Parents talk a lot about safety, but most of that talk is for adults. Kids live in a different operating system. They run on routine. They read your face more than your words. And when something breaks that routine — a storm, a fire alarm, a power outage — they don’t reach for plans. They reach for whatever they practiced.
If you want your kids to be okay in emergencies, you have to build a system they can run. Not a binder of instructions you read once and then forget, but a few simple paths worn into the ground by use. The test isn’t whether you have a plan. It’s whether your kids can run it half-asleep in the dark.
The trick is to build everything in the grain of their everyday life. Use the same door you always use. Put the meeting spot where you already pass by. Turn instructions into the shortest phrases that still work. “Stop. Follow Dad.” “Meet at the mailbox.” “Downstairs closet for storms.”
This sounds obvious, but it’s the opposite of how most people prepare. They buy gear they’ve never used, write plans their kids have never heard, and store kits in closets no one can reach. I’ve done that too. It feels like progress, and it is, a little. But you get more leverage by shrinking the plan till even your smallest kid can carry it in their head.
Kids aren’t small adults. Age matters. Babies need naps and diapers. Toddlers need choices that don’t overwhelm them. School-age kids can memorize a meeting place and a phone number. Teens can take real roles. If you match the job to the kid, they surprise you. If you don’t, they freeze.
Comfort isn’t fluff here. A small stuffed animal, a familiar snack, a photo of your family — these help kids follow directions when everything else feels strange. We pretend that grit is all you need in an emergency, but for kids the shortest path to grit goes through comfort. It’s easier to be brave when your hands know where the flashlight is and your pocket has a granola bar you like.
There are a lot of moving parts in family preparedness. The mistake is to try to solve them all at once. Better to do a few small things completely, then add more. The first version of your plan should fit on a fridge card. If it doesn’t, it’s not a plan yet.
Start with communication. In disasters, local phone lines get jammed, but texts often slip through, and calls to out-of-area numbers may work when local ones don’t. So you need one out-of-area contact that everyone knows by name. Put that number on every card and bag. When you’re separated and worried, knowing exactly who to text is half the problem solved.
Then pick two meeting spots: one close (down the block) and one far (outside the neighborhood). Don’t pick clever places. Pick obvious ones you can reach with a stroller, in the rain, with a kid who lost a shoe. If you can draw it from memory, you’ll remember it under stress. If you can’t, you won’t.
You also need roles. Roles are where plans fail or succeed. When the smoke alarm goes off at 2 am, you don’t want both parents running for the same bag while no one’s counting heads. Decide in advance. One parent grabs the go-bags. The other gets the kids and checks doors. If you have an older child who can handle it, give them a small real job — the flashlight bucket, the pet carrier, the weather radio. Don’t give them a ceremonial job. Give them something a little hard that matters. Kids rise to that.
Schools and daycares are part of your plan whether you like it or not. Ask them boring questions now, when there’s time for boring answers: What are the lockdown and evacuation procedures? Where is the reunification site? How will you notify us? What ID will you need? Then add those details to your card and your phone. If you have kids scattered across activities in the afternoon, write down each location’s policy. Emergencies love the hour between 3 and 5 pm.
Go-bags are where a lot of parents start. They’re also where a lot of parents overdo it. A kid-sized go-bag should be light enough that your kid can carry it without slowing down, and simple enough that they can find what they need without you. If you have to explain what every pouch is for, you packed for yourself.
The contents aren’t mysterious. Water they can open, snacks they’ll actually eat, a hoodie, socks, a change of clothes, basic hygiene, a small flashlight or headlamp with spare batteries, a whistle, a few dollars, an ID card with a recent photo, and copies of your plan and medical info in a zip bag. That’s the core.
Then tune by age. Babies need diapers, wipes, cream, a changing pad, formula or a breastmilk plan, bottles or sippy cups, pacifiers with clips, a spare lovey, onesies, a small blanket, child-safe sunscreen. If you use formula, ready-to-feed wins when you can get it. Toddlers need the same plus a board book and an extra shirt. School-age kids can handle a notebook and pencil, a small game, a rain poncho, a comfort photo, hand sanitizer, and an ID bracelet if they wander. Teens can carry a small battery pack and cable, period supplies, extra glasses or contact stuff, deodorant, a bigger water bottle, and a printed list of key numbers and logins (not passwords) they might need. Multitools are teen catnip, but only include one if you’re sure they’ll use it wisely and the places they’re going allow it.
Label everything. Not with your child’s first name in big letters a stranger can call out, but with their name inside the bag and your out-of-area contact in a visible spot. Use clear pouches so you and your kids can see what’s there. Rotate sizes, snacks, and batteries on a schedule you’ll keep. I tie it to the clocks changing. If you don’t like that, pick your own mnemonic. Just don’t pick “whenever I think of it.”
Medicines are where ad hoc plans hurt you most. Make a one-page medication list for each child: drug name, dose form, schedule, prescriber, pharmacy. Put dosing tools right with the meds. Keep a 7–10 day backup of essentials if you can. Include copies of action plans for asthma, allergies, seizures, or anything else you use. Store one in the kid’s bag, one in a home binder, and one on your phone. If your child uses devices — inhalers with spacers, epinephrine auto-injectors, glucose meters, hearing aids — pack spares and batteries, plus a one-paragraph troubleshooting note a babysitter could run.
Food matters more than you think. You can buy any calories for yourself in a pinch, but kids with allergies, celiac, or just strong preferences can seize up if there’s nothing they recognize. This is not the moment to wage war on picky eating. Stock shelf-stable versions of what they do eat. Label allergy-safe snacks clearly and keep them separate.
The way you teach the plan is to make the smallest pieces automatic. Most kids can learn when to call 911 and what to say. Practice the sentence: “My name is X, I’m at Y, and there’s Z.” Put your address where little kids can see it. Let them practice on a toy phone. Don’t make this scary. Scary is the enemy of recall. Short and calm wins.
Fire drills are surprisingly fun if you keep them short. Draw a quick map with two ways out of every room and a big obvious meeting spot — the tree, the mailbox. Practice day and night a couple times a year. Teach kids to feel a door with the back of their hand, stay low under smoke, and never go back in for a toy. The time to learn how loud your smoke alarm is isn’t when you’re already scared. Let them hear it in daylight while you’re holding their hand.
Weather safety is local. Know the hazards you actually have, not the ones that make good TV. If you live where tornadoes happen, pick your shelter now: lowest level, interior room, away from windows, something to put over your heads. If lightning is common, the rule is simple: inside a building or a hard-topped car, not under trees. If you flood, “turn around, don’t drown” is not a slogan; it’s the distilled experience of people who wished they had. A weather radio will wake you when your phone won’t. That’s the one alert you’ll be happy you bought the day before you needed it.
Practice is where the whole system either gets real or stays theoretical. The aim is repetition without dread. Two minutes to the mailbox. Who can beat the timer? Now switch roles: today you grab the flashlight bucket, your sister leads the route. Make a “family safety day” twice a year when you check bag snacks, try headlamps, and ask the same handful of questions. Where’s the out-of-area contact number? Where do we meet if the block is closed? What do you text if you’re safe at Aunt Kim’s? Say the sentences out loud. Words you’ve spoken are easier to remember than ones you’ve merely read.
House upgrades multiply the effect of all this. Smoke alarms on every level, inside bedrooms, and outside sleeping areas. Test them monthly. Replace them on schedule. Teach kids the sound so their first thought won’t be panic. Tag your shutoffs for water, gas, and power with big readable labels, and keep the needed tools nearby. Put more light within reach of small hands — cheap headlamps in bedrooms and a “lights out” basket in the hallway beat candles, which are the sort of solution that creates a second problem to solve. Anchor tall furniture. Keep heaters honest by drawing a three-foot kid-free zone they can see.
Stock water and food that fit your family. One gallon per person per day for at least three days is a baseline. Babies and stressed kids drink more. If you use formula, add water for that too. For food, buy what you already eat and rotate it like it’s just pantry stuff, because it is. Keep a manual can opener and utensils in with the stash. Plan for no-cook meals. During outages, keep fridge and freezer doors closed. A full freezer holds cold longer than a half-full one. When you doubt a food, throw it out. The cost of a mistake is asymmetric.
The best plans give kids something to do. During outages, let them hand out headlamps, pick quiet games, or run the snack station. During storms, have someone be in charge of the radio. Small jobs push back against helplessness, which is what really scares kids. Fear hates motion.
After an event, you’ll be tempted to fix everything. Don’t. Fix the routine first. Regular meals, bedtime, chores. Simple honest explanations. “The storm broke trees. We’re safe. Grown-ups are fixing it.” Keep scary news off the loop. Watch for common signs of stress — sleep problems, clinginess, regression, headaches, anger, or withdrawal. Many fade. If they don’t, get help from a pediatrician, school counselor, or community support. Kids recover faster when they can help, even with small things: bagging debris with gloves, thanking helpers, choosing which snacks to restock. Recovery is also a routine.
People ask for lists and links. They help. Templates for family communication plans exist, and you should use one. Print wallet-size plan cards for every caregiver and older kid. Put the big version on your fridge and a photo of it on your phone. Most of what makes a plan work is boring: filling out names and numbers, labeling a bag, checking dates. Do the boring things now, and your future self will look back on your present self with a surprising amount of gratitude.
You don’t have to buy everything or finish everything this weekend. You just have to take the next step and then another. If you do one small thing each week for a month, you’ll have a working system. The steps are plain: write a one-card family plan with an out-of-area contact and two meeting places, give everyone a copy, pack kid-sized go-bags with age-appropriate extras, set two drill dates, and talk to your school. After that, you’re mostly maintaining: rotating snacks and sizes, testing alarms, and running two-minute drills that feel like games.
If you like rules of thumb, here are mine:
There’s a lot of bravado in the way people think about preparedness. You’ll see gear that looks like it’s planning to invade a mountain. Kids don’t need that. They need simple paths, practiced often, through familiar places, with familiar people, carrying familiar things. They need to know whose voice to follow and what sentence to say. They need to feel useful.
I used to think preparedness was about stockpiles. Then I had kids, and I realized it’s about user interface. The smaller the plan, the bigger the chance it works. The more it feels like your life now, the more your kids will be able to run it when life is not like your life now.
There’s a moment in every emergency when you can feel the plane of the situation tilt. Before that moment, you’re guessing. After it, you’re executing. Kids feel that tilt too. If what they’ve practiced slides them onto the right path, they go. If there’s no path and no practice, they freeze and wait for you to build one in real time. That’s a hard time to be building.
So build now, while everything is ordinary. Write the sentence you want your child to remember. Pick the meeting spot you’ll pass by tomorrow. Put the out-of-area number where small hands can find it. Pack the snack they actually like. Test the alarm in daylight. Put a headlamp where a kid can reach it. Then run the two-minute drill and laugh about how silly you all looked crouching under the dining table.
The future won’t send you a calendar invite. But it will reward the families who rehearsed being calm.