Must Have Survival Skills for Kids

If you have children, you know that your job as a parent is to teach your kids not only to be responsible adults, but also to take care of themselves. What most people don’t connect is that teaching them to take care of themselves means more than teaching them how to make a budget or how to dress themselves. It also means teaching them a few survival skills that are necessary for making it in the world they will someday enter alone or in case they are ever on their own without you. Check out these 10 must have survival skills for kids. If your kids don’t already know them, be sure they do before they leave home.

Must Have Survival Skills for Kids

How to make a meal themselves – From an early age, teach your kids how to prepare their own meals. You would be surprised at the number of adults who cannot cook for themselves. Teach them how to cook a nutritious meal for themselves so that when they need it, they know.

How to navigate in the woods – One too many family have overlooked this in the past only to have their child get lost in the woods or worse. To keep this from happening to your kids, teach them not only how to navigate using a compass, but the sun, moon and stars as well.

How to start a fire – Along the same process of the last point, if your kids are lost in the woods overnight, having a fire will serve multiple purposes for them. First it will provide light and in the dark? That will mean the world to your kiddo. Second, it will provide what may be much needed heat and third it will give them a source of heat to cook with.

How to cook over an open fire – Speaking of cooking? Teach your kids how to cook over an open fire. If they ever need to feed themselves, they’ll need to know that it isn’t just like cooking on a stove.

What to do if they get lost – It’s all fine and well to teach your kids to find their way out of the woods, but what happens if they get lost at the mall or downtown in a large city? Teach them how to handle it and how to get help just in case. You never can tell with kids what will happen from minute to minute.

How to mend clothing – In today’s society, it seems that we’re more content to toss something and buy a new one than we are fixing the item we already know. Teaching your kids to mend their clothes will help them in the long run by teaching them to fix what they have before they buy a new one.

How to create a shelter – Whether it’s pitching a tent or using branches and leaves, your kids need to know how to create their own shelter. Take them outside and show them how to do it then make sure they can do it themselves.

How to find (or purify) water – Teaching them how to find and/or purify water to make it potable will make sure that if they ever are without access to it, they are still able to hydrate themselves, stay clean and cook.

How to forage for food – Sometimes food just isn’t readily available. Luckily, nature provides a lot of what we need in our diets. Teaching your kids what wild plants are edible and which ones are not will go a long way to teaching them how to survive on their own if needed.

How to defend themselves – No matter what your chosen method is, all kids should be taught how to defend themselves. Too many kids are hurt every single day for you to overlook this one. It really could be the difference between life and death for them.