Surviving camping with your kids

As I mentioned awhile back, I went “camping” with my husband and two daughters. I say it with the quotes because we didn’t really do any hardcore camping. We really pitched a tent in someone’s yard up north. Also, my youngest, Breanna, and I didn’t even sleep in the tent. I wanted to but she was ready for bed long before we were, and was loudly protesting being awake. Not wanting to leave her alone in a tent that was pretty far away from where the rest of us were, the host offered his spare bedroom to me. I put Breanna in there and ended up deciding to sleep there to rather than risk moving her at 1 am and have her keep everyone awake.

So it wasn’t so much camping. Alas. But there’s always next time and maybe we’ll even get to go somewhere with no electricity! If that’s what you’re planning, here are some handy tips.

This site offers some suggestions along the lines of starting slowly. I guess that’s what we did – we didn’t take a 20-month-old and a 4.5-year-old into the middle of a national park away from everything, we started with a tent in a yard. The author suggests picking a campground where you can drive right to your site rather than backpacking in because you’ll be more likely to avoid forgetting something you really need for your kids. Also, if you suddenly run out of bandages and your child scrapes himself while playing, a drive-in campsite is more likely to have a store nearby. And they’ll also have actual bathrooms, or outhouses at least; peeing in the woods is an art if you’re a girl, and a young one may have some trouble with that.

The author also suggests that you can try some campsites that are more like actual kid camps, where there are organized activities. If your kids get bored easily, having a campground that offers sports, specific hikes, horseback riding, etc, might keep you from losing your mind when they look around after five minutes and ask, “now what?”

This site offers similar suggestions but also recommends that you have a back-up plan (presumably involving a hotel or motel in town) in case of bad weather. The authors suggest you set up your gear at home first to familiarize yourself with it so you can get the tent pitched quickly and get straight to having fun, and to avoid trying to figure out your camp stove while the kids are hollering that they’re starving.

They also suggest keeping meal planning simple and to perhaps prepare as much as possible ahead of time. I also liked their idea of packing your gear and storing it together in large tubs so that everything is ready right away if you want to go on a spontaneous camping trip, though that might be harder with very young kids. They recommend making sure each kid has their own flashlight, setting a perimeter boundary of where your kids are allowed to go, and to warn children not to feed anything to the wildlife.

Most sites that I checked out had one common suggestion – when you’re doing your planning and preparing, get your kids as involved as possible in the process according to their age. The more involved they are, the more invested they’ll feel and the more important they’ll feel too. Hayley, my 4-year-old, was a great help in rolling up the sleeping bags with me, and she also made sure no one forgot the flashlights or pillows.

Other than that, the best thing I can say is to have a sense of humor, be flexible, and enjoy yourself!