SFP 168: Hiking with Kids [How + WHY]

Life gets busy. Sometimes it gets hard to make time for the simple things–like taking your kids for a walk in nature. But the value of the free and simple things should never be underestimated. Today, I’m sharing my favorite strategies for hiking with kids and the immense (yet not-so-obvious) benefits for the whole family.



Show Notes/Links:



* Episode 90, There’s No Such Thing as Bad Weather with Linda Åkeson McGurk.* Tula Toddler Carrier



Full Episode Transcription:



Today we’re talking about hiking, and this seems like such a simple thing, and I’m going to give you some practical tools and strategies for hiking, ways that we have found hiking is more or less successful, but also some of the benefits. I think we underestimate the benefits of simple unstructured activities like this. Last year on the podcast in episode 90, we talked about the idea that there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes. In that episode we had Linda Åkeson McGurk who is Rain or Shine Mamma, which is the name of her online platform, but also the author of There’s No Such Thing as Bad Weather. After that episode, I really felt this huge shift in the Simple Families audience towards understanding the importance of getting our kids outside. Now, even though many of us know, yeah, sure, kids need to play outside, they need nature, it can be really easy to let that unstructured outdoor time take a back seat to the structured stuff. So maybe there’s no time to get outside and play in the woods today, or even just get outside and play in the park because you have to go to soccer, and you have to go to swimming, and you have to go to all these other activities that seem to become the priority, and really there’s a few reasons that these type of activities become a priority.



Number one is we’re paying money for it, and if we’re paying money for it, we want to make sure our kids are doing it. We want to make sure that they’re benefiting from it. So the fact that we’re investing our money there, it means that we’re going to invest our time in these activities. So something like hiking that’s free, we’re not going to be as invested at spending our time because we haven’t sunk the money into it. Now, another big reason that we tend to lean towards structured activities is that we feel like that’s what our kids need, and we sort of feel this pressure, keeping up with the Joneses, to do what all the other kids are doing, and we’re afraid if we don’t get our kids into a certain class or activity when they’re young, that they’re not going to thrive and then they’re not going to have the abilities as they get older.



Now, I’m definitely not slamming structured activities by any means. My son does karate and both my kids do swimming lessons right now and it’s a great fit for us, mainly because it doesn’t feel like too much. That’s always my word of wisdom for people who are enrolling their kids in structured activities, is there is no perfect number, there’s no secret number. You have to pay attention to what feels right for your family. When those types of activities become a burden, or they become exhausting, or you start to dread them, or your kids start to dread them, then you might be doing too much. Another important red flag to keep in mind if you might be doing too many structured activities is if you don’t have an opportunity to make time for things like going for a hike.