Tips For A Family Emergency Plan
Consider this: A crisis, any crisis such as a flood, pandemic, or tornado, makes you unable to care for the people who depend on you. What kind of Family Emergency Plan did you have in place for that situation?
Whether or not your children could survive without you is not a topic that any parent truly wants to consider. But it’s very important. Staying informed and sparking your children’s interests are the first steps for that plan.
Staying informed and finding out what disasters are most likely to happen in your area and the history of their occurrence. Stay informed of any specific instructions or information you may need to know regarding these specific disasters.
Half of the battle with children is getting them to want to learn. You need to get them interested. If you approach the topic incorrectly, you may as well be speaking to a brick wall. Worse yet, your children may develop an aversion to the entire concept of getting on without you.
Could Your Kids Carry On Without You In A Disaster?
Most children in the industrialized world today don’t have much in terms of survival skills. But as their parent, you can change that and significantly increase their chances of survival in a worst-case scenario.
There is no one proven technique to make any child a prepper at heart. You have to do what works for your child.
Maybe your child has the personality that would be easiest swayed if you made everything into a game.
Maybe your child is an over-achiever? Give him or her more responsibilities and tasks while keeping motivation running high.
Maybe your child is more socially motivated? Make Emergency Preparedness something you do together, and let your child be a confidant in your family emergency plan – to a certain degree.
Planning For Your Own Demise
It’s not a lovely thought, imagining what would happen if you were not around, whether you are far away or something far more sinister.
Nonetheless, this is what you must do for the sake of your family.
Think about what would happen in the various disaster scenarios you have been working to prepare for if you were not around.
If you don’t like the way that plays out with your kids flying solo, then it’s time to create an alternative plan that swings into action if you are not there.
If your children are not old enough to be expected to take care of themselves, you must arrange for someone to help them, and they must know how to contact that person.
Even if they are old enough to get to a safe house or the storm, you must ensure they know the plan by heart. Drills are your best friend.
A Family Emergency Bug-Out Bag
Planning a bug out is difficult as it is, but it is all the more difficult when you are planning to hightail it out of there with children.
Young children and teenagers cannot carry as much as adults, so to be safe, pack most of your family’s supplies in the main bag and let the children carry less.
This becomes a problem when you’re not there. Who will carry the main supplies? You will have to figure out this to help save your children.
If a friend agrees to be their bug-out leader, in case you cannot fulfill the role, will that friend be able to come to the house and pick up that bag?
If not, you will have to figure something out, such as supplying your friend with a bag of his or her own or caching supplies at a meeting point.
Bug-out skills
If your child has a bug-out bag, you already have a list of necessary skill sets: Your child needs to know how to properly use all of the items in his or her bag!
There is little use in giving your children tents, camping stoves, paracords, and water purification filters if they don’t know what to do with them.
An emergency situation is no time to start figuring things out. Practice this family emergency plan regularly!
First Aid For Emergency Planning
In addition to knowing your ‘bug out’ and ‘bug in’ plans and having the right tools available, your children must have some skills.
Quite possibly, one of the most important skills for anyone, survivalist or not, is some rudimentary knowledge of how to provide first aid.
We don’t necessarily have to make our children into field physicians, but they need to know enough to patch up themselves and their siblings.
The sense of self-reliance and self-confidence that comes from knowing such things is often almost as important as the skill itself.
Emergency Tool Usage And Safety
In addition to all the things your child has in his or her bug-out bag, you will have to practice using various tools safely.
If your children are going to shelter in place without you, they will have to be able to use all of the tools that come with that job.
And they are going to have to use them safely!
Many parents balk at the idea of putting a large sharp survival knife, a saw, or any such tool in their children’s hands, but the sooner they learn safe tool usage, the safer they will be.
Assuming they have the concentration and coordination to use the tools safely under your supervision, that is! I’m not advocating handing a baby a box cutter!
Basic Emergency Survival Skills
Given how much there is to prepare your children for, it is a bit much to try to teach them hardcore skills like surviving in the wild for two weeks with nothing but a knife…
…however, start them off on some basic wilderness and urban survival skills nonetheless!
Finding water is a very important skill to learn, for example. Identifying plants that are poisonous to the touch is another.
You want your children to know how to behave around wild animals, seen and unseen, and many other things.
As you can see, preparing your children for the eventuality that they will have to get through an emergency on their own does not have to be terribly difficult.
But it does require taking some time and serious thinking. So until next time, help your children to stay prepared!
One of the biggest challenges every emergency survival plan has to go through is getting your family on board with the survivalist lifestyle.
It can be very difficult for spouses and children to understand why their parent or loved one insists on spending so much time and effort preparing for an event that may never occur.
While no fully prepared person actually wants disaster to strike, they want to be ready to have a leg up on survival in the unlikely event that all hell breaks loose.
Hard Reasons For An Emergency Survival Plan
Food issues, water, medical supplies, and other tools and gear are important elements to ensure the immediate survival of you and your family after disaster strikes.
And while disasters can sometimes bring out the best in people as they lend their neighbors a helping hand, a crisis situation can also bring out the worst in people and foster a state of lawlessness wherein looting and violence prevail.
That’s why the element of security and self-defense prepping is equally important to ensure your and your family’s safety and survival. But unfortunately, most individuals don’t have what it takes to act as the sole security force for an entire family unit.
No matter how many guns you have, how much time you’ve spent at the range or how well-defended your home perimeter may be, you alone cannot ensure your family’s survival – especially if they don’t know how to defend themselves. You are not there to help them.
That’s why it’s incredibly important for you to teach your family how to defend and fend for themselves and each other in preparation for when disaster strikes.
You can still do everything in your power to make sure they never have to fire a shot or throw a punch, but the time may come when you aren’t there to protect them, and your loved ones may have to take matters into their own hands.
Children don’t possess the same instincts as adults regarding sensing danger. You likely notice when a strange person or car is lurking about, or if someone says something suspicious or alarming, your guard will go up, and instincts will scream that something isn’t right.
Children only know a world of security and protection, surrounded by their families, teachers, and caregivers. How can they know who they should fear and what measures they must take to protect themselves from danger?
Speaking To The Kids About Emergency Planning
The best way to teach your children about safety and self-defense is to speak to them in a way that conveys confidence that they can take the appropriate measures to protect themselves should disaster strike.
Ultimately it’s up to you when and what to teach your children about the potential dangers and threats in the world, but you should help them learn what types of things should cause red flags to be raised and how to distinguish good from bad.
Think about it: Kids are taught to keep their hands to themselves early and not to hit, bite, scratch or yell at others.
But if their life is on the line in a disaster survival scenario, they must be taught that it is okay to throw these standards out the window for the sake of self-defense. They mustn’t fear getting in trouble for protecting themselves against an attacker or home invader.
Teaching The Children About Emergency Preparedness
Children can be enrolled in self-defense classes (such as martial arts) as early as they see fit. These classes can teach confidence, survival tips, discipline, and personal physical protection skills, all of which will help your little one learn the principles of fight versus flight in survival scenarios.
If you have firearms in your home, you can begin teaching them proper shooting techniques as soon as they can physically hold a gun and handle the effects of recoil while aiming and hitting a human-sized target.
That said, your family should be taught that guns are last-resort measures that only invite heartbreak, as taking human life or inflicting serious injury is an incredibly emotionally daunting endeavor.
When not in use for practice-shooting purposes, guns should be locked away in secure areas and only made accessible to your children when all order disappears. They are needed for home or personal protection.
Unfortunately, the larger your family unit and/or the larger your property, the more difficult it will be for you to take care of security measures by yourself.
The same goes for families with very young children, elderly relatives, and disabled members, all of whom are unlikely to be able to defend themselves and must rely on the protection of others.
This begs the importance of establishing a multi-layered defense wherein each family member serves a role that benefits the greater good of the group and its overall security.
A larger family may mean more mouths to feed and lives to protect. Still, it also presents an opportunity to create a larger defensive force capable of protecting a larger perimeter.
As the cliche goes, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Similarly, your family is only as strong as its youngest, weakest, or poorly trained member.
Aside from hand-to-hand self-defense and firearms training, all family members must be on board with a plan for reacting when their backs are against the wall.
Everyone should be familiar with primary and secondary exit plans, meet-up points, and communication plans to coordinate and regroup if your home or shelter is compromised.
In many cases, it will still be up to you to act as the leader of your family unit. This means you may end up putting your life on the line for your family and be the first person to respond to an attack, whether on the road or at home.
Ideally, you can deter or eliminate a potential threat and allow the rest of your family to find cover. That’s why when you’re teaching your family about self-defense, they should be told that: A) confrontation should be avoided at all costs and B) always seek cover and concealment before attempting to engage a threat head-on.
So, do you want to wait until all hell breaks loose to establish an emergency family plan for you, your family, and your home? Or would you rather take action now and get everyone geared up and trained to defend themselves against the dangers of a post-disaster world?
Protect What Matters Most When A Crisis Hits: Your Loved Ones
It’s more than just a plan; it’s a promise to your family.
When the unpredictable strikes, you don’t want regrets. By now, you’ve grasped the weight of a well-structured family emergency plan. The next step?
Sit down with your loved ones this weekend, map your plan, and rehearse it. Don’t let the “what ifs” keep you up at night. Remember, you’ve got the power to shield your family from chaos.
So, dive in, start plotting, and let your actions shout, “I’ve got this!” Take that leap – for your peace of mind and their safety. Let’s do it together today.
