As a parent, you understandably want your children to grow up to be strong, independent individuals who can care for themselves. In most cases, this involves teaching your children how to communicate, understand basic subjects like math and science, cook and clean, and instill the importance of good ethics.
However, another important thing to teach your children that many parents often overlook is survival skills. In life, you never know what could happen, so it’s essential to give your children the best chance no matter what comes their way, including emergencies and disasters.
Outdoor primitive survival skills and survival prepping are just as important as teaching your kids their ABCs and 123s. And it’s never too early to start. In fact, the earlier you start teaching your children how to survive should disaster strike, the better. Kids absorb more when they are younger and, thus, will only get better, stronger, and more knowledgeable as they grow up if you start teaching them at a young age.
So let’s take a look at the steps you can take to teach your children about emergency prepping and how to survive in the wild.
Talk to Your Kids About Emergency Preparedness and the Importance of Survival Skills
Before you dive right into teaching your children outdoor survival skills, it’s helpful to have a brief discussion with them first to help them understand and to prepare their emotional state. Teaching kids how to survive in the wild at a young age is great, but it can also be scary and overwhelming if you don’t first help them understand.
So start by talking to your kids about what emergency preparedness is and why it’s important. Help them understand that while you are there to protect them and keep them safe, it’s good for them to learn how to protect themselves as well.
Again, you want to be mindful of their age and emotional state, but you also what to teach your child to be strong and independent and to have some grit. If they rely entirely on you for everything all the time, they will have a harder time learning how to take care of themselves in the great outdoors if a disaster does occur.
Start With the Basics of Primitive Survival
After you’ve talked to your children about emergency preparedness and the importance of learning to survive should disaster strike, it’s time to show them what to do in those situations. When starting them young, or at any age really, it’s generally best to start with the basics.
There are so many skills you can teach your kids when it comes to surviving in the wild. But it’s a good idea not to overwhelm them right away. And when it comes down to it, these five survival skills are the ones they most need to know to help them get by in an emergency.
1. Water
First things first, teach them how to find clean water. Most kids today are used to having their basic needs easily met with things like food and water readily available to them. So it can be challenging for them to know how to find clean drinking water in a disaster if they aren’t shown how ahead of time.
So take them out in nature and show them how to find a water source and how to filter or make it safe to drink. You can use special water bottles that filter, buy a mini filtration system, or one of those filtering straws. You should also teach them that if a filter is unavailable, they can boil the water to kill off most bacteria and diseases.
Make sure they also understand which water sources are safer than others, such as flowing rivers, creeks, and streams from snowmelt, versus stagnant puddles and lakes. Furthermore, you should also help them understand the general importance of seeking water as soon as possible because the average person can only survive three days without water.
2. Shelter
The next step is to teach them how to find or build a shelter. While many people think it’s important to find food next or build a fire, having a shelter is even more critical because exposure can easily lead to death. So teaching them how to stay warm and safe from the elements is key.
This includes showing them how to pitch a tent if they have one available or building one using brush, leaves, sticks, and branches. Of course, if possible, you should also show them how to find natural shelters that already exist, such as bluffs, caves, and overhangs.
You can also show them how to turn a simple tarp into a shelter and how to create warm bedding using brush and leaves to help them retain body heat when lying on the ground.
3. Fire
Next up is fire. Even if they have shelter, fire might still be necessary to keep them warm and will also be necessary for food. And when it comes to primitive survival, there likely won’t be any matches or fire-starters available, so leave those at home when teaching them how to start a fire.
Instead, just bring along some flint or use only rocks and sticks and show them how to get a fire going using friction or sparks. You’ll also want to show them how to find the best things to use for tinder and kindling, as well as how to find logs.
Give them tips as well, such as making the kindling fluffy for airflow, keeping the kindling bright and hot so it can burn big logs, and making sure the wood or logs they find are dry.
4. Food
After they have their water, shelter, and fire, finding food should be their next course of action if they find themselves needing to survive in the wild. For younger kids, this can be how to forage and find edible plants, berries, nuts, or even bugs that they can eat for protein. When they get a little older, you can teach them how to fish or even how to hunt small game and then how to prep and cook what they’ve found using the fire.
5. Clothing
Learning how to dress properly to protect their body is also an important basic skill to have when learning to survive. If it’s hot, they should know what to wear to stay cool and protect themselves from getting burnt, and if it’s cold or wet, they need to know what to wear to stay warm and dry.
When disaster strikes, they might not have many clothing options on hand to choose from, but showing them how to dress appropriately can still teach them how to be more aware of their body and how to keep them safe.
Teach Them How to Treat Injuries
Beyond the basic survival skills, it’s also important to show your kids how to tend to injuries in the wild. Children can more easily become overwhelmed by even the smallest injuries, so the first step in showing them how to treat themselves is to teach them how to stay calm and be strong and get themselves to safety.
The next step is to teach them how to recognize signs of injury or illness to help them learn how to be more aware of their body and its needs. A cut that is bleeding is obvious, of course, but something like heat stroke or dehydration is not. So it’s important to teach them how to recognize certain signs and symptoms, such as dizziness, fatigue, and lightheadedness, so they know that they need to take care of themselves as soon as possible.
Once they learn how to recognize signs of an injury or illness, you should then teach them specific first aid skills for things like sprains, broken bones, cuts, stings and bites, and even head injuries. Most importantly, you should focus on things like how to stop bleeding, how to prevent infection, and how to dress wounds.
As they could be dealing with potentially dangerous animals and insects in the wild, it’s also important to teach your kids how to identify different species, the injuries they can inflict, and how to treat them.
Help Them Understand the Importance of Water Safety
If you live near a body of water such as a lake, a river, or even the ocean, it’s also smart to teach your kids about water and ocean safety. And even if you don’t live near a body of water, you never know when or where disaster could strike, so either way, water skills are important to have.
This includes teaching them how to swim and avoid drowning, how to recognize strong currents and rip tides, how to identify and avoid dangerous marine animals, and how to avoid toxins in the water. You should also teach them that water can reflect the sun and lead to sunburn more easily as well as the importance of staying out of the water if it is storming.
Instill a Survival Mindset in Your Children
Beyond actual skills, your children also need to have the right mindset and endurance to survive. They can know all the best skills, but if their body is not mentally and physically prepared, they can still have a hard time trying to survive.
So, in addition to teaching them skills, you should also help them learn how to have a survival mindset by improving their body and their mind. You can start by making sure they get plenty of exercise every day. Children need exercise anyway, but it’s especially important if you want them to be strong enough to survive in a primitive setting.
However, running around in the backyard is not the same as running around in the wilderness. So, in addition to getting everyday exercise, it’s also a good idea to take them on hikes if you can to build their endurance in more rugged settings.
For their mind, teach them things like positive thinking, awareness, mindfulness, willpower, and how to stay calm when things are stressful and chaotic. It’s also helpful to teach them to be adaptable and flexible as these are essential mental skills to have in unpredictable situations.
Take Them Primitive Camping
Finally, to put their skills to use and to help them continue to learn, take your children primitive camping as often as you can. This will get them familiar with what it’s like to live with little resources and tools at their disposal.
In this setting, you can more easily show them what it would be like to survive in the wild and can more realistically put their skills to the test. When they are little, you can help them with more things and show them how to do things like set up a tent, find water, build a fire, and forage for food. But as they get older, you can ask them to do more things themself to see how much they have learned and only step in to help if they need you to.
Camping, in general, also has many other benefits for kids besides teaching them to survive in the wild. Overall, it can help them connect with nature and learn to appreciate it, relieve stress, offers them a healthy outlet for their energy, expands their sense of wonder and their knowledge, and it is also a great way to bond with family.
Wrapping Up
Getting your children involved in survival prep and learning primitive survival skills as early as you can, and using hands-on experiences, is one of the best ways to help them prepare for unexpected disasters and emergency situations. The tips and steps listed above can help, but how you go about it is ultimately up to you. Just remember to be mindful of the age of your child and don’t overwhelm them with everything all at once. Learning good survival skills takes time, but the more you can make it an enjoyable experience for your kids, the more they will be willing to learn.
[Note: This was a guest post.]