Kids and prepping

Tell us what you have and maybe we can fill in the blanks as best as we can.

Thank you all for your advise its good to know you can always ask.
By the way traveller im a boy but thanks for the advise anyway haha.

Can I ask: those of you who have survived the toddler, preschooler and young child years...what advice would you give for prepping for a SHTF situation with these ages? I'm trying to cover all my bases here but I feel that all you older and wiser parents probably have some AMAZING ideas and insights.

Hey Mamabear 🙂
One thing I found valuable was to de-commercialize my kids when they were young.
By this I mean for example reduce toys and get them to enjoy playing with shells, stones, sticks etc that can be found in nature, that way if they are in a bug out situation they won't be crying for their toys and unable to amuse themselves with simple things. We still do this when we go to the river sometimes making little teepee's with sticks and rocks etc
Playing games like hide and seek which teaches them from an early age to hide and be quiet is great.
Good age to teach them some simple sign language so they can communicate silently with you if need be and it is fun and can also amuse in a bug out situation with minimal stuff to entertain.
I will think of more ideas when my head isn't being deafen by bagpipes 😆

Think back to Little House in the Big Woods...corn cob dolls, pigs bladder balls, pumpkins became dolls furniture etc I think with kids especially little kids the more capable they are of amusing themselves the less you will need to prep in any special way for them.
My neighbour still thinks her kids are to young to do the dishes at 8 & 10!!!
Teach them the 'mundane' tasks as early as possible, my kids loved doing the dishes when they were 4 & 5 playing with the bubbles and occasionally they even washed a dish too 🙂

I read an article recently and damn I wish I could find it again but it was sighting a six year old Amazonian girl who went on a trip with other villagers, not her parents, and she collected shell fish for them and cooked them as well. She behaved like a little adult in many ways pitching into the work.

Teach your little one about wild food, they always love that when they are little 🙂

Our society has gone so wrong in thinking kids are there to be entertained rather than a productive member of the family.

I read a statement once about the Amish, which being in Australia I have never been exposed to but it went something like this...
From 0 to 7 a child will cost you
From 7 to 14 you should be breaking even
14 and over should be making you a profit

I tried in my own ignorant way to do this with my kids with some level of success and happy with the results.
At a young age a lot of this happens as part of play 🙂

Thanks Cares! We're doing pretty darn good on the de-comercialization. When our little one was born, my husband and I wrote a "toy manifesto" entitled 'Elmo can't date my daughter' and we put it up on our family blog to keep the people in her life on track with our goals for her. The rules are pretty simple: no licensed characters of any kind, no TV, no plastic toys and no name-brand anything. Clothes, shoes, toys, etc. All the stuff in her life is good quality, open-ended toys that she loves. I loved dolls so much as a kid (Cabbage patch!) and for her first birthday she got her Waldorf doll that I made for her over a few months. We're REALLY happy with how we've been doing and it's getting easier on the grandparents to find stuff that fits with our wishes!

LOVE that idea about hide and seek! Love it. I'm really worried about her making noise but that's a great way to introduce the concept. We're starting that today! We've been doing sign language with her and she's pretty adept for her age. I think we'll work on expanding her vocabulary. I'm trying to include her 'helping' me throughout the day now too.

I'm doing her BOB right now and I'm having problems doing so. For instance: clothing. How on earth do I make sure this kid is gonna have shoes and clothes to fit her? I'm not worried about say, a three week stint, but if it's forever? How do you prepare for that while still being portable? Crazy. I'm mostly gathering stuff from second-hand kids stores in all sizes right now but it's kinda daunting. And medical. Oy. There's a fun one to plan for too! She's already accident prone. Sigh.... I'm not worried about stuff to keep her entertained because, like you said, she's totally able to keep herself amused with whatever's around her. And for the most part she'll be 'helping' me anyway. I am worried about education (we are MAJOR book readers in our family and she's the queen of the library!) . And health. And how not to freak her out for the rest of her life but still have her be prepared for anything that's coming.

Hey that sounds great Mamabear 😀
I raised mine that way and it is great having kids that don't even know what the latest fads are let alone wish to follow them.
I homeschooled my kids and as long as they are taught a love of learning, which I think is a natural thing in children that is destroyed by the school system, then teaching them is of little concern, as soon as they can read and write they will devour knowledge.
Books are a concern in a 'forever' bug out situation as they are big and heavy so not the thing you want to be carrying...I haven't a good solution to this problem unfortunately. You can't rely on electronic books working, I could almost cry for the knowledge that will be lost if things get turned off and people haven't purchased hard copies of books...knowledge is power and we would be plunged back into the dark ages, with a lack of books and peoples current poor reading skills.

I have found that children who love to read generally also love to write. My kids use to take one of DD's rag dolls 'David' on many adventures and write stories about them 'like the time he was attacked by a tiger' hmmm yes a tiger in Australia, it was our cat and it gored him and he needed stitching up 😉

Yes clothes are a concern for little ones, I used to just be buying clothes and shoes a couple of sizes to big when I found them but that isn't much good in a bug out and you can only carry so much. I you have a BOL you could store some larger clothes there as well as some books???

We are not looking at bugging out so I seriously have nothing prepared in that way, we aren't in an area prone to natural disasters and if war comes here then I think everywhere else will be well and truly stuffed anyway 😕

one tip for all of you guys and girls with children is going to the toilet.
if you are bugging out make them go to the toilet very often. if you encounter someone else on your bugout and their nerves spike it induces your need to urinate.
this for kids could mean 1. they run off to find a spot to pee and are spotted by the person you found(could be hostile or even a predator) 2. the wet themselves, when they wet themselves they will smell a little which could alert the person it also makes noise and even if you aren't spotted later on in the bugout you are going to have to be washing clothes instead of making shelter, fire, snares etc etc.

Good point Marl 🙂

Totally a good point Marl! We're not at the potty trained stage just yet though...we're starting that just after the new year hopefully.
Cares: in this case, we don't really have a choice to bug out...we're in the middle of a major city and it's not going to be fun sticking around here for very long. That being said, we're also in a place that can reach -35 in the winter (which is just around the corner...ugh.) so we might just have to stick around if it hits temps like that.
I'm really stressed out about this. Can you tell? 🙄 When it was just my husband and me, no worries. Now that we've got a little one it serves to focus your efforts right quick. Any suggestions for staying SANE while thinking up every possible worst case scenario? This parenting thing has gotten a lot harder around here as of late...

sadly i dont really know much about staying sane mamabear all i can say to help is go do something that really pushes your limits.
i had a school camp earlier this year and the on the mountain bike they took us further than normal. the result of that is on the way back our bodys started to use the food in our stomachs for energy making us all VERY hungry. although its hard to do this in a situation where you are stretched to your mental limits you need to find a way to tell yourself it is worth it. get some sort of inspiration(i imagine kids could do the trick) or just write "It'll be worth it" on the back of your pack because in the end it really is, but at the time you get that little part of your brain that says "take a sleep" or "you may aswell give up" "you're never going to make it" and you start to believe it. i think in a bugout it will be easier cas you can take breaks on your walk but if you know you have to be their quick you will probably encounter this sort of thinking. i really dont know how to keep sane once you reach camp though. i only really know the mentality of the initial walk. if it were to hit right now i could probably make it to my location but once there i would become frustrated and tired and probably wouldn't be able to deal with it at all. but i know one thing for sure is never to underestamate the mental aspect of prepping. very well you may have all the gear you need to survive but someone with nothing but the mental aspect could come and take all of your gear and you would lose the moral to keep going.
i dont really know much about kids because i have never had them but i imagine when your at camp you would be looking after them which would help? but i suggest having a good look into the mental aspect of it because it really does matter.

one tip for all of you guys and girls with children is going to the toilet.
if you are bugging out make them go to the toilet very often. if you encounter someone else on your bugout and their nerves spike it induces your need to urinate.
this for kids could mean 1. they run off to find a spot to pee and are spotted by the person you found(could be hostile or even a predator) 2. the wet themselves, when they wet themselves they will smell a little which could alert the person it also makes noise and even if you aren't spotted later on in the bugout you are going to have to be washing clothes instead of making shelter, fire, snares etc etc.

Pay that!!!

- G-O-O-D O-N-E - Marlprepper!

Never gave that a thought - that was something they trained us in - 'smell like a local', otherwise perfumed deodorants/smoking and such can be smelt a long way out - it is surprising how sensitive you become to smells when your made go 'el-natural', will add a little garden tralle???? ( those little garden shovel things about 30cms long you get in garden centres for the pack - not sure of proper name) or get one of them surplus fold-up ones for the vehicle.

Never had to deal with temperatures of -35 mamabear and I don't think I would know where to start, the coldest we get on a really cold year is -9 perfectly sultry compared with what you have!

Mamabear. Sticking it out at -35 is a common sense thought. If anyone were to get stranded there would be no help. One would quickly die being exposed to the elements. Try starting a fire bugging out in winter. It is a pain in the ass. 2-3 feet of snow in the bush that should be cleared for fire. Then there is shelter on top of that. The thought of leaving in those temps is upsetting my tummy. However the cold temps would keep the Americans south.

Too true Gravlore. Too true. -35 sucks hard with a huge feather duvet, hot cocoa, a roaring fire and walls all around me with the furnace blasted. The thought of bugging out during that makes me sick to my stomach too.

Speaking of Kids and Prepping: It turns out that my most of my grown kids are Preppers too. Imagine that! I was pleasantly surprised to be able to engage in a 'real' conversation with them this summer - their preps,their thoughts, their dreams (BOL), plans, etc. Awesome!! I guess they were actually paying attention as they were growing up after all......