Kids in Nature: The Benefits of Camping on Children’s Health
Imagine your child, eyes wide with delight, racing through a sun-dappled forest clearing. Their infectious laughter echoes as they chase colorful butterflies and scramble over fallen logs.
Picture your tween, eyes shining with equal parts excitement and trepidation, as they muster their courage and plunge into a lake’s chilly waters — gasping at first, then shouting with uncontained glee.
This is the transformative power of the outdoors to awaken a sense of adventurous self-discovery in kids.
I recently read an article by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. He outlines what he considers an unplanned and uncontrolled social experiment on children over the past decade - the introduction of the "phone-based childhood." The prevalence of smartphones and constant connectivity has profoundly disrupted the way kids grow, develop, and experience the world. Many crucial life skills can only be developed through unstructured play, risk-taking, and face-to-face social interactions. Today’s kids are missing out on some essential developmental formation (mental, emotional, relational, and physical) because of the sheer amount of time they spend on their devices.
The research shows that the effects have been pretty devastating. Rates of anxiety, depression, loneliness, and self-harm have skyrocketed among youth. Academic engagement and performance are declining. Youth often exhibit behaviors very similar to those found in substance addictions.
But Haidt is not trying to return to some romanticized past that predates smartphones - technology is not all bad. We just need to find ways to balance it with the real-life experiences that our kids need to grow and thrive.
One powerful way that has been shown to counter the negative mental health effects of excessive smartphone use is immersive nature experiences like camping. In nature, unstructured play, risk-taking, and face-to-face social interactions abound - all the things associated with improved development and wellness. Immersing themselves in green spaces provides young people with a chance to explore a new environment, learn or practice new skills, and engage with the world in a healthier, more holistic way.
The Importance of Unstructured Play
Our 2nd daughter bravely trying out a log crossing.
As Haidt explains, human childhood evolved over millennia to be filled with self-directed, physical play and exploration in nature. This type of unregulated, unstructured play is critical for healthy childhood development. It allows kids to explore, take risks, make up their own games, and engage their creativity in unique ways.
Unstructured play builds resilience by letting children encounter small challenges and obstacles that they then have to find ways to overcome. Whether it's climbing a tree, building a fort, or figuring out the rules for an invented game, kids are constantly putting their problem-solving abilities to the test. As they work through these challenges, they develop grit, perseverance, and self-confidence.
The freedom of unstructured play is also crucial for emotional development. When rules and structures are imposed by adults, kids can't fully express their emotional selves. But during unstructured play, children are able to freely experience and work through the full range of emotions like joy, frustration, disappointment, and anger in a safe environment.
Unstructured play allows kids to experience true freedom within reasonable boundaries. They get to make their own choices, take reasonable risks, and learn about the world through pure exploration and experimentation. This sense of autonomy and independence is what transforms play into such a vital component of childhood.
Camping provides the perfect environment for self-directed exploratory play by immersing kids in nature's wide-open spaces. Hiking trails, forest glades, streams, fields, and campsites become canvases for unlimited imaginative play scenarios. Children are experts at turning found objects like sticks, rocks, leaves, and pinecones into the tools and props for their invented worlds.
With few restrictions beyond basic safety, kids can spend hours living out their curiosities and inner realms of fantasy. The independence, hands-on learning, and self-discovery available in these settings is unmatched. By facilitating unstructured play in nature through camping, we can reintroduce this critical developmental modality that is being lost in today's over-scheduled, over-structured society.
Developing Self-Reliance & Grit
From the very start of a camping trip, kids are faced with a multitude of small tests and hurdles that they must size up and overcome through their own decision-making and effort. A camping trip allows kids to make worthwhile mistakes from which they can learn and grow, providing experiences that build true perseverance and problem-solving capabilities. What has been termed ‘thrilling play’ has been shown to be the most effective in reducing childhood anxieties.
Our 3rd daughter exploring Richardson Grove State Park.
As they help pitch their tent, gather firewood, cook over the campfire, navigate by map or trail, learn to properly douse the flames, and try out other camping fundamentals, children get ongoing practice at judging risks, learning from mistakes, and taking responsibility for the outcomes of their choices. With a combination of parental guidance and age-appropriate autonomy, camping allows kids to keep pushing the boundaries of their abilities in a safe environment.
Camping normalizes mild risks and self-reliance, letting kids build lasting confidence in their capabilities through trying and failing in an encouraging, growth-oriented atmosphere. As they succeed at tasks, that self-trust and grit compounds into a hardiness of mindset and spirit - qualities that will serve them in every future challenge. Kids begin to realize their ability to assess and overcome hurdles on their own, and as a result their confidence and self-efficacy grow tremendously (the same is true for adults!)
Beyond just the nuts and bolts of camp skills, simply being immersed in nature demands constant adaptability and critical thinking, and helps us practice simply being present as we are attuned to everything happening around us. Weather changes, animal behavior, finding routes, and improvising solutions all require young explorers to stay alert and be resourceful with what’s around them.
These opportunities to practice independence also develop responsibility, accountability, and self-motivation in kids. When given the room to make their own choices, children rise to the occasion. They take pride in their accomplishments and learn to trust their instincts and capabilities instead of reflexively seeking adult guidance.
Developing self-reliance and inner resilience is what helps children become competent, thriving adults. And there is no better sphere for incubating those qualities than the engaging challenges and reasonable risks found when spending extended time immersed in the outdoors.
Resetting the Social Experience
While online connectivity offers some benefits, face-to-face interactions are vital for developing critical social and emotional capabilities. Being in-person helps us learn to read nonverbal cues, interpret tone and context, navigate group dynamics, and practice empathy. This type of communication provides important depth and nuance that is largely lost in the flat, transactional world of texts, messages, and video calls.
Outdoorithm Collective kids enjoying boulder climbing in Yosemite National Park
Camping trips give children a powerful reset, with many opportunities for shared tasks, exploration, and discovery. Around the campfire, during hikes, while playing outdoor games, or even just working together on camp chores, kids are developing stronger social and emotional intelligence. Much of what they do at camp requires teamwork, communication, division of roles and combined effort, providing kids with endless opportunities to learn invaluable group skills like cooperating, compromising and resolving conflicts through these collective wilderness adventures.
The memories made and inside jokes generated on camping trips form deep wellsprings of connection in themselves. These special shared experiences between siblings or with parents foster deeper connections that can transcend circumstance and time, helping kids feel centered and grounded when everyday life becomes turbulent or overwhelming.
Cultivating Awe
Awe has been called one of the most powerful emotional experiences available to humans. It's that sublime mixture of reverence, admiration, and even fear that we feel when we encounter something stunningly vast that transcends our understanding of the world.
Psychologists have found that experiencing awe provides a multitude of cognitive, emotional, and social benefits. On the cognitive side, awe has been shown to increase life satisfaction, humility, and critical thinking by helping us realize how little we actually know and how much is still a sublime mystery. It combats narcissism and entitlement while increasing curiosity and open-mindedness.
Emotionally and socially, awe builds trust and ethical decision making while decreasing prejudices and the need for over-consumption. It helps quiet the ego and increases our empathy, concern for others, and feelings of being part of something bigger than ourselves. Numerous studies have linked awe to increased life satisfaction, lower stress levels, and an enhanced immune system.
Perhaps most importantly for childhood development, awe is one of the most powerful inspirations for exploration, adventure, and learning. That wonder at encountering something that makes us see how small we are relative to the earth drives us to keep probing, discovering, and daring to venture into the unknown. Awe cultivates bravery and lays the foundations for both scientific and spiritual understanding.
While awe can come from numerous sources, some of the most powerful experiences of awe arise through immersion in nature's landscapes and phenomena. The physical grandeur of supermassive redwood trees, towering mountains, and star-filled skies lead to awe responses that are visceral and primal.
But it's not just the grand scenery and epic vistas. Nature provides infinite awe-inspiring moments of micro-scale beauty - sunlight glinting through droplets in a spider's dew-beaded web, the fractal perfection of a butterfly's wings, or an iridescent feather from a hummingbird's throat. These small yet breathtaking flourishes remind us that the natural world is an endlessly unfolding unveiling of majesty.
Through outdoor experiences like camping, children get frequent doses of these awe-inspiring encounters with the vast and the intricate. As our children accumulate these spine-tingling sensations of being a tiny but wondrous part of an inconceivably enormous and complex universe, their perspective on their own existence is permanently broadened. Camping provides formative experiences that can inspire a lifelong sense of awe, humility, curiosity, and appreciation - qualities that are indispensable for thriving in our miraculous world.
By cultivating awe in kids through immersive nature experiences, we're not just raising healthier, happier individuals. We're seeding the next generation of scientists, conservationists, innovators, dreamers, and spiritual leaders that our world desperately needs.
Sally with her three oldest daughters in the Eastern Sierra
The rise of the "phone-based childhood" has had significant impacts on kids' emotional health, social development, and practical capabilities. While there are no perfect solutions, one of the most powerful antidotes we have is to help young people rediscover the joys and formative benefits of extended, unstructured time in nature.
What a beautiful gift to our kids for us to help facilitate these critical nature experiences and shared adventures. The resilience, connection, and awe forged through camping provides our young people with a holistic foundation to grow into healthy, resilient, and grounded adults.
So get out there and start making camping plans - your kids will be all the better for it. Check out our campground map to find a campsite near you or search by campground name. Need more help? We also offer custom trip planning to help you create the experience that works best for your family.
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