Very few doctors are able to cure radiation. Rad-X is only useful if you take it before getting radiated, it raises the radiation resistance and therefore reduces the radiation taken. Not very useful in FO2.
You can take radaway for getting rid of radiation, it reduces the radiation level by 100 over time.
But since you are only a little radiated you might want to wait until you've at least 100 radiation before taking this valuable chem. A little radiation doesn't hurt, you have to be radiated a lot for negative consequences.
Sneak, Lockpick and Steal are highlighted since you chose them as Tag skills at creation, you start with extra 20 skill and only need half as much skill points to raise them.
Raise the skills you want to be higher.
You don't need more than 100 steal, it won't raise your chance to pickpocket successfully considerably, if you pickpocket from behind you'll almost always succeed (but save first, even with 300 skill you can fail)
If you are able to pick every lock you find if you try repeatedly there is no reason to raise lockpicking. My character was able to pick every lock with 100 lockpick skill, but even less might be perfect, especially if you use lockpicks.
Only raise sneak if you try sneaking a lot and fail your skillcheck
too often, I never used this skill.
Since you're using guns the most useful skill for you is "small guns", each percent skill raise will increase the chance to hit by 1 percent. But if you find "Guns and Bullets" magazines read them first, they raise your skill if it's lower than 91, the lower it is, the more you'll benefit.
You can also raise "unarmed" if you like meleeing more, besides increasing your chance to hit your punches and kicks get also more damaging.
Raising big guns isn't worth it, 100 carrying capacity is too low.
You can raise "energy weapon" or "melee" if you find a great weapon of that kind you want to use, but not before.
First aid can be raised by reading first aid books, so don't raise it.
The doctor skill heals more HP and even crippled limbs and there are even quest related skill checks in the game, so raisíng it to 80 is a good idea.
Traps aren't very important and 48 skill is quite high.
Science, repair and outdoorsman can be increased by reading books.
Speech is extremely useful for dialogues and definitely worth raising .
Barter is useless, if you absolutely need lots of money raise gambling above 100 and go gambling. But there are more important things than money in the game.
Flares can be lightened and used to lighten dark caves or other dark locations. You can wear them in your quick weapon slot or throw them on the ground to see the surroundings better.
Meat jerky can be useful to keep geckos or dogs busy, I never used it.
You should give the best armor available to your character and your NPCs. Armor is more important than weapons and leather armor should be the best armor you've found until now.
A1: Your village will starve without a way to increase food production.
A2: You can return when you have higher skills and better equipment (electronic lockpicks) to look what's down there, but that's optional.
A3: You can just punch them to death. Your karma will drop but this can be evened out by killing bad guys and doing good things elsewhere. The "childkiller" reputaion will stay and make at least one optional quest location unavailable, but this might be worth it.
If you let others steal from you and get away with it you won't survive long in the nuclear wastelands. Letting children steal because they are too young to get punished by law shouldn't work anymore when the government has collapsed and there's anarchy. The developers really seem to hate children and want to make the player hate them too.
Killing them with molotov cocktails will still make you a childkiller.
You can set up explosives in your inventory and let them pickpocket them, go away and watch them explode or test if the child kills are added to the kill statistics if you just cripple their legs so they can't run away and let Sulik kill them.
Hurting the kids without killing them will make them run away without your character suffering negative consequences.
I'd just enter combat mode each time you have to go past them, it's not worth wasting your time, you don't have to visit those locations often and the children outside the Den are friendly. Don't let the developers succeed in making you hate children.