Emergencies can come at any time of the day and from any place. The current COVID-19 pandemic and the wave of natural disasters that have hit the US would be great examples of this. While the odds of your family being hit with a terrorist attack or a natural disaster could be very slim, the unthinkable can truly happen at any given notice.

 This means it’s always important to keep prepared and to learn how to ensure safety. Whenever a worst-case scenario happens, it’s best to just stay prepared and get ready for what could happen. Safety training can make all the difference, especially in starting it out with children when they’re young. These are some helpful tips for teaching your children how to manage an emergency about how to stay prepared. 

Understand that your child can handle more than you think

While the idea of teaching a young child how to be prepared isn’t a pretty vision, it is something that is needed so they can improve on picking up signs and handling situations. You don’t need to directly point things out to your child either or even explain anything in graphic detail. But starting young so they can detect signs and learn to recognize them is going to be a very good first step.

Children react differently in emergencies, but getting the training done when they’re young is going to massively help in teaching them to stay calm.  Sometimes you’re not going to be there to calm down your child and they need to keep themselves calm in a situation. You never know when your child may have to call urgent care for someone, so never underestimate your child.

Create an emergency plan and involve your child

Since any emergency plan could potentially happen, it’s best to create some scenarios so your child can grasp an understanding of what could happen and what could be a solution to this problem.  If your children are very young, having them know your name and your phone number can help a lot.  It’s important to just stay prepared and creating little scenarios can help.

Schools do drills to teach children how to handle dangerous situations such as earthquakes, tornadoes, lockdowns, or even fires. While these are very helpful, it’s also important to realize that there could be a world of other events that could happen and it’s best your child understands those and knows what to do. This can include bad weather at home, you having health troubles, fires, terrorist attacks, or anything else.  It may also be helpful to install apps on their phone to keep them safe in the chance you’re not around.

Teach them to be alert in public spaces

This is going to give both you and your children a very valuable lesson in staying alert and prepared out in public. Many people try to just keep their nose buried into their phone when this shouldn’t be the case at all. Sure, it can be easy to stay distracted when you’re out and about, but sometimes that’s when an emergency will hit.  Breaking away from the phone and being alert is also an unconventional health habit that anyone should jump on.