Teach yer children well

Considering the oft-emailed story about a toddler found after the 2004 Tsunami who was described as being "too young to adequately identify himself to rescuers" (who was reunited with his family -- see snopes.com, so stop emailing that story, please), to yield the following working theory:

Of course, parents teach their kids their own phone number and address, etc, in case they ever get separated or lost.  But maybe, especially for a really young child, it would be best to specifically teach the child to respond to the question someone will probably ask him -- for instance, drill the child to respond to the question, "What is your Mommy's name?" with mom's First Name Last Name.  Or "do you know your address? / Do you know where you live?" with Our Address.  Etc.

I guess my idea is to teach the child the pattern of the conversation that would occur in that situation, so that if it ever does, they know how to answer the questions.  Mommy's name may be (in normal daily life) "Mommy" -- but the answer to the question "What is your Mommy's name?" is Meg Smith.  Maybe I'm being overly clever, I dunno.  <shrug>

It's awfully easy to have ideas about kids before you have them, but I *do* have memories of getting lost in department stores as a small child, and people trying to help me, but I think I was too embarrassed at my situation to allow them to help me....And once, at summer camp, going into a large public restroom looking for my mom (at probably 5 or 6 yrs old), along with 10 other little girls looking for THEIR moms, and all the little girls were yelling "Mom!" or "Mommy!" and women's' voices were coming from the closed stalls -- "Jenny, is that you?" "Clarrissa?" etc.  I observed this mess, and considered what to do, and then called out "Susan?" and my mom answered me right away -- and the silence was sudden as the other little girls turned to see how I had managed to get my mom to recognize me so quickly.