Attention Parents!
We know you want to get kids outside more often, so to help make it happen we’ve got adventure advice from a 10-year-old.
Let’s face it: a family adventure is at the mercy of the kids. No matter how well planned, the outing ultimately depends on how the kids hold up. I have suffered through several misadventures with my kiddos that ended in meltdown.
So I asked my 10-year-old son Finn for his ideas about what works—and what doesn’t. After a lot of complaining, followed by bribery, he sat down and wrote down his advice for making sure your next outdoor adventure doesn’t suck.
My parents make me do outdoor stuff with them. They’re also making me write this. I don’t like writing. It’s boring. So is hiking. It’s just left-right-left-right, one foot in front of the other. What’s the challenge in that?
But sometimes the hikes lead to cool things. I didn’t want to go on a hike last month. It was two miles up a steep hill in Mexico. I complained most of the way up. But then we got to the top, and there were monarch butterflies everywhere. For the first time all day, I was silent. I just watched thousands of orange butterflies fluttering everywhere through the forest. They gathered in big clumps that hung down from the trees. And when the sun warmed them up, they started flying all around me. It was pretty awesome.
I also learned that these butterflies flew thousands of miles to get here. They are so fragile and small and they flew so far. I saw one butterfly dead on the forest floor and was sad. It worked so hard to get there.
Bring candy. M&Ms have helped me get up several steep hikes. Candy also helps after a long uphill climb on my bike. My mom steals from my Halloween candy and brings it on every hike or bike ride. The best are the Reese’s peanut butter cups.
Tell the truth about distances. Don’t lie about how much further it really is. Just tell it to us straight. My dad always lies to us about how many more miles we have to go to make it sound closer. But that just backfires because we are more disappointed and frustrated when we don’t get there. Stop lying! You are grownups and should be setting a good example.
Now me and my brother have learned to just automatically double whatever distance my dad says. If he says we have one mile to go, we know that means two miles. If there are only ten minutes to the trailhead, it’s at least twenty or probably more like thirty.
Play games. Like 20 questions or Two Truths and a Lie or anything that distracts us from the boredom. If you want to take it up a level, Truth or Dare is fun. My brother usually dares me to do something embarrassing or dangerous. Once, he dared me to plunge into a cold creek in the middle of winter. It hurt but I did it. Another time he dared me to make snow angels without a shirt on.
Bring a tennis ball. My dad keeps a tennis ball in his backpack at all times. Whenever me or my brother start to have a meltdown, he distracts us with the tennis ball. It’s hard to resist. If someone throws you a tennis ball, you want to catch it and then throw it back. He will throw the tennis ball anywhere with us—at the airport, in a hotel lobby, on a trail, and even in the Grand Canyon.
Last summer we went on a weeklong paddling trip down the Grand Canyon. The first three days were fun. But by the fourth day, my arms were tired of paddling, and I was sick of pooping in a bucket. When we set up camp that evening, I started to lose it. But my dad got out the tennis ball and started throwing it with me. I threw it back, and pretty soon we were playing catch on a sandbar in the middle of the Grand Canyon. My brother jumped in and we started playing hotbox, a game where one person tries to steal bases between the two throwers. We got covered in sand as we slid beneath the tags, so we got into the river to rinse off. Soon we were throwing the tennis ball again, making amazing diving catches. I once belly-flopped hard jumping off the sandbar into the river but I hung on to make the catch.
Tennis balls can serve as baseballs, footballs, basketballs, and even soccer balls if you are desperate. We’ve played football on a wilderness island using a tennis ball.
Tennis balls are irresistible. I have seen old people sitting at airports get out of their seats to catch a tennis ball that we missed. Whenever you bounce a tennis ball to someone, they will automatically try to catch it and throw it back. Except the airport security guard one time.
Include us in the planning. Let us help decide what we are doing. Our body, our choice! If you tell us what we are doing, we will resist no matter what because it’s parents telling us what to do. But if we get some say in it, we will complain less.
My mom gives us choices, like a mountain bike ride or a hike, which is a brilliant move. None of the choices are to stay at home and play Fortnite, so we have to pick one of the things she wants to do.
Downhill adventures are best. Think ziplining, skiing, and sometimes even mountain biking. We went to a downhill mountain bike park last summer where a shuttle drove us to the top and then we rode fun, flowy trails down to the bottom. Another time, my family drove to the top of a gravel road in Pisgah, and we did a night bike ride all the way down. We could only see the cone of light from our headlamps and the stars through the trees. It was pretty cool.
I can’t think of anything else. Just don’t forget the candy.
Cover photo: All photos courtesy of the author
