No matter how hard you try to keep your kids protected all the time, there might be instances when things are out of your control, and you need to rely on your children’s capability to survive. While you may want to be with your kids all the time, at times, they ought to do things alone, such as going to school or attending skill lessons. With that, the presence of danger approaching them might just hurt your bones.  

The world is full of uncertainties. To help you put yourself at ease, especially when your kids are far from you, you should try to teach them basic survival skills. While you don’t want them to use such skills on a regular basis, it’s better to have them prepare for what’s to come.  

Moreover, listed below are some of the survival skills you can teach your children.

• Swimming 

Your children should be learning to swim, ideally starting at a young age, as it’s one of the most basic survival skills there is. While it might sound like a fun activity, you should teach your child how to swim in deep waters since you can’t always assure that they’d be able to land on shallow waters.  

If you know how to swim, you can teach your children yourself by bringing them to a local pool every weekend during off-school hours. Moreover, if you’d like your children to fully equip themselves with the proper swimming skills, you can bring them to swimming lessons and inform the instructor that your main goal is survival. This will help them know what kind of skills and tricks your children need to develop.  

 

• Finding Safe Water 

Water is a basic human necessity, and a person won’t survive without water for three days. With that, you need to ensure that your children can find safe water they can drink from time to time.  

The safest water your children can drink is from the rain collected from leaves or any clean container they could find. Alternatively, they should look at the downhill wherein safe water usually runs. They can also try to follow animal tracks and be hopeful that it’ll lead them to a good water source. If your children can boil the water first before drinking them, it would be better. However, this might not apply to every situation, especially if they don’t have the necessary tools.  

• Keeping Warm Without Fire 

For your young children, they might not be entirely safe around fire, more so creating one on their own. With that, you need to teach your children how they can keep themselves warm even without fire.  

You can teach your children to create a ‘scarecrow suit’ wherein they tuck their clothes, including their pants, to their socks and fill their clothing with leaves and plants. However, you should teach your children which kinds of leaves they should gather and which ones to avoid, including poisonous plants.  

Apart from stuffing their clothing, they could also build a bed full of leaves to keep them warm if it gets dark. Depending on where your child is, it can take them 30 minutes to create a bed, allowing them to be distracted while they wait for help. This will also help to develop independence as they age.  

 

• Self-Defense 

As terrible as it sounds, there might be instances when your children will be in a situation where people will try to hurt them. No matter how confident your children are, thinking that they’re strong and could handle themselves, it would be better to equip their bodies with the right skills to help them escape any unpleasant situation. In most cases, skills and tactics work best rather than strength.  

You can enroll your children in self-defense classes, such as martial arts, weapon training, or wild animal awareness. This way, you can be confident that they’ll be able to protect themselves in whichever situation they might be in.  

• First Aid 

While you teach your children to protect themselves in the direst situations, you shouldn’t forget to teach them basic first aid in case they hurt themselves or someone around them is injured. This way, they can prevent infections and stabilize the situation.  

Ideally, you should teach your children how to use the first aid kit you have in your home, so they exactly know what to do when the situation calls for it. Moreover, you should also teach your children alternatives they can use if they don’t have any first aid kit. Through this, they can be efficient with their surroundings and constantly look for ways to keep their bodies protected and safe.  

Conclusion  

As much as every parent wants to be with their children all the time, some situations are out of your control. To put you at ease and make sure that your children can handle and survive by themselves, it’ll never hurt to teach them basic survival skills. You can try to make it a fun activity that they can enjoy as they learn. Ideally, you should begin teaching them when they’re already aware of their surroundings and can follow instructions properly.