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Primitive Camping with Kids Builds Resilience

Not so long ago, glamping – a glamorous version of camping was all the rage for kids and parents who wanted to spend some quality time together in nature. While there is nothing wrong with that, it turns out that the variant with far fewer luxuries is much better for your children and their development.

If you want your kids to be more resilient and to gain many other valuable skills, take them to primitive camping places in Texas or wherever you are. You will like it, and your kids will be grateful for it in the long run.

primitive camping with kids

Primitive camping with kids builds resilience

Let us list some of the benefits of primitive camping with kids and how these factors combined lead to greater resilience.

Unstructured play

We, grown-ups, have to do everything on a strict schedule. There is a time when you have to start work, errands to run on your way home, and even our leisure time tends to be preprogrammed.

Sadly, kids don’t fare much better in this area – classes, schoolwork, even extracurricular activities – everything is on a timer and a strict regime.

The same holds for the kids’ playtime and the way they play. Most kids are stuck behind the screen of a computer or a tablet, playing video games.

Many of these games also require an internet connection for multiplayer games, meaning that your child won’t even leave the proximity of your home’s router so that they could play.

All of this changes when you go primitive camping. There are no rules, no restrictions when it comes to the way kids will play. Instead, they will have to use their imagination and resourcefulness, which builds resilience.

Less pressure and stress

This one is building upon the benefit we just mentioned. There is no strict timetable when you are outdoor, no pressure to do things perfectly, according to a set of pre-established rules or on time.

Same as adults, kids these days are under a great deal of stress. A significant amount of it comes from peer and academic pressure. When you take them primitive camping, those factors will not be there to stress them out.

Without stress, children will be able to think more clearly and calmly and to organize their thoughts.

Time for reflection and interaction

This item is valid for both kids and parents. As mentioned above, we spend so much time under pressure. But, that is just one side of the issue.

Another factor to consider is the fact that we sometimes seek out distractions.

Just think about yourself and how many times in a day you take your phone to check for notifications even when you know that there is nothing new to be seen.

Or, consider how many times you tend to watch a movie or a TV show while absentmindedly scrolling through your social media feed without a clear idea of what is happening on either screen.

Primitive camping means fewer modern-day distractions.

It also means more time to devote to self-reflection, a chance to be alone with your thoughts, and do some soul-searching.

Simultaneously, without your devices driving your attention away, you as a family will be more eager to turn to each other, to communicate and interact. This type of connection is very valuable and impossible to replace.

A chance to explore

One more downside of technology and the fact that we all walk around with the sum of human knowledge in our pockets is that kids are becoming less and less curious.

When they are out in nature, kids will encounter things, sights, plants, and animals that they have not seen before. This is going to awake their natural curiosity, which is another crucial element of resilience.

Exploring the great outdoors, finding odd pebbles and tree branches, or even falling into a puddle and becoming soaking wet and laughing about it around the campfire – all of these are elements of a healthy childhood that kids do not have a chance to explore in the urban areas.

That is one more reason why primitive camping will do them good.

Creative problem-solving

Let’s be honest here for a minute. No camping trip goes without any problems, and no two camping expeditions are the same.

Every time you go camping, you will encounter a problem that you have never experienced before. But, that is OK. It is all part of the fun.

Without the ready-made solutions that they might have at home, kids will be inclined to find creative solutions to those problems. As you might have figured out on your own by now, creative problem solving is yet another component of resilience.

Back to basics

We, adults, tend to pamper our kids too much. We want to provide them with all the things we had growing up and go the extra mile and give them the things we never had. And that is OK and natural.

What we tend to forget is that children are more resilient than we give them credit for by their very nature. And, to be honest, they are more resilient than most adults.

Kids love challenges. They love anything that seems like an adventure.

They’re happy not to wash, skip fancy meals, not sleep in their bedroom if they have people around to explore with, and trees to climb, wood to find, birds to watch.

Conclusion

Being resilient is already an essential part of your child’s nature. The best you can do is foster that quality. Primitive camping with kids is one way to do it indeed.

Resilience is the ability to interact well with people and experiences. As a parent, you need to provide your children with an opportunity to experience things that will boost their well-being.

The more experiences like these your child goes through early in life, the better they will be able to cope with life stressors and all the challenges that might come their way later.

Going primitive camping is not the ultimate solution for all those issues, but it is a massive step in the right direction.

About the Writer: Rebecca, a translator, avid traveler, and bookworm. Her job has given her the amazing opportunity to travel to dozens of countries around the world, and writing on Rough Draft gives her a chance to try to showcase some of them.

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By | 2021-04-19T07:46:12-04:00 April 19, 2021|Travel|Comments Off on Primitive Camping with Kids Builds Resilience