How To Talk To Your Kids About Prepping:

In the meantime, however, with all the crazy going on in the world we can prepare our families for the future and show our children how to prepare Biblically and practically. How to do we talk to our kids about prepping though? How do we enable their little minds to understand such a huge topic?

When our son asks why I buy food that we can’t eat I can’t tell him “we’re saving it for a rainy day son”. This might work with your children, but my son is the most literal person in the world outside of my sister. When I say “it’s for a rainy day” he will literally wait until it rains and goes downstairs and try to raid my pantry. It makes for an interest conversation most days!

Here are some verses that we talk to our son about when he asks questions:

Proverbs 28:19 “Those who work their land will have abundant food but those who chase fantasies will have their fill of poverty.”

We use this verse when we are talking to him about the garden that we have. When he helps me can, blanch and freeze our produce we talk about how it’s important to have extra and to store food for the future. We also use the following verses when we explain why it’s important to depend on ourselves a bit also as well as expecting the store to always have what we need.

Proverbs 21:10 “The wise store up choice food and olive oil, but fools gulp theirs down.”

I Timothy 5:8 “Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”

II Thessalonians 3:10 “For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.”

Genesis 41:34-36 “Let Pharaoh take action to appoint overseers in charge of the land, and let him exact a fifth of the produce of the land of Egypt in the seven years of abundance. Then let them gather all the food of these good years that are coming, and store up the grain for food in the cities under Pharaoh’s authority, and let them guard it. Let the food become as a reserve for the land for the seven years of famine which will occur in the land of Egypt so that the land will not perish during the famine.”

The following verse we use when we take him to the range and practice our skills. We use it when he sees us buying ammo (when we can find it!) and when we teach classes to those who want to learn how to protect themselves and their families.

Proverbs 22:3 “The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and pay the penalty.”

This verse in proverbs we use for just about everything! It makes a bold statement about laziness and being helpful to mom and dad!

Proverbs 10:4 “Lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth.”

The hard part to explaining this verse to a 5-year-old is that wealth doesn’t always mean money. Sometimes wealth means pride in your work, a healthy family, a roof over our head, bills that are paid. Sometimes hard work leads to money and sometimes it leads to adequate! What we strive to teach our son is that as long as we are faithful to the Lord that he will provide for our needs. Next, we go into the conversation that distinguishes between needs and wants! Sorry buddy, transformers and legos are NOT needs!

There have been times that we have had the same conversation with our son a thousand times. Sometimes he gets it and sometimes he doesn’t. The biggest asset to these conversations and making sure that he understands those concepts is to enlist his help. He helps me plants our seedlings, he helps me water, weed, pick, blanch, freeze, and can our produce. We enlist his help when we go to the range, we are able to teach him range/gun safety. The skills we show him have value, and over time he will start to see that. We also enlist his help in finding foods on sale that are non-perishable that we can store away for our rainy day.

The point to these delicate conversations is to not raise your children acting like chicken little then end up on that hoarders show!!! Like I’ve said a million times; there is a line between preparedness and paranoia. It’s our jobs as parents to make sure that we are staying on the preparedness side and raising our kids to think practically and logically about preparedness.

It’s also our job to teach them how to get into prepping the right way. We use each and every opportunity to show him that there is a difference between preparedness and paranoia. We use each and every opportunity to show him that it’s biblical to be prepared and to use our preparedness to bless others and show them the love of Christ.