Raising Outdoor Kids: 10 ways you can tell if it's working

You're committed to raising kids who are as passionate about playing outside as you are. You buy them the gear. You sacrifice "me" time in the outdoors to take them on easier hikes, snowshoes and other kid-size adventures. You clench your teeth and live through all the "This is too hard" and "Can we go back yet?" comments. You budget money to take them white water rafting and heli-snowshoeing instead of to buy new backcountry skis for yourself. And at the end of the day, you ask yourself, "Is this working? Is it all worth it?"

Here's how I know my efforts to raise outdoor kids are working, and why I get at least as much out of it as my boys do:

1. Upon making it down the steep scree above the meadow at Ptarmigan Cirque my 12-year-old says, "I didn't have any trouble coming down that. All this hiking must be working."

2. My 8-year-old tracks some kind of big cat while we're snowshoeing and says, "I bet I'm going to study wildlife when I grow up."

3. My 8-year-old goes to a summer camp at Mount Royal University and announces, "I'm going to Mount Royal University when I'm older. They have a climbing wall."

4. Their favorite ride at Disneyland is Grizzly River Rapids because "it's like being in the mountains."

5. Standing in line at the Matterhorn in Disneyland, I have to tell my 8-year-old not to climb up the fake mountain.

6. Both of my boys say they'd rather go back to the Jean-Michel Cousteau family camp on Catalina Island than Disneyland for their summer vacation.

7. My 12-year-old says he wants to go snowshoeing for his 13th birthday instead of playing laser tag.

8. It's February, and my 8-year-old asks if we can go camping in the spring because he doesn't want to wait for summer.

9. While waiting at Panorama's activity center to go white water rafting, my 12-year-old looks at the tennis courts and says, "I'm an outdoorsy person. But not the tennis kind of outdoors."

10. When grandma asks my 12-year-old about his favorite part of going to Hawaii, he doesn't say it was playing at the beach or the hotel pool. It was caving at the Kula Kai Caverns.