Need Help teaching survival skills

W

wade

Joined
Sep 22, 2005
Messages
493
I need a lot of help. I am attempting to teach my girlfriend survival skills and failing miserably. She understands basic concepts and the reason its important to have some knowledge of the skills but when she is practicing them she tends to quit if she cannot master it the first or second try. For example, I have made her a small psk which contains a Mag/firesteel block and some PJ Cotton ball straws. Well I wanted her to practice lighting the cotton balls with her flint and striker so that if she ever needed to use the ones in her psk it would be a easy task. She couldnot get it at first it took about fifteen minutes for her to sucessfuly light a cotton ball with a spark, and she argued with me the whole time. In the end she said it was stupid and she will just carry a lighter insted:rolleyes:. My second example happened last night, I have also packed some para-cord in her kit and wanted her to learn some basic knots so if she ever had to use the inner strands she could tie them together. I thought that it would make sense to start off easy.... the square knot. She never got it, I showed her a hundred times and even got out my knot book. She again got frustrated and gave up, I asked her how she was going to tie on fish hooks if she would not learn the knots and she replied "Then I wont fish."

I dont know if I am going about this wrong or if I am just wasting my time:confused: ? Can anyone help me with suggestions? She wants to learn this stuff but it seems that practicing it is when she gets frustrated to the point of quiting. Help please.
Wade
 
Sounds like a waste of time. You can't force-teach someone anything. Give it up for a while. If she finds interest in these things, she'll ask you to teach her again and she'll have a more fruit bearing mindset.
 
Wade, teaching survival is not easy to family believe me I know. Kudos to you for trying tho.

You are better off getting a 3rd party to teach her as it will focus her attention more and there will be less refusal in a group dynamic.

What the heck happened to your cotton balls? they should start with 1 or 2 swips of sparks. Make sure there is not too much vaseline in them and make sure you pull them apart and fluff them up before sparking.

As they say you can lead a horse to water........;)


Skam
 
skam,
They were DRY! They didnt have any PJ because I wanted it to be easy at first. She would not push the striker hard enough to make a good spark. Once she could make a good 'shower' she could not aim it to the cotton ball.
 
You lady sounds like my wife. How I got my sweet lady to accept a sparking tool was to hand her a lighter. Then I asked her to hold the lighter under water for a couple of minutes. When she tried to light the fire, the lighter wouldn't spark and she commented that it getting soaked probably kept it from lighting.:D Then I spotted the lightbulb over her head and she grabbed the Hotspark and after showing her the proper technique to use it, within a few minutes, she was igniting cotton dryer lint and placing it into her prepared fire.:thumbup:
 
At this point, it seems that you are wasting your time trying to teach her. It sounds like she simply is not interested, or does not see the importance of what you are trying to teach. As was said, you cannot force-teach her - especially if she doesn't have the patience. You can, however, force her to want to learn by demonstrating the importance of knowing. Here's how:

Get her really drunk.

Bind her hands and feet with paracord (using only square knots), and then blindfold her. Put her in the trunk of your car.

Drive deep into a large, densely wooded national park, far away from civilization, and wait for nightfall.

Dump her (bound and blindfolded) in the woods with nothing but her PSK, a knife, and a flashlight. Then go home.

She'll spend the night in the woods, in the dark, without any sense of direction. If she wants to get warm at night, she will be forced to practice firemaking.

If she survives, I promise you that she will never again underestimate or disregard the importance of survival skills.

Of course, she may never speak to you again. And she might press charges. And there is the possibility that she might be attacked by some sort of ferocious wild animal. And she may get hopelessly lost, and starve to death in the wilderness. Maybe you should give her a compass too, eh?

Good luck.

TheSurvivalist
 
lol.

I think there's probably a better way to encourage someone to learn than to dump them in the trunk of a car. But it is an amusing thought.

Dunking a lighter in water and then showing that it doesn't work is probably a good idea. Just to get her thinking.

If she's having trouble with a striker and firesteel, have you tried a blastmatch? They provide a one hand operation. She might find it easier to use.

But if you really want to get your lady interested, got other women involved too. Girls like to flock (by that, I mean they're more social than are guys, on average). If they can learn skills in a girl's group setting, they tend to be more positive and "into it" than if it's just "something that my paranoid husband/boyfriend wants me to do."

Is your girlfriend competitive at all? If so, setting up some competitions might help her learn some skills. See who can build a fire fastest and make there be a real prize if she wins. But make sure she's competing against people at about her skill level so that she has a chance.

Finally, remember that many women in our society are raised to believe that some things are what a guy should do, and so they wait around for a guy to do it. I've observed that making a fire is one of those things. It can take decades to change a woman's attitude if she was raised that way, so be aware that you might be fighting some hidden sexist behavior modeling. In this case, a strong female role model who can show that "woman are too allowed to do this" might be just the thing that you need.

Me, I'm starting my girls on these skills this summer. They're 4 and 7. There won't be any of those "that's something that only boys do" crap going on with them ....

Anyway, just my two cents.
 
If you dump her in the woods with the tools to survive and she does,i'd suggest you move to another state 'cuase she's one tough cookie and she'll use those tool's on you .Better than sleeping with one eye open:eek: :)
 
The dump her in the woods idea actually aint that bad. I am thinking more along the lines of a "planned" day hike gone wrong. Take her hiking with minimal supplies and pretend that I am lost once it starts to get dark. Let her spend a night in "survival" style and then in the morning get "lucky" and find my way back out. What do you think? Of course if she ever found out that we were not lost she will make my life miserable.
 
>Finally, remember that many women in our society are raised to believe that some things are what a guy should do, and so they wait around for a guy to do it.

It's the most annoying thing. "All i have to do is look cute and some guy will do it for me", and then they want equality. Well, the cute ones don't, the ugly ones are the ones who want equality because they can't con guys into doing things for them. And this gets taught to them young too, all they have to do is cry and someone will come along and do it for them. Boys get told to shut up and do it. Ok, end rant.
 
Must be a recent thing. The women always took care of getting the fire going in our family. They used it to cook, so they gotta be able to get it going and keep it fed, which meant gathering the fuel as well.
 
Failure of a student to learn is the fault of the teacher not the student. Simply providing the information isn't teaching. Your fundamental role is to determine how to present the information so your students pay attention, understand and retain the information.

There are *many* ways to do this, use humor, tell stories, make it interactive. You have have to figure out a way to make it important for them to learn, and them make it easy for them to relate to the material. You have to do as much work as the students.

-Cliff
 
wade said:
The dump her in the woods idea actually aint that bad. I am thinking more along the lines of a "planned" day hike gone wrong. Take her hiking with minimal supplies and pretend that I am lost once it starts to get dark. Let her spend a night in "survival" style and then in the morning get "lucky" and find my way back out. What do you think? Of course if she ever found out that we were not lost she will make my life miserable.
Click to expand...

Do you really want your girlfriend thinking you're so lame that you got her lost in the woods? Sounds like a good way to make sure she'll never go hiking with you again.

I'm just sayin' ....
 
some people are interested in self-reliance...and some aren't. if she isn't a hiker or the outdoor type, she'll see no reason that she'll ever need what you are trying to show her.

i've found with my girl that short stories, news articles, etc., are the best way to get her to realize why i'm interested in this stuff and how it's a real possibility. give her realistic scenarios in which she may actually have to use these skills. like i said earlier, if she isn't the outdoor type, it will be harder than usuall. try starting with skills that relate to car breakdowns.

best of luck.
 
Don't sound like alot of fun....

Only a few things I can suggest, although the golden rule has already been mentioned...(the one that says you can lead a horse to water but ya' can't lift thier tail up an' suck it up through thier ass for 'em, or somethin' like that)

Here's some thoughts though...

Watch that you aren't too didactic the way you're teaching things. didactic learning ain' no fun, activity is. If you make it seem too much like work, she's likely to resent the hell outta the experience, and balk at every opportunity. Instead of crouching her down in the backyard with a cotton ball and a striker trying to explain the importance of a fire, and mention all the gloomy doomy consequences of NOT having a fire, try taking her out on an overnighter. When it's time to settle down for the night, have her light the fire, while you go hunting and gathering some marshmallows, or a couple hotdogs or something. (this isn't the time to teach her about burning the fur off a squirrel for dinner):D If she don't start the fire, you don't make one yourself, although giving a helpful pointer here and there might be awright, if necessary.

Also try making it easier at first, and then progressively harder. When we're first learning these kinda skills it's more important to just plain develop confidence at first than technique. Have her start a cottonball that's coated with vaseline, second one a bit less, third one, barely a dab, fourth one with none at all.

The idea with taking her out hiking.....

I wouldn't "pretend" to be lost. That kinda thing backfires nine outta ten times. It's more likely to undermine her confidence in you rather than bolster confidence in herself. (Not to mention having to live with her re-telling the story of how you screwed up and made her spend a whole night in the woods over and over again every chance she gets)

Taking her out hiking and telling her up front that you're gonna spend the night/weekend roughing it with a minimum of gear might work better. But remember, it's not practice or training, it's....just for fun...to see if we can do it...;)

Also, just pure outdoor exposure is the best teacher, I think. Just plain lotsa fun outdoor trips, maybe make each one a bit more adventurous than the last.

Remember to STOP and take a break yourself when you start getting pissed off, it aint gonna getcha nowhere, so take a break and cool down if you feel the pressure rising, and don't push her too hard, you'll get much farther with slow persistence.

I stopped to reflect on the few things I've learned, and I never really remember having "learned" to start a campfire, build a shelter, or gather berries and rose hips,or catch a fish- I just kinda started doing it with time and exposure.

Biggest thing is to try to keep it light and fun. even though it's quite a serious topic with grave consequences for misjudgement.

These ideas have gotten me through teaching my wife some basic SD to shoot, and helping to teach a few topics back in the EMS days. (Gawd I had to teach some freakin' idiots!! GRRRR!!!!!)

If you can get the time and money a real deal course might be good for her also. somehow the significant others tend to learn these things better from other folks than loved ones. (kinda the way they'll ignore your advice about something for a month and a half, but then listen right up to some clerk in the grocery store that says the exact same thing you've been saying all along)

Slightly OT, but ya' know...this is honestly something I've never gone through with my own wife. She was born and raised here in Alaska, and when she was in the third grade her SCHOOL took the class out for a week long field trip to learn survival. They taught the kids to make a fire, clean animals, build shelters, etc. knives were required. Imagine something like that these days!

She's actually pretty adept when it comes to the wild, with the exception of an acute case of "Bearanoia" (the unreasonable fear that a hungry bear is lurking behind every tree and rock waiting to devour her) Last time she went hiking without me, she brought her 1911, four extra mags, AND my L-frame Smith&Wesson 586 with three extra speed loaders!)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top