Family planning and concealed carry

[Jackson]

Start what? Firearms safety training?

I was thinking more about the second part. What do you tell them about dealing with potentially violent situations, and when kinda thing. The second part of your post covered it.

 

[HardTargetFirearms]

Excellent conversation here. I would never attempt to intrude on someone else's parenting. All children are different and ready to learn at different ages. I strongly feel the decision of when and the responsibility for this lies solely with the parents. For my family it was an easy decision. Both my sons , now aged 15 & 9, were taught firearms safety as soon as they were old enough to get into things. That is a post for another day though. As far as threat planning, my 15 year old knows to control his younger brother and move them together to cover and away from me in most cases. My 9 year old knows there are some bad people in the world and that he walkd on my left side because daddy's gun is on the right side. I have gone into a bit more than thatwith them, but this illustrates the basic difference in the information presented based on age. The most important thing to do is have a plan. Please keep up the feedback on this. All input, whether you agree with it or not, keeps the thought process going and that is how we learn.

 

[SmileDocHill]

My kids are old enough to know the basics of walking on the sidewalk so I'm between them and the cars, if I say "on guard" or "watch out" they pretty reflexively get behind me so that I am between them and whatever I am focused on. They also know not to get right up on me so I can still move around. This is very practical, to the point it has come up several times just walking through the neighborhood and seeing dogs come running from behind houses. Until we know they will stop at some invisible line (literally, often an invisible fence) we plan on it still coming at us and they should be behind me by the time it gets there. We need to work on vehicle tactics though.
Honestly, at first I thought a lot of this was really paranoid stuff but I've found a lot of it to be very handy and have used it for more than just really bad situations. Example, when one of my kids was studying sigh language for scouts (or something) we all chimed in. I use signs with them all the time now for the basics of "it is time to go", "gather up on me", "x# of minutes before going", "stop what you are doing"...this is really handy at most any place we are out and about playing. The other parents are yelling and trying to round up their kids when it is time to go and I give a couple hand signals and they all round up. Yes, I look like an over controlling guy that has his kids trained like sheep dogs but we all know that isn't how it came to be and they appreciate it.