How to Help Your Kids Find Their Address In an Emergency

If you’ve ever called 000, you know that one of the first things they ask you — often before you’ve even said why you’re calling — is your location. So when you’re teaching your kids how to dial emergency numbers on your phone, make sure they know their address, too. A sticker can help.

The U.S. CDC tweeted an address hack the other day: stick one of your return address labels on your phone. I remember address stickers from the days of landline phones, and it’s still handy to see an address label on a phone you might need to use when, say, ordering a pizza from the office. But you can use this tip for cell phones, too.

Do the kids in your household know their home address? If they ever need to call 911, they will need to tell operators where to send help. Put a return address label on the backs of household phones for easy reference. Learn more: https://t.co/U2wBSFEHBY #PrepYourHealth pic.twitter.com/InGJcg9MSp

— CDC Emergency (@CDCemergency) August 25, 2021

Just print or write your address on a sticker, or use one of those address labels you get randomly in the mail, and put it on the back of your cell phone. (Don’t want to show off your address to the world? Open up your phone case and stick it inside there. Just make sure the kids know about it.)

If you haven’t talked with your child about how and when to call for emergency help, we have a whole guide to that here.

Now, it might seem silly to expect that a kid who is old enough to read an address label might not remember their own address, but it happens, especially if they don’t need to tell people their address very often and aren’t in practice.

While you’re at it, consider asking grandparents and other caregivers to use address labels themselves — either on the phone, or by posting their address in a known area of the house. That way, if a kid ever needs to call in an emergency at Grandma’s house, they’ll know where to find the address if they recall it from memory.