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.