Through work with disaster-affected children throughout the world, the humanitarian community has incorporated child protection as an essential element of a country’s first response to crisis. Three principles have emerged. First, responders must be guided by a commitment to both assistance and protection of children. Second, child protection efforts should reflect the principle of family unity. Finally, response and reconstruction must be guided by the continuity principle. This principle focuses on the importance of maintaining the child’s existing individual, familial, organizational and communal strengths and resources. Based on the authors’ field work in Aceh and Louisiana, this article critically examines the child protection responses post-Indian Ocean Tsunami and post- Hurricane Katrina. The complete lack of attention to child protection concerns post- Katrina contrasts sharply with the nearly textbook child protection response to the tsunami. The evaluation of this contrast reveals the many lessons that developed countries could learn from their counterparts in the developing world.