Publications

AMC Outdoors, June 2001

By Cindy Ross

When you’re active in the outdoors, it’s alarming how much food children can consume. I make wholesome foods the rule, allowing for an occasional treat. I bring as many fresh items as I can but refrain from toting fresh meat unless the outdoor temperature is as cold as the fridge. At mealtimes, since there is nothing resembling highchairs in the wild, we fashioned three-foot circles of heavy poly-nylon tarp and plopped the kids in the middle of it. We put a bowl between their spread legs and pulled a bib over their heads. If they dropped food, we could scrape it up and put it back into their bowls. We wiped the mats off after every meal and folded them into our kitchen bag.

No matter how short your excursion from the campsite, bring snacks along—they’re as important as the roll of toilet paper. It doesn’t matter if it’s true hunger or boredom; once kids get it into their heads that they want food, the motivation is insignificant and you need to have something to give them.

Encourage your kids to drink water as often as possible. Don’t wait until their wants become needs; by that point they are in danger of dehydration. We found that a gravity-fed water filter (like Cascade Designs’ Platypus) is worth its weight in gold. Pumping water through a filter for the four of us was a huge task, but we could just hang this bag up and in an hour have three gallons of purified water.

Kids often get hungry right before they go to bed, but no one should go to sleep hungry, especially if it’s chilly and the extra calories could keep you warm. We always offer a snack just before the kids brush their teeth. And we make sure there is drinking water in the tent for nighttime use—we all can get a little dehydrated during the day.

With all that drinking, bed-wetting can be a problem, even long after a child is potty trained. My son, Bryce, had a tendency to crawl out of his sleeping bag in the night. Once out in the cold air he would need to pee. My daughter, Sierra, on the other hand, was a deep sleeper and didn’t always answer "the call." I solved both of these problems by checking on my son at night to see if he’s cold (touching his nose and hands is a good test). I also woke both of them when I needed to go and brought them along with me. If a young sleepy child has to leave the tent in the middle of the night to urinate, he rarely wants to do it alone. So we have our mass exodus: no one’s bag gets wet, and Mom doesn’t have to make multiple annoying trips out in the night. If you don’t catch them in time, just keep a high-absorbency pack towel handy, which can blot up to a liter of liquid.

It took a little thought to figure out our family’s sleeping arrangements. You might want to consider who is most famous for the middle-of-the-night elimination and let them be closest to the door. We put our children on the outside, as they are smaller and can fit closer to the tent walls. This gives Todd and me some sense of being a couple too.

If there are older children in your family you might want to consider using a couple of two-man tents to give them some space. But do this only if you are sure the kids are beyond needing anything in the middle of the night, which would cause you to have to get up and go over.

Lack of sleep and fatigue are your biggest enemies in the battle to maintain your kids’ good moods in the wild. Make every effort to see that their needs are met. Establish a bedtime ritual when camping, perhaps a bit different than the one at home. We read books, give back rubs, sing. Have some familiar item along to give them consistency and security—a small pillow from home, a stuffed animal, or a special blanket. Waking up to pitch black or the nylon tent wall in your face can be unnerving to a small child. Have a flashlight handy. In fact, we got Sierra and Bryce each a headlamp so they can read and draw in their bags at night.