red brick, yellow door

We always knew that we wanted to take our kids camping, but guilt-inducing parenting articles reminding our generation that our kids aren’t getting outside enough sealed the deal. Neither my husband nor I grew up camping, however, so we had a steep learning curve. What we’ve found is what most folks won’t tell you when they are extolling the virtues of a family camping trip: It can really suck. No, I mean really suck. Your job as a parent is to get through the suck and not let your kids see how much it sucks, so that they, too, can someday experience the suck with their own kids. Why? Because as painful as it can be, it can also be the most engaging, endearing, and memorable time you ever spend together as a family. Here’s a list of the things I wish I had known before packing up the car for the first time:

1. Practice setting up your crap first. Never open a tent for the first time at a campsite. Just don’t. At many state parks, you can’t check into a site until late in the day. If you don’t know what the hell you are doing with all your equipment, you’ll have some pissed off kids who are wondering where their dinner is at 10:00 p.m. while you are still trying to figure out what pole goes where.
2. Draw out a list of what you can’t live without when roughing it. I’m talking the basics. Real basic, like sleep. With four kids to wrangle at a campsite over a series of days, sleep must happen. And don’t give me that crap of the crickets and the stars lulling you to sleep under the blissfully swaying trees. Unless you regularly sleep on your hardwood floors, I would recommend an air mattress. We can fit two queen sized air mattresses and two singles into our 8-man tent. It looks a bit like a giant bouncy house, but it works.
3. Don’t be a hero. If your idea of camping means that you emerge from the wilderness sporting a week’s worth of stubble wearing the pelts of the animals you hunted, skinned, and cooked over a roaring fire you started with two twigs and your bare hands, you might consider lowering your expectations. A lot. If it’s a first (or even a second or third) camping trip with your kids, do yourself a favor and start at your closest state park at a site that provides electricity and water. They’ll also have bathrooms. With showers. Remember that part about sleep? Now imagine that scenario with six people, a dog, and no access to showers. Not happening, folks. Not happening.
4.  Keep your dreams of campfire culinary greatness at home. My kids know that if they see a bag of Doritos on the kitchen counter when they get home from school, we are going on a trip. Camping makes everyone hangry. For the most part, we pack healthy foods including lots of fresh fruits and veggies. Heck, we even make our own granola and trail mix, but I never regret having some crap on hand that’s quick and easy and tastes good over a fire. And sometimes that crap is refrigerator biscuits, cooked in any one of several thousand different ways. And that’s ok.
5. Have a disaster plan. I know, a vacation shouldn’t require such a plan, but this is camping and things can go wrong. Be prepared. Talk through what you want to do if it rains. What if a kid gets hurt or stung by something that you can’t identify? What if you get split up from each other when hiking? You can’t possibly predict all that could go wrong, but you need to have an idea of how you are going to react to the most common scenarios. I have no fewer than five fully stocked first aid kits on hand when we go camping. I wish I was kidding.
6. Prepare to entertain your kids. Read enough parenting articles related to the great outdoors and you’ll get the idea that the second your children go outside they will frolic like cute little woodland creatures, keeping themselves occupied for hours birdwatching and exploring the local flora. Hogwash. If your kids are in school, they are used to being directed by adults for 8 hours every day. Eventually, they will entertain themselves, but it might be with such wonderfully creative games as “Rock Tag” where the person who gets hit with the rock is “It.” Bring board games and cards, coloring books and crayons. Print off a camping scavenger hunt or make your own. Buy out every last glow stick Dollar General has to offer. Choose a campground that has a playground and try to pitch your tent within sight of it. You can sit back with your glass of wine while watching your kids play with all the other children whose parents are doing the exact same thing you are.
7. Embrace the suck. Channel your inner Mary Poppins. Know going into your trip that it is going to be a lot of work, that it will probably downpour while you are trying to set up your tent, that you’ll have forgotten to pack somebody’s wubby that they just can’t possibly sleep without. Take notes on what worked and what didn’t, what gear you needed and what you wished you had. Make camping a habit. You’ll all become much more proficient at it with practice.

Accept the negative aspects of your camping adventure so that you can then shift your focus to where it needs to be – on spending uninterrupted time with your family. Work your butt off, but also play together. Tell stories. Hike the trails together, hand in hand. Your time together doesn’t last forever. Make it count.