own child and other young patients.

Like fingerprints, dental imprints are unique to every person, so bite impressions can serve as an accurate method of indentification. Dental restorations and X-rays have historically been the primary basis for dental identification. Toothprints is important now because the successful fight against tooth decay has left many children with no cavities and, thus no dental records. An unrinsed Toothprints also captures saliva, which is a powerful source of our scent, making Toothprints effective for scent-dog tracking. Toothprints is simple and easy to take, and once taken, you’ll keep the records for immediate access.

What is Toothprints?

Toothprints is a patented, arch-shaped thermoplastic wafer. When your child bites into the softened wafer, it records individual tooth characteristics, tooth position within the arch and the upper to lower jaw relationship – all important information for identification. You’ll then write your child’s name on the zippered plastic bay provided and keep it at home in a safe place.

How Often Should You Update Toothprints?

We recommend that you take an initial impression when your child is age 3 (or after all primary teeth have come in), repeating it at age 7 or 8 (after the upper and lower front four teeth and the first permanent molars have come in) and again at age 12 or 13 (after all permanent teeth, excluding 3rd molars, have come in).

Making a Toothprints bite impression takes only a few minutes. It’s comfortable for your child and will give you peace of mind. Hopefully, you’ll never have to use it.

What To Do IF Your Child Is Missing

  1. Act immediately. If missing form home, search all closets, piles of laundry in and under beds, inside old refrigerators and wherever a child could crawl into and hide and possibly fall asleep or not be able to get out. Check with neighbors and friends. If you cannot find your child, immediately call the police. If missing away from home, notify management or security officers of the facility and ask for assistance, the immediately call the police.
  2. Call the police. Stay Calm. Identify yourself and your location and say, “Please send an officer. I want to report a missing child.”
  3. Give your child’s name, date of birth, height, weight, eye and hair color and any identifiers, such as eyeglasses or contacts, piercings, braces or unique physical attributes.
  4. Tell the police when you last saw your child and what her or she was wearing when the disappearance occurred.
  5. Listen and follow the instructions from the police and respond to their questions.
  6. Request that your child’s name and identifying formation be immediately entered into the FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC) Missing Person File (computerized system). This ensures that any law-enforcement agency in the USA will be able to identify your child if he or she is found in another community. If you have any doubt that the police have entered the information into the computer system, you have the right to ask the FBI to make the entry for you.
  7. Contact the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 800-THE LOST (800-843-5678). The Center is a nonprofit organization that serves as a clearing house for information on missing and exploited children. They can verify that your child’s information is entered into the NCIC Missing Person File. One of their communications specialists will take information concerning your child and assign a case manager who may able able to follow up with you and the police department investigating the case. They may also be able to refer you to support groups in your community that can also help.

Safety Suggestions

What Your Children Should Know

  • Full name, address and full telephone number (including one parent’s work number).
  • How to call the operator and make a long distance call.

What You Should Know

  • Maintains accurate, up-to-date records. If you move, get copies of records to keep until new clinicians are found.
  • Know how to obtain your child’s medical and dental records quickly in an emergency, including X-rays and documentation of all scars, birthmarks and broken bones.
  • Observe what your children wear every day.
  • Know your child’s route to school, friends’ full names, where they live and how to contact them.

What You Should Do

  • Arrange with local police to have proper fingerprints made of your child and take advantage of any state program to take DNA samples, ensuring your keep the only records in a safe place in your home.
  • Update candid close-up photographs and videos of your child at different angles every 6 months.
  • Update a written description of your child, including hair and eye color, height, weight and date of birth, and descriptors such as eyeglasses or contact lenses, piercings, braces and unique physical attributes.
  • Instruct all caregivers (for whom you checked references and qualifications) not to release your child to anyone but you without your permission.
  • Establish a safe place where your children can go in case of trouble.

What You Should Not Do

  • Children’s names should not appear on clothing or other personal articles where a stranger can easily see it. A child is more likely to respond if called by name.
  • Children should never be left alone in a car or supermarket cart.

What You Should Tell Your Children

  • Call you if they change agreed-upon plans.
  • Always stay with a friend or group and never go to isolated places.
  • Go to the checkout counter or clerk when separated form you while shopping – never the parking lot.
  • When home alone, never answer the door or tell someone over the phone they’re alone.
  • Grownups don’t need to ask children for help. If a stranger asks them for help, it’s best to ignore them, leave the scene immediately and tell a parent about it.
  • Say “no” if an adult makes them uncomfortable, asks them to something or touches them inappropriately.
  • Kick, scream, fight and yell, “This is not my daddy or mommy!” if a stranger tries to force them to do something.
  • If abducted, they should leave their hair in the car and spit all over the door handles and other places in the car.