Prepping with special needs kids

M_UK - February 20, 2022

Advice

Hi all,

I’m new to prepping and decided to get sorted after recent covid/ridiculous storm/potential war.

We have 3 aspergers boys who only eat certain foods and certain brands only.

Please note they can detect between tap and bottled water so swapping food item brands is not an option. Neither is ‘when they are hungry they will eat’.. once the three of them refused to eat for 3 days on holidays, to the point we were worried.

This leaves us dependent on the freezer (to store preferred foods). Do I just buy generator? If so, any suggestions (UK)?

Thanks!

6  

If you have a car, consider buying an inverter to provide enough electric power from your car to run your freezer or other small appliances one at a time.  A pure sine wave inverter with at least 1000W or maybe 1500W peak output may be enough to power your fridge.  It also would likely be less expensive, easier to maintain, and quieter than a stand alone generator.

 

I’m a fan of preppers having generators and I had to use mine for two separate multi day power outages in the last few weeks.  A generator would easily power your freezer but would also power other household items, which is oh so useful, but would be even more useful for folks with special need kids.  My wife has taught Asperger kids and I know they can have inflexible routines.  Having a generator to maintain your food supply for them & to limit the disruption in their schedule should be helpful.

As for as generator suggestions, I’d get a dual fuel.  Mine will run on LP gas or gasoline.  Also before purchasing, figure up the wattage of everything you MUST have.  That will determine what size unit you need.

https://theprepared.com/forum/thread/my-portable-generator-setup/

https://theprepared.com/forum/thread/ice-storm-in-memphis/

https://theprepared.com/forum/thread/relearned-two-important-lessons-and-learned-a-new-one/

 

Kudos for thinking about preparedness!   Are any of the “certain foods/certain brands” available in cans or commercially prepared boxes?  (Example:  mac and cheese in a box).   What do you pack when you travel for more than 4 hours?   Do they ONLY eat foods you prepare from the freezer?   If there are any premade, commercially available foods they will eat at any time of day, buy extras and replace as needed annually.

Consider buying and placing the preferred foods in other homes (family, friends) that you could go to in the event of an emergency and have sufficient food for several days for the three children.  If needed, buy a small chest freezer for those sites, and offer to pay a small amount of money each month/quarter/year to cover the electrical expense.

Look up online support groups for children with Asberger’s and ask the same question you asked on this forum.  

Generators MUST be outside.   Generators cannot be inside a dwelling.   Does your home allow for this arrangement?

 

Hi M_UK

welcome to the forum! We all have to start somewhere! It’s very easy to get into a ‘doom-spiral’ when you first start getting prepared so we’ll done on finding the home of ‘sane prepping’ and congratulations on taking action based on recent experience!

So I would ask you if your children eat ANY shelf stable foods? Cereals, tinned foods (tuna fish, baked beans, spaghetti hoops etc) dried fruit you could start to stock up on? If the freezer is full of prepared foods, do you prepare this yourself? Could you focus on ingredients and a means to prepare the food rather than keeping the freezer running?  It might not be a ‘perfect diet’ but would sustain them during a short term power cut.

Thinking positively, if you were to write down EVERYTHING they WILL eat, do you have any options to keep them fed for a day? A week? 2 weeks?

if you want to keep your freezer going then a generator is going to be your best option – remember then you also need to store fuel for it. Have a think about how long you want to be able to keep the freezer running? A power cut lasting just a couple of hours your freezer will probably be ok as long as you don’t open it, (get some freezer packs to help keep things cool) but if it’s out for a day or more you’ll want a way to power it until you’ve eaten your way through the contents! Think about where you would keep/use the generator, you can’t run a generator in the house so you’ll need cable to connect the generator to the freezer! And fuel (but that’ll need correctly stored and rotated) Another option I’ve looked at previously was the larger power packs, like a giant battery, that you could keep charged and just plug into but the cost put me off and tbh I’m not sure they would be powerful enough keep a freezer running for long.

I don’t have a generator yet but I must admit I do like the idea of Redneck’s dual fuel version! 

 

I’ll echo what others have said here and add another tip

• Stock what shelf stable foods you can that they will eat
• Buy a generator to power the freezer for the foods in there they need in there. This website has an article about generators.
• Prepare an emergency bag with supplies for them in case you ever have to evacuate. Having food, clothing, and comfort items for them ready to go at a moments notice will help you to beat traffic, and make a very stressful situation that much better.

 

My heart goes out to you and all other such parents. Good friends of mine have a severely disabled child who needs constant care but lives at home, and a crisis would be extremely tough on them.

When they were my neighbors, I and others did what we could do help them and we all appreciated how tough their daily routines were. Might I suggest this is a time to break the “don’t share your preps” rule, and invite others into your planning? People are usually more understanding than we expect–a good thing.

Otherwise, I think the comments above are very sound.