How (Not) to Coerce Your Child Into Prepping
And reflections about not putting my climate anxieties on my offspring
Top Note: I have some exciting news! I’ve recently signed on with a literary agent. What this means is I’ve cleared the first hurdle required to get published through a traditional press. My agent and I are refining my proposal and, more importantly at this point, laying some groundwork to boost my platform.
This is where you come in. While a book idea can rest on the excellent idea alone, many publishers want to ensure that the book will sell and to do that, they want to know that prospective authors have a decent platform. Meaning they have a variety of publications under their belt and decent followings on social media. This Substack is a huge part of that platform which is modest, but growing. So I come to you with a humble request to share this newsletter with your friends, family, and colleagues who you think would enjoy it. Please share articles that you appreciate with your network. Each share helps me a ton. And don’t forget to engage with posts in the comments and “likes” as well.
And now, back to your regularly scheduled newsletter…
You know that adventure camp I told you about a few weeks back? The one where kids learn skills like foraging and archery and fire-making and shelter-building. Basically, all the necessary skills that would make you the go-to badass in an apocalypse situation. Well, this camp offers a year-round “apprenticeship” option for any kiddo who wants to really dive into these kinds of apocalypse-ready skills on the regular (by “year-round” I mean, eight weekend days throughout the next nine months).
The fact that a resource like this exists in Portland made my prepping heart explode with joy. And not only that, the principles around which this organization is based is centered around connection and understanding of nature. All the things that I, myself, want to get out of this cramming for the apocalypse project. I feel like I’m working against decades of disconnection with nature where I enjoy being in nature, but don’t know a damn thing about it. The fact that my kid could have the opportunity to actually build that natural connection during his impressionable age is just thrilling for me. And following his successful experience at the summer camp, I thought maybe this could be what it takes to get him to go down the road of building these skills.
But…he doesn’t want to do the apprenticeship. Not at all. It’s not that he didn’t love his summer camp experience there. Oh he did and he’s still talking about the shelters he made, the arrows he shot, and the sticks he carved. He just matter of factly said, “nope, I don’t want to do that,” when we offered to sign him up with one of his best buds. He echoed the sentiment when the best bud tried to convince him to join as well.
But nope, he’s not interested. It was a decision immune to peer pressure.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled not to drop the money for yet another activity. And I’m glad that it’s one less thing to shuttle him to throughout the school year. But I couldn’t help feeling bummed that he wasn’t going to dive into the kind of skills that will be invaluable as he grows up on a quickly changing planet. It’s this disappointment that reminded me a bit of what I committed to when I began this project many months ago. That commitment was to not put this on him.
As I was writing my book proposal, early drafts had an entire section on me signing Finch up for scouts and adventure camps and making him do all these in-the-woods kinds of activities. But as I went through various later drafts, I realized that forcing my anxieties onto him could just have the opposite effect to turn him off of it altogether. It’s the same balancing act we have in trying to talk to kids about hard stuff that I wrote about in another post a few weeks ago. You don’t want to be too over-eager or over-explain so they just stop listening or get too intense about it so they never want to talk to you about it. So you try to play it cool and just let them lead the way.
It’s also a practice in not letting one’s own anxieties take over how we go about the world and affect your relationship with your kid at the same time. My anxieties over the climate are completely interconnected with the intense love I have for my child. I love him so much that any time I think about what his future could look like on this changing planet, my eyes well up with tears and my heart races with anxiety. My desire for him to build skills so that he can withstand the apocalypse and to be a part of a community that will thrive post-capitalism is wrapped up into this project so much so that the skills I’m seeking to build all go back to him and the other young humans he’s growing up with.
But I also can’t put that anxiety on him nor any of his peers. None of us should. Young people around the world are already leading the way to making the kind of large-scale impact that could, hopefully, change the course of history (just last week, Montana youth successful won a lawsuit where they sued the state of Montana for violating their constitutional rights to a safe and healthy future). Yet, we cannot just leave it to the young people to create social change. We all need to find our way into action regardless of the time we have left on this planet.
That’s why I have to stop myself from trying to get my own kiddo to do an activity that he really doesn’t want to do just because I think it could be useful. I’m letting him live his childhood which currently mostly involves dragon- and fantasy-related art and imaginative play, Taekwondo, and cardboard-and-rubber-band “projects.” And I’ll continue to talk to him about climate change and climate justice and all the hard things at those right moments. It doesn’t mean that I won’t be tempted to just sign him up for the stuff I’m into him doing. I just need to make sure he’s on board.
Amazing news! Congratulations :)