Preparing the kids

Preparation, Preparedness & Prevention Disaster Preparation & Planning
1

In all my prepping these past few years, I’ve been questioned many times about why, why spend all this money on guns and food and crazy things like body armor and a garden, people would think I’m a nut if they knew that I have body armor and guns and I’m actually looking five minutes into my future for potential bad shit going down…
And I had a moment of clarity. I realized I’m gonna drop dead someday, and what in Sam Hell are my wife (well…she’s as ready as I am, it’s my duty as a husband to care for her but she’s pretty independent and doesn’t need much babying) and my kids gonna do?
So, the kids became more central in my preps. They’re getting to the age where they get the concept of preparedness, they’ve each got a good (and stubborn) head on their shoulders. So I’ve been training them more, PT is a big part of it, and they’ve been keeping a close eye on world events for me (they can do the internet thing better than I).

Anyway, I realized that through all of the defecation plummeting towards the oscillation right now, I’m preparing for them (and with them, they’re very driven to get prepped, guess I did something right :D). As a father it’s my job to keep an eye out for this sort of thing til the pups are ready to dig their own den, so to speak.

I’d assume all the fathers (and mothers, too) are with me on this.

So, on that note, what are you doing to prepare your kids? I started small: Boy Scouts. They’re on track for Eagle (things I wish I’d done as a child…) and they love it. I’ve been taking them hiking as much as humanly possible, and range trips are a bi-weekly affair, they whine if I don’t bring them. My oldest is also firmly in charge of stocking and storing ammo, sharpening all the knives in the house (there is a chore I’m glad to never deal with again, aren’t kids great?), and rotating the food stores. My youngest is in love with ham/CB radio, and enjoys cleaning guns, feeding the animals, and tending the garden, as well as laying out an impressive system of interlocking fields of fire around the house. He figured out, with geometry, the best vantage points in the house to shoot from, how to fortify them, and where people are most likely to approach the house from.

So, what have all you done on the subject of readying the kids for TSHTF?

2

I have to agree. So many times kids are left out of the planning. One critical thing is the age of the children. Toddlers require a whole different set of preps than an 8 year old who requires different preps from a 14 year old.

Right now I’m lucky. My eldest is 20 and has chosen to be on her own. My next two are 13 1/2 (G) and 12 (B). So far they share our political / societal beliefs. More importantly they are now a whole lot self sufficient.

Next up is that they have been in scouting since they were first eligible. My daughter since kindergarten and my son since 1st grade. My wife was my daughters’ troop leader, I am still a registered Girl Scout (don’t look at me that way :smiley: ). I am also Assistant Scoutmaster at my sons troop. The advantage to this is that we were able to tailor the programs, while staying within GSA and BSA rules and guidelines, to teach these kids more of what we consider to be critical skills.

On top of this we go camping on our own a lot, shooting, our 13 yo loves canning they both are into food selection and doing what they can, though getting them in the garden can be a chore.

So one of the biggest components is psychological conditioning (AKA raising your children). The bigger problem is an issue of age. Right now the biggest challenge we face with the kids is their size, or rather their constantly changing size. They are both at the age where they cut through shoes and clothing due to growth, in short order. I can buy a pair of boots and have them last for a long time. I can buy my son a pair of sneakers and he will out grow them in 3 months.

The 2nd biggest problem I see is their age and size. The smaller and younger the child, the more your resources are drained in caring for them while trying to accomplish other tasks. Please talk about mutual assistance groups all the time. A MUG can be critical to a family with young children.

3

My son is 4 and this is one of my main problems prepping for him. i just dont have the money to keep up like i should.

I do plan on getting him into scouting. My dad was my scout master and there are alot of fond memories.

4

Great thread. And cool kids… “laying out an impressive system of interlocking fields of fire…” Nice!

I’ve come into disaster prep’ing late and so my strategy is different for my two “groups” of kids. The teenagers are amused by the kooky turn their dad has taken. They get it but don’t live it yet… I think my job for them is provide a sane and rational example and let them come to it on their own. They’re out of the house soon… too late to push them into being something other than what they want to be.

The pre-schoolers are young enough to learn the lifestyle but they’re still young. I’m starting them with more immediate danger response type stuff… gunman walks into the restaurant, forest fire sneaks up on the house… the kind of thing that demands instant action. So we’re about to start training for a family code word that makes even the 3-yr old drop everything and await orders. The guys on GunTalk have been talking about this a lot lately… regardless your feelings about the show, I think it’s actually a great idea. And the kids get on board with it… Pavlov was right about his dogs.

5

We recently had a moment when my wife actually suggested that we improve our situation a bit.:smiley: She mentioned that she wanted to return to the range a lot more regularly and that she thought that we should increase our stores. I am pleased and surprised by her attitude. Living in sub-sahara Africa for a number of years made a positive impression on her. That, and some recent local events have opened her eyes to reality.
HES is absolutely correct that preparing for toddlers is different than for an 8 year old.
My son is racing toward his second birthday so I will have the opportunity to provide an education for him about preparedness. Clothes and shoes are the hardest at the moment. He grows faster than the grass. We have a nice library for him that carries him to about three years old. We add to the book collection regularly by purchasing classic children’s reading material. I need to start his collection of classic adventure and hunting tales this summer. I think, overall, preparing to educate a young child is the hardest part of this process.

6

My kids have been in the mix since they could walk by incorporating prepping skills into family activities such as camping, fishing, gardening, helping the wife while canning and jarring and hunting when they were old enough to do so. Since they go to the range with me two to three times a month their firearm safety and usage is better then most adults we see at the range.

They know how to store and rotate food so with that and the above skills they have a good understanding of basic prepping.