Today, I’m going to talk about children in an off the grid environment.
If you’re moving off the grid and you have children. Of course, you have some additional considerations versus people who don’t have children. One consideration you have is introducing your children to off the grid thinking.
Depending on the age that you move with your children off the grid, you will use different approaches probably for teaching them about off the grid thinking. For very young children, it’s very easy. They don’t know anything else. Right? And they will learn to be experts right away just watching and working with you off the grid. They will be the easiest age group to deal with; they will be complete off the grid experts before they’re ten years old.
As the children get a little bit older, you have to respect their existing lifestyle more. You know, a ten year old child who’s asked to move off the grid from the suburbs is claimed to face a lot of trauma: leaving the social network at school, the play time in the suburbs of the city with their friends, everything the kid has learned to date is going to start to disappear.
So it’s important to balance that as you take your child off the grid. Consider your child’s needs and don’t leave your child in the dark about what’s going on. Explain to the child what you’re doing, why you’re moving off the grid because you want this lifestyle for your family, et cetera right? It’s not just to save energy. He needs to know that this is a lifestyle change, this is something you aspire towards. Right?
And then learn some chores, the chores may sound like work, but the chores will, if you assign specific chores to your children, they will become more part of the community, of your off the grid community. They will feel like they’re adding to the family’s wellbeing, and they will gain specific expertise in the areas that you assign the chores, so they can gradually attain the off the grid mindset that they will need to be successful off the grid.
Another consideration about children off the grid: School. How are they going to go to school? All the most common solution is for off the grid livers living in the mountains or rural areas is home-schooling. Now, there are a lot of different approaches to home schooling. And most people have a lot of success with it.
You should check your state’s home schooling laws. Right? There are different laws in different states. You can also consider teaming up with an entity like Home School Legal Defence. That will help you be sure that you your rights are being granted to you. I mean, that you’re able to use your right to teach your children off the grid; you need to make sure you have that legal right in place.
And then it will help you keep your kids educated and safe. Living off the grid also provides an incredible classroom for your children: the farm. If you’re an off the grid homestead-er, you’re probably farming and you have this huge natural classroom at your fingertips, the land, the gardens, the animals. Enormous amounts of knowledge can be gained in these areas and the children will become experts at farming and gardening, not just off the grid living. So there’s an enormous classroom at your fingertips as an off the grid-er. You can share with your children all the knowledge available in this classroom.
So, what’s another consideration about taking your children off the grid? I’ll just end with one final one, a very practical consideration and that’s for the babies and it’s: diapers.
In our research, we discovered that many off the grid-ers have come up with a great solution for diapers because diapers will double a family’s laundry load. A family of three, that all of a sudden adds a baby will have twice the laundry that they had before the baby when they’re doing the baby’s diapers. So a solution that many off the grid-ers use is two, five gallon buckets, one bucket for the poopy divers. And one bucket for the pippy diapers. The buckets contain water and right when the diapers are soiled, the parent puts the diaper in the appropriate bucket and just soaks it. So, when it’s time to wash. The diapers wash very easily, right? No, stains. It’s sort of a pre-wash.
Be careful, it’s not recommended that you use large, five gallon buckets around babies, right? There’s a certain danger there. So, you have to be on your guard if you’re using these buckets. Be safe, keep your baby away from the buckets and away from any danger, but this is a great solution for off the grid-ers. Pre-soaking: it’s that simple.
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