Raising Outdoor Kids: Scrapes, scratches, bruises and non-fatal cuts build character

I came across an article today titled Barrier to Active Play: Safety Concerns. The thesis of the article is that one of the biggest barriers to kids playing outside is their parents' fears of kids hurting themselves, being abducted by strangers, or struck by lightening a split second before a meteor falls on them.

If you're a parent, this is nothing new. Let your kids play unattended in your front yard and you run the risk of Social Services taking them away to live in the custody of the state where they'll be safe. Or worse, the neighbors will look at you with their eyes askance. Yet we all know that sheltering our kids from irrational dangers that we know exist only in our heads isn't healthy for them. It robs them of the experiences they need to learn how to identify risks, develop their sense of independence, gain the resilience to keep playing when they scrape a knee, get some exercise...In other words, it robs them of the experiences they need to become the independent, well-adjusted individuals we want them to become.

This isn't something that outdoor parents leave behind in the city when we take our outdoor kids into the wilds and reintroduce them to the food chain. I've seen parents, who themselves take risks with severe consequences in the mountains, berate their child for stepping in a creek or happily hopping across boulders...Be careful! Watch your step! You're going to fall and scrape your knee! See, you fell. I told you to watch your step. Why were you watching me?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not perfect when it comes to letting my boys do something I know has a greater than 50/50 chance of spilling blood. But I've learned the hard way in soooooo many areas of life that we all have to learn our own lessons. And one of the reasons I take my sons to the mountains is so they can learn their own lessons. Unless I think a bone is going to be broken or worse, I usually let things unfold as they were meant to. Just as I learned from every scraped knee, scratched shin, bruised buttock and cut finger from the Rocky Mountains to the West Coast Trail (seriously, I was 12 when I hiked that thing...what were my parents thinking?), my sons are learning how to identify risks and decide to either take them or avoid them.

Sometimes taking the risk works out, and sometimes they leave a little bit of themselves on the trail. Either way, they keep going. They don't let a little pain or a little scratch stop them. And at the end of every hike I can see the independence and confidence they've gained, and how they bring that back to their day-to-day lives in the relative safety of the city.

Raising Outdoor Kids: Go on a techno-fast and let boredom works its wonders

"Go on a techno-fast. Research shows that multitasking can divide attention and hurt one’s ability to learn and create. Children and parents need a break, and nature is the best place to take it. Set aside times in the day and every week — or a whole week or more — to leave the electronics behind. Exit the virtual and enter the real. Spend a little time in the Cascades, your yard or even the English countryside. Your kids may complain at first, but they’ll come back from the break feeling better. They’ll notice it. So will you."

This was tucked away at the end of an article titled "Forward to Nature: Why a Walk in the Woods Could Calm ADHD, Make Your Family Happier and Deliver Your Kid to Harvard" by Richard Louv. In a nutshell, the article articulates the health and other benefits of getting children into nature: lower rates of depression and negative stress, reduced symptoms of ADHD, improved academic performance, the list goes on. If you're reading this, you're probably already aware of all this. (Us outdoor parents tend to spend a lot of time preaching to the choir about this stuff.) What really caught my attention was the section at the end of the article that listed easy ways to "Reclaim Nature." Go on a techno-fast was one of them.

As it happens, my teen-aged son is on day 6 of a school project in which he had to give up electronics for a week. After an initial increase the frequency and duration of fights with his little brother, he settled into a pattern of sustained boredom interspersed with shorter periods of fighting with his brother. So last night I handed him my old copy of Into Thin Air, and he actually read it. Reading on its own isn't new for him. He's always enjoyed books like Diary of Wimpy Kid or The Hunger Games. Age appropriate stuff. This was the first adult book I'd suggested he read. It was also the first non-fiction book, aside from kid classics like The Scoop on Poop (there are two; I recommend the newer one).

Then this morning he recommended that we go cardboard tobogganing again. This was new. Seldom does he suggest going out to do that kind of stuff any more. So we took the cardboard toboggans out and had a blast, even though the snow was wet and slow. And when the cardboard was too wet and bent to slide at all, we used them as forts and had a snowball fight. It was all fun, spontaneous and driven by the boys, not me.

And then, after we'd come in, dried off and warmed up, he went out and threw snowballs for the dog in the backyard for an hour. I don't know what suddenly got into him, but I know what didn't: two-dimensional digital stimulation. Or maybe I do know what got into him: boredom. Good clean old-fashioned boredom, and it was the best thing that's happened to all of us in a while.

Old School Outdoors: Retro sliding with cardboard toboggans

Yesterday after tubing at Norquay, we went into the day lodge for hot chocolate. At some point, one of the boys pointed out a poster announcing an upcoming cardboard toboggan derby. I didn't think about it again until we got home and they announced that they wanted to make their own cardboard toboggans.

So I went into the basement and pulled up a couple big sheets of cardboard that their bedroom furniture had been delivered in. Then, being the over-thinking adult of the family, I went online to find photos of cardboard toboggans to see how to make them. By the time I looked up from the screen, the boys were already cutting and taping. So I closed Google Images, shut up, and let them create.

The results? The old school cardboard toboggans slid better than 90% of the fancy plastic store-bought sleds we've tried over the years. We spent at least an hour going up the little hill behind my house, sliding down on the toboggans and our butts, getting snow up sleeves and down necks. When we were finally too cold to continue, we reluctantly headed back home, upon which a certain teenager was heard to say, "I can't believe we had that much fun with just pieces of cardboard."

Basic but effective

A little less snow in the face thanks to the deflector in front (the uphill end)

Tubing with Kids in Banff: Norquay is Just as Good the Second Time

You know you're doing something right when you go to a tube park and your 9-year-old says he wants to walk up instead of taking the magic carpet.

Last year when we went tubing at Lake Louise, walking up wasn't as big a commitment. But Norquay is hands down the tube park with the most vertical in Banff National Park. It's also steeper. That adds up to a good workout, even for an outdoor dad who's used to hauling his butt up mountains.

The reward was worth it, though. Whether you hurtle down one of the seven runs solo or as three tubers holding onto each others' tubes for dear life, you get a pretty wild ride. At the end of each run at least one of us walked away with a face that felt frozen into place by the rush of winter air we'd just blasted through.

After a couple walks up the hill, the magic carpet proved to be a valuable addition to the tube park since the first time we went to Norquay in search of tubing fun a couple years ago. Exercise and active kids are good, and so is just focusing on the fun of an activity without feeling like you have to maximize its fitness value. This was one of those days, and when my 13-year-old asked if we could take the magic carpet I didn't complain. You'd be amazed at how sitting on a tube and letting gravity pull you to the bottom can leave you breathless.

Also in tubing's favor: it costs less than skiing and has zero learning curve. Even for a skiing family like us, sometimes it's nice to leave the skis and boots and poles at home (not the helmets, even though they aren't required) and hit the slopes sans all the stuff.