The Prepared Child

If you ask most people why they are prepping, the immediate response is “For my children.”  We want to give them a chance at surviving whatever disaster may befall the world as we know it today.  Through our own research, preppers know better than anyone the terrible results of a disaster.

Most of us have covered many of the bases in disaster preparedness as far as food, shelter and self-defense are concerned.  Children, however, have a psychological need for security and stability that require other types of preparations.

Obviously, the stability you normally provide will be completely rocked if you have to grab your bug-out bags and set off on foot in the middle of the night one terrible evening.  Surviving a horrific natural disaster that wipes out a child’s familiar home will take a bite out of any child’s sense of security.

We must prepare our children by building their natural resilience.  Like any other characteristic we want to instil in our kids, (like honesty or kindness) positive reinforcement and repetition can bring these natural traits to the forefront.

Teach your kids to think critically.

The ability to think for one’s self is vital in a survival situation.  Kids have to know that their own logic and instincts are to be respected, and that just because someone is an “authority figure” it doesn’t mean that person has their best interests at heart.  Sometimes this can be difficult for us as parents, since we expect (okay, we’d like it a lot!!!) our kids to obey us immediately and without question.  We have to temper that desire with the encouragement of reasonable questions from our kids.

Ask your kids the following questions to ingrain the habit of critical thinking.

1. Why do you think I want you to do this?
2. When watching a movie or TV show, pause the program to question the actions of the characters with your kids.  Did you see how the man asked that little boy for help? What do you think the boy should do?  If someone asked you to do this, how would you react?
3. How does this (choose a current event) affect us? What do you think about what is going on?