Getting Children Involved in Preparing

My young fella is 15. He has been helping me prep from day 1, maybe day 2.
I've been really open with him as to why, and we discuss possible teotwawki events, and also discuss world/local events in the news.
He is helping me to build at my bol - to him it's a camping trip away, but to me it's a life lesson. He'll be setting snares, practicing archery, looking for edible plants etc.
Each potential bol I have looked at, I have made him give me pros and cons for each site. This last place I will finally start, he gave this area a lot more pros than any other place we looked at too.
And, he gets to cook his own food, set his own tent, collect his own firewood.
And, he then also teaches his 2 younger nephews these skills as well.

Opsec is important...make the training 'our secret' and you have a bonding excercise too...

I don't get my children involved in prepping per say I do teach them things relevant to their age and actively get them involved with fun activities

my personal mantra s let kids be kids

I have taught my eldest child who is only 5 to do the following things
how to call 000 and tell the nice person mummy or daddy needs help and what's happened i.e daddy fell down or is bleeding
the basics you get the picture
he also knows where the 1st aid kit is , fire blanket fire extinguisher is located so if asked he can get it

he knows to never answer the front door to anyone and to simply tell mummy or daddy there is someone at the front door
both my son and daughter have extremely loud whistles that they carry with them and the rule is if they ever go walking around outside and accidently wander off and get lost to sit in place and blow their whistles and we will find them
my son also knows that when he is at the park or anywhere even at home if anything ever happens or someone tries to lure him and his sister away to look anything in their vehicle to blow the f*ck out of the whistle and daddy will be right there

we have given him basic instructions on fire alarm drills to basically grab his special wool blanket and get down low by the window in his room and stay there till told otherwise as he gets older this will change

as far as prepping goes I will just teach the kids public safety set them up in a martial arts class and give them the basic skills to do handy things and if they want to go deeper then that's fine if not no point being a drill master

I've also set up a shelf in the cupboard whee there are drinks and snacks they both can reach easily just incase something unfortunate happened to me or my wife and the children had to spend several hours or longer fending for themselves it would break my heart to think of them being hungry and thirsty just waiting for someone to come home

most importantly and this I think is one of the biggest things is we have set in stone the legal guardianship and made arrangements in our wills to protect our children's assets in the advent that both my wife and I were to pass away ( think accident or something ) while our children were still young and we have redundancies in place if the 1 options is not possible
I rest a lot easier knowing that our children would be raised and taken care of in a manner that we agreed on and its not one of those things where they were orphaned and people only wanted them for their trust accounts

I think in all of the things I have done those decisions were the hardest to make I mean we all plan on raising our children right? so what happens if you cant who then and what if the people you think would do it don't want to?

Good points for young children there, Grumble. I was always more concerned about our teenagers telling their classmates about our guns and ammo, the cases of canned food in the pump room, the silver coins in the safe, our bug-out bags, and the mutual support planning that we had done with our neighbors.

Now that the BHC and I are retired and back in Texas, we don't have to be so concerned. Everyone within a 20 mile radius of us is pretty much on the same page.

so my thing is I will teach my children as they need to know and is relevant to their age but in a way that is innocuous
>>>>> Yes.. With kids, the type, depth of the answer is all age dependent. Same question, different age = different answer...

@#$%
Age dependent means you start with the simple things. For instance, I would boil hamburger, mince it in the food processor so the kids had to eat it with the spaghetti. Later I taught them to make spaghetti. March around the kitchen waving a spoon, make it fun, teach the lesson, the next day take them to the market and how to buy spaghetti for the next meal.

I got them to help me cut out cents off gas coupons, we would buy gas, then show them the money we saved and what they wanted to do with that money.

They do learn and remember lessons, however there comes a day when they are responsible for how to apply life lessons and strategies to there own lives.

That's a valuable point.

Teach kids how to survive in the here & now. Even if TS never HTF they'll be well prepared for life.

And at the end of the day, that's our job as parents.