Travelling with Young Children – Passport Requirements

Traveling with children requires a lot of preparation. Which travel destinations are suitable for children? Are there extra facilities for children at your destination? Ensure whether the hotel you are planning to stay is child-friendly? These are all questions that need to find answers to before you decide to travel with your children. Backpacking for a child or children sounds amazing but it’s not as easy as it looks. It’s not always easy to decide what to bring from home what food you can buy from streets? If this is the first time that you are going abroad with your child, then he needs a passport or identity card. Yes, children under 18 (all infants, toddlers and adults) need their own passport or ID card when traveling abroad. As a parent traveling alone with your child, a permission document is sometimes also required. Check early if a consent form is needed.

Documents You Must Have

Children including adults (up to the age of 15) could be added to the passport of one of the parents. In 2009 the European Union already decided not to allow this anymore. This is due to the established safety standards. Each person's biometric data must be included in the passport. One of these biometric data is a facial image. Now it is compulsory for all children to have their own passport to travel abroad. Now that children are no longer allowed to be credited in the passport of one of the parents. More frequent checks are made to see whether there is actually a relationship between the child and the accompanying adult. This happens especially if the children have a different surname. It is therefore important that you also take additional documents with you when traveling with underage children. As extra documents it is best to take a copy of the birth certificate or a recent extract from the register of authority.

Ask the Authorities

Of course it is always interesting to contact the embassy of the country you are traveling to before the actual trip. This way you will immediately know whether they have additional requirements in this regard.

Photo Requirements for a Children's Passport

Just like yours, an official passport photo is also required for your children. What is very important is that there should be no visible support on the photo. This actually means that you have to hold the baby so that your hands cannot be seen. This is of course not always easy. That’s why we recommend to capture photos at home and order passport photos online. This way you get chance to click the best shot that meets the requirements. After all, it is not always easy for children under the age of six and especially for very young children to adopt a nice straight posture when a passport photo is taken. Many young children also tend to laugh or look surprised when a photo is taken. The passport photo of your kid must meet the requirements. For passport photos for children under six, the requirements in terms of posture and facial expression are slightly more flexible. Children up to the age of 6 may also be in the photo laughing! They must not meet the following requirements: Posture: eyes open on a horizontal line, head tilted and shoulders straight. Expression: neutral look, looking straight into the camera and mouth closed.