Getting Kids Excited About Camping

Theres probably nothing healthier for children than being in nature, camping with their family being one way to experience this. The idea of this is awesome, but sometimes the reality is less than the ideal. Thinking through a strategy for getting kids excited about camping is the best way to assure that there will be many good trips in the future. Also, taking a long term view will give families the best chance of continuing their family trips as kids get older, and through their teen years have a tendency to be less excited about such activities.

Making a plan is an important part of the process. Adapting plans for future trips and adjusting plans over time is also part of the process. By this, we mean that as you experience camping trips together as a family, you will discover things you would not choose to repeat, as well as those things you might wish you'd allowed more time for. These are the adaptations you will make based on experiences. The other way you will want to adapt plans is to adjust them for changing interests and abilities as your family gets older. Your kids will be older and will be able to engage in some of those activities you might feel were inadvisable at a younger age, but would be okay now. Also, clearly the things kids like to do changes over time. Lets begin by considering planning taking ages of children into consideration.

Planning Camping Trips with Ages of Children in Mind

There is nothing worse than a camping trip that goes wrong because the plans were wrong. One of the ways this can occur is when the plans are not with the ages of children realistically considered. This can go one of two ways. Activities can be geared at too high a level for the ages of your children, or perhaps at too low a level. There are no hard and fast rules here. The parents will be able to make the best decisions regarding these matters. However, here are some things to keep in mind.

For younger children, acitivities should be of shorter duration. The attention spans of younger children is less than that for older kids. There may be some pretty exciting activities that these age kids can do - just for a shorter period of time. As kids get older, these activities can be for longer durations. Again, these are things that parents will know best.

Acitivities should be such that kids are challenged, but not to the point of frustration. Of course, if parents plan things carefully, they can gradually provide challenges that perhaps result in brief and minor frustration. These can be part of the learning process. At the risk of redundancy, this again is something that there are not hard and fast rules for. Parents will know where kids challenges might turn into frustrations that might damage their overall perception of the camping experience.

Perhaps this advice belongs further up in this article. However, it is probably an obvious enough matter that it almost is unnecessary. Trips should be planned that do not present so much in the way of safety worries that everyone is miserable. If you have small children and are camping on the banks of a raging river or in an area overrun with Kodiak Brown Bears, you might be a bit unhappy. Plan so that stress is not a part of the equation

Planning For the Different Interests of Family Members

This is one place where I think parents need to be on the same page before getting kids involved. Knowing what your kids like to do, and to an extent what you would like for them to be doing, already have some things in mind that you will be happy with. If you can have a list of possible activities from which the rest of the family can choose, things will go much more smoothly. You can think of it as negotiating the win-win outcome.

The trick comes in when the reality sets in that one of your kids has one set of interests and another has another set of interests. What to do? Well, there are a couple of strategies we use here. They kind of depend on the situation.

One strategy is to divide the activities. Truthfully, I believe in this strategy the most. By this, I mean that each kid perhaps gets to pick one activity that we will all do. This might be fishing the first part of the day, and then swimming later in the day. Or it could be a hike in the morning and a trip to a nearby historical site later on. This way, the family stays together, and everyone learns to share and appreciate the interests of other family members. As a quick note, but in my mind quite important, mom and dad need to get to choose an activity now and then too.

Sometimes there just is a compelling reason why the whole family really cannnot do all activities together. A case-in-point comes to mind from a trip that we took a few years ago where hiring a fishing guide was part of the plans. Some of the family members had only passing interest in fishing, and certainly not for an entire day, not to mention the cost that would be involved in paying the guide for family members who would just as soon be doing something else. We try to keep these situations to a minimum, but they do happen.

Other Considerations

There are a number of other things to take into account for planning family camping trips. The gear you will bring can play a major role in the success of the trip. We have some suggestions in the form of a Camping Gear List that might be of assistance. If you need help choosing a tent or a sleeping bag, visit our Camping Gear page.

We have found some of our greatest joys as a family while together on camping trips. The description of a Month Long Trip we took might give you an idea of what we consider a great adventure. What is really important is that you find the right adventure for your family.
Happy Camping