Tattoos are personal things. And so are our children. Sometimes, the two combine, and here are 10 stories of parents getting inked for their children.
- A couple of years ago, Steven and Gloria Kimmel lost their little son, Isaac, to a disease before he even reached a year old. After that, they decided to honor him by getting matching wing tattoos across the tops of their backs.
In a photo that went viral, the couple has placed their newborn daughter, Claire, between them, looking as though the wings are hers.
Says Steven: “The tattoo was meant to be his angel wings. He was half of each of us, so we each had one of his wings to hold us. He was the angel that was holding us together when we were so lost without him. The tattoos are a reminder that he is always with us in spirit.”
- A birthmark can be a strange thing. Often it can lend to someone in the way of their beauty. For others, it can be more of a nightmare.
Little Honey-Rae Phillips had complications at her birth, and it played a part in her developing a permanent long red mark that covered half of her right side.
Well, obviously her parents, Adam and Tonya, were concerned about the stares and hushed talk she would get about it. So, out of love for their daughter, both parents were inked with red marks so their little girl will always know they are with her in everything.
- A tragic car crash claimed the lives of a woman and her six-year-old daughter. Now, the woman’s husband, Ian, has to live with that.
Just a couple of days before the crash, Ian’s little girl, Mya, could see that he was having a tough time one day after he got home from work, so she wrote him a letter to cheer him up.
It read: To daddy, I love you more then enything. Lots of love, Mya… with kisses and hearts.
A short time after the accident, Ian had that letter tattooed onto his left arm, an exact duplicate of her writing and spelling. It’s a constant reminder of the little girl who loved him, and the little girl he’ll never let go of.
- When Charlotte was 4 years old, she was diagnosed to be deaf, so she had to have a cochlear implant attached to her left ear. To support his little girl, her father, Alistair, shaved his head and had a nearly identical tattoo put on the side of his head of what his daughter was now having to wear.
When Charlotte saw the tattoo for the first time, she touched it and giggled, and told her dad it was “cool.”
- In Australia, Brad Kearns’s first son was stillborn. After his funeral, Brad had exact duplicate handprints of his little boy placed around his neck in a cuddle position so he could always remember the little boy he calls Buddy.
Says Brad: “These are the hands of our first son. His name was ‘Buddy.’ It wasn’t always going to be his name, but it seemed right at the time. When we met him for the first time and he was peacefully sleeping, it just seemed so right. He was my little Buddy. These handprints serve as my daily reminder.”
- Lindsay Peace has had tattoos of all three of her children inked somewhere on her body.
One of them was the girl that was born to them that they call Ace, in a tattoo pose crossing her legs and blowing a dandelion. But as Ace grew older, she knew something was wrong. She just didn’t feel right… as a girl.
Ace is transgender, and to honor that, mom Lindsay had her tattoo of a girl altered to show a young boy in the exact same pose.
- While some of the younger ones around us older folks are clinging to the trend of tattoos, one mother nearing her 50s has decided to join the ranks of the inked by having the face of her daughter put on her forearm.
But Lonnie Taylor didn’t have just any old portrait of her daughter, Rhandi, put on her. She had the tattoo done up in the style of ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertiti, complete with that very recognizable headdress.
And she did this because she loves her 18-year-old daughter AND Egyptian history and culture.
- 8-year-old Gabriel Marshall of Kansas had surgery to remove a brain tumor. It left a nasty scar on the right side of his head. The young boy told his dad that he felt like a monster with that ugly scar.
So his father, Josh, had an exact duplicate of the scar tattooed on his own head.
Josh told his son: “If people want to stare, then they can stare at both of us.”
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