Note: This is day 9 of National Preparedness Month. Follow this year’s campaign on Twitter by searching for the #NatlPrep #BeReady or #PrepMonth hashtags.
This month, as part of NPM20, I’ll be rerunning some updated preparedness essays, along with some new ones.
No matter where you live, if you've got kids, the odds they will have some sort of brush with an emergency or disaster over the next decade. Hopefully it will happen when they are with their parents, but it could happen at school, or other times when they are away from home.
While I was envisioning somewhat more common disasters - like earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, or hurricanes - twelve months later, you'd be hard pressed to find any adolescent or child who hasn't been greatly affected (read: traumatized) by our COVID-19 pandemic crisis.
As much as we'd like to spare our children the stress, grief, and physical dangers from disasters and other crises, we are passengers on a violent and often unpredictable planet. And sometimes (warning: anachronistic cultural reference ahead), it provides an E-Ticket ride.
Many of us of a certain age got our early initiation into preparedness in the boy or girl scouts, where we learned basic first aid, and what to do in an emergency. Today, that is less likely to be the case.
Growing up in Florida in the middle of the last century I got used to the yearly `drill' of preparing for hurricanes. I was lucky enough to grow up on an old wooden boat (built in 1917) in a Marina and learned to swim, fish, tie knots, and even row a dinghy by the time I was in the second grade.
Growing up in Florida in the middle of the last century I got used to the yearly `drill' of preparing for hurricanes. I was lucky enough to grow up on an old wooden boat (built in 1917) in a Marina and learned to swim, fish, tie knots, and even row a dinghy by the time I was in the second grade.
I am also the product of the cold war, of the Cuban Missile Crisis (I was 8), of duck and cover drills, weekly CONELRAD alerts on TV, and films like Survival Under Atomic Attack and `Bert the turtle’ PSAs in elementary school.
It was, admittedly, a different time. But it probably led me into an early career as an EMT (age 18) and Paramedic (age 20). Not such a bad result, actually.
Today, while many threats remain, parents appear more reticent to discuss emergency preparedness with their kids. Fortunately, disaster preparedness – particularly for kids - has come a long way from the `bad old days’ of the cold war.
Ready.gov provides age appropriate tools for parents and teachers to teach emergency preparedness to both kids and teenagers.
While most parents want to protect their kids from undo worry - when a disaster threatens, it threatens all of us – regardless of our age.
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| 30 Second PSA |
Ready.gov provides age appropriate tools for parents and teachers to teach emergency preparedness to both kids and teenagers.
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| READY.GOV |
While most parents want to protect their kids from undo worry - when a disaster threatens, it threatens all of us – regardless of our age.
Helping kids to understand more about emergency preparedness and community resilience will help them cope (and perhaps, even help) in the event they, or their community, are caught up in a disaster.
I strongly urge parents to find and teach age-appropriate preparedness skills to their children. To include them in family `emergency drills' and discussions, and to make sure they know where to go (a friend, a neighbor, the local fire house etc.) if they should become separated from the family during an emergency.
For more resources for teaching kids about emergency preparedness, you may wish to visit:
Teaching Kids About Emergency Preparedness - American Red CrossChildren In Disasters: Kids and Families -CDCEmergency Preparedness for Children - Canadian Govt.
