Camping with Little Kids

We’ve camped with 9 month to 7 year-old kids in California, Utah, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland — we hope to cover lots more ter­ri­tory in the com­ing years. Each time we camp we learn a few things. Then, think­ing per­haps we’ve dis­cov­ered it all, we take another trip where we fall down again and learn more. It’s a lovely cycle, really.

Lessons learned

#1 — Our first out­ing was with a group of par­ents, where we learned that mobile babies get really, really dirty when you camp. We’re pretty laid back folks when it comes to dirt on our chil­dren, but we had to make a con­scious effort to let go even more than usual. This bat­tle was best left un-picked.

#2 — The next camp­ing trip taught us the impor­tance of care­fully choos­ing a camp­ing site. The noise of the strong wind may not have both­ered us adults, but it sure kept the dogs up, who kept the baby up, who kept our tent-mate up, who may have decided then and there never to have chil­dren. Sleep depri­va­tion is not pretty.

#3 — Our third trip taught us our most valu­able les­son. Even babies who can’t walk or talk can open a tent zip­per. You must close the zip­per to all tent doors up high where your child can’t reach. If you sleep more soundly than your child or are camp­ing near a haz­ard like a river, you may even want to con­sider lock­ing your­selves in with a zip tie that must be cut off by a grown up. (A zip tie may even be a neces­sity with tents that can­not be zipped upward.) We were lucky, in this case. Our son had only got­ten about ten feet away when I noticed his absence. We were also camp­ing with a large group in an area com­pletely devoid of bears, snakes, water­falls, poi­son ivy, and many of the other haz­ards that might be present when you’re camp­ing some­where other than the grassy field of a large fenced fairground.

#4 — This one was also a doozie. Never camp in a small three-season tent at the base of a snow-covered moun­tain in late November — even in California. Springing for a motel room will be money well-spent.  Silly us, we did our best to snug­gle up and toughed it out. At the time, we were still co-sleeping and night nurs­ing. My breast has never been colder and I have never been hap­pier that my kid keeps his hat on. Needless to say, we took the rest of the win­ter off. We’ve since invested in a big­ger tent and now check the weather before plan­ning our nightly accommodations.

#5 — The fol­low­ing spring, we learned that the best place for your toddler’s booster seat is on the ground. It’s not very secure on a pic­nic table bench. (At this point you are prob­a­bly ques­tion­ing our com­mon sense!) We also dis­cov­ered one of our two favorite prod­ucts ever – the toddler-sized Sunday Afternoon hats.

#6 — A key les­son we learned in Utah this spring is that a river-side site that would have been per­fect and relax­ing before we had kids is absolutely fright­en­ing with lit­tle kids in tow. As we drove up and did an ini­tial assess­ment of the site, I had visions of chil­dren slip­ping off the banks and into the sweep­ing cur­rent.… We were for­tu­nate to find an alter­nate site in a safer part of the campground.

#7 — On the last few trips we’ve real­ized how our con­fi­dent, busy, and increas­ingly inde­pen­dent kids are eas­ier to see in the dark when they wear glow sticks around their necks. The glow sticks pull double-duty by mak­ing get­ting into a sleep­ing bag seem that much cooler: the kids really enjoyed hav­ing their glow sticks in their sleep­ing bags with them. (This is not appro­pri­ate for younger kids who might be tempted to suck or chew on them.) Headlamps and camp chairs made to fit are also hot items to bring along.

Q&A

Our learn­ing curve has lev­eled out and the insights we bring home now are more logis­tic in nature and less excit­ing, so I will spare you those; how­ever, a mom recently asked me a few great ques­tions about camp­ing with babies and tod­dlers and I have decided to share our answers here.

Did you camp with your kids when they were very young?

We started both of our kids at around 9 months or so. It wasn’t a con­scious choice to wait until then, though. They were fall babies so it just worked out that we camped in the spring and summer.

How is it get­ting a tod­dler to nap in a tent in the mid­dle of the day?

If your child will nurse to sleep and it’s not too hot out then it might be easy. Otherwise you might need to be cre­ative. Maybe your child naps in a car­rier, stroller, travel crib or carseat? We love the Ergo and just go for a walk around nap-time. If that fails we cre­ate a rea­son to go for a drive. I once saw par­ents with a jog­ging stroller and a gui­tar try­ing to ser­e­nade their tod­dler to sleep with lul­la­bies on a quiet trail.

Can you get a kid to sleep at 8pm when adults are up talk­ing and keep­ing them up?

We don’t worry much about bed­time when we are camp­ing. I used to stress about it so I could have my time at the camp­fire, but I have since learned that it is far less stress­ful to rock a child to sleep in my arms by the fire (and have other folks bring me drinks) than to sequester myself in the tent to sing and rock my tod­dler to sleep while resent­ing the fact I was not social­iz­ing. As my kids have got­ten older they have got­ten busier. We now just wait until they are really tired — the trick is to catch them before they are so tired they melt down — and then bed­time in the tent tends to go well. On our most recent trip, we camped with a fam­ily who was bring­ing their 3 and 5 year-old on their first trip. Bedtimes went smoothly all around and all four adults even got in a game of cards! However, I think it is help­ful to regard that adult time as an unex­pected lux­ury the first few times you camp. This way you won’t be too dis­ap­pointed if you find your­self stuck in the tent with a lit­tle one. The bright side is that if you go to sleep when they do you might catch more sleep, and every par­ent could use some of that.

More on sleep

Naturally, bed­times are not always such smooth affairs. I was just talk­ing to a friend today who had a mis­er­able first camp­ing expe­ri­ence. Her son woke up in the mid­dle of the night and would not stop cry­ing. He was used to always sleep­ing in the crib — his rou­tine and usual com­forts were com­pletely absent. If your child has never slept any­where but his crib, then you might con­sider set­ting up a pack and play in your tent. (Did I men­tion how nice it is to have a big­ger tent now that we are a fam­ily of four?)

We travel a lot and one thing we have done to improve the con­sis­tency of their away-from-home bed­time rou­tine is to buy each a travel sleep­ing bag / air mat­tress combo. We take them every­where with us. This way the bed is famil­iar whether they’re in a tent, in a hotel, or at grammy’s house.

Our two year-old still winds up sleep­ing with us some­times when we camp. A pair of zip-together-able rec­tan­gu­lar (non-mummy) sleep­ing bags and Therm-a-Rest pads that strap together make this more com­fort­able for our fam­ily. If some­one gets shafted regard­ing the sleep­ing arrange­ments it tends to be me, so I have learned to toss an extra blan­ket and or sleep­ing pad in the tent to make the night more comfortable.

If you are still night nurs­ing a lit­tle one, I have heard that air mat­tresses can be more com­fort­able for moms lying on their sides than the less sub­stan­tial foam pads or Therm-a-Rests. This tid­bit is based on hearsay rather than my own experience.

Every fam­ily is different

There’s no magic answer for when the time is right to start camp­ing with your kids, so you’ll just need to try it when you are ready. It might turn into a sleep-deprived night­mare, or it could end up being eas­ier and more enjoy­able than week­ends at home. Either way, you will have given your kids a new expe­ri­ence and some fresh air and cre­ated some sto­ries to share down the line. If your first trip doesn’t work out, then you can adjust and try again when the kids are older or you are more ready.

In this crazy info world of inter­net, TV, mobile phones, Wii, etc., it is relax­ing to unplug and get away as a fam­ily. I love camp­ing with my kids and hope you do, too.

Have a camp­ing story? Advice about camp­ing with babies, tod­dlers, or even big­ger kids? Questions? Please share below!

Tagged as: camping, camping with babies, camping with kids, camping with preschoolers, camping with toddlers