Take Your Kids Camping

The hubby and I have yet to take the explorers camping. I’m hoping this is the summer it’ll happen, but I still have my doubts.

So who do I turn to when I need some advice and ideas for ensuring a successful first kids’ camping experience? Fellow blogger Roy Scribner. He encourages parents to experience the great outdoors with their children at CampingBlogger.net and was just the person I wanted to have stop by and share some thoughts on why it’s so important to go camping with kids.
 
Family camping is enjoying a huge resurgence in popularity lately, but if you haven’t taken your kids camping yet, you might be wondering what all the fuss is about. 

Maybe you have memories of camping trips with your own parents – the family camping vacation was quite a rich tradition for many of us in our youth. But even if camping wasn’t a part of your childhood, there are a lot of good reasons to make it a part of your own kids’ upbringing. 

Working parents, school sports, television and video games – there are a lot of distractions that come between parents and kids these days. While we cannot change some of the economic realities of our modern lives, we can teach our children that there is value in simplicity. A family camping trip is a great way to instill these values in our children and show them that fun doesn’t have to include a video screen.

Some of my strongest childhood memories are from our summer family camping vacations. Giant banana slugs in a redwood forest, bears in Yosemite National Park, mom frying toast on a camp stove for breakfast. These are the kind of memories that your children will recall years later when they have kids of their own. Runaway sensationalism is alive and well in all of today’s electronic media, but it can’t compete with what your children will discover in nature!

Some of our friends who we have coaxed into camping have been a bit nervous about spending an unplugged weekend with their kids. I have to admit, the inside of our tent looked like a small toy store on some of our early camping trips! We quickly discovered, though, that once our kids were outdoors, the toys weren’t nearly as interesting as a stick or skipping rocks on the water, or even a giant banana slug. Nowadays, our 4-year-old is the only one who brings a few toys – and those tend to see little use.
 
One of the greatest benefits we enjoy on our family camping trips is watching our kids get excited about seeing an animal in the wild, or stare in amazement at a waterfall. Of course, we are usually staring in amazement ourselves, which highlights the connection we share with our children during those moments. It seems that in so many of our children’s activities, we as parents are more like spectators than participants, which is one reason the family camping experience is such a strong one – it’s something we do together.
 
The family camping experience is also a great confidence-builder for our kids. I remember how proud I was the first time I learned how to make a campfire and your kids can gain similar confidence by taking responsibility for some of your campsite tasks. In fact, the first few times you go camping, you just might feel a little pride yourself when you finally get the tent set up! If you run into problems, just remember – your kids are watching!

It's always nice to share.

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