You Want Me To Go Where? Camping With Teens

This article is courtesy Woodall’s Family Camping, RV Destination and Campground Blog, by Jeanine Kennedy.

We have been blessed with four beautiful children – a teenager, two preteens and a toddler.  And while they all have their moments at times, I have to admit, camping with older kids is by far the most challenging.

As a whole, they’re a pretty tough bunch to please.  Friends, sports and trips to the mall are all hard to compete with.  And all those hormones can make for some serious attitude problems.

But have no fear.  It is possible to go on a family camping trip with your teenager — without making everyone involved miserable in the process.  It’s all a matter of striking the right balance between your child’s new-found desires and those of the rest of the family.

At least at this point, we’ve made it very clear to our kids that we are a camping family — plain and simple.  They will come with us and we will spend time together.  Staying home alone is not an option.  That said, we’ve been around the block a few times and understand fully that if our teen isn’t happy, then nobody’s happy.

So we find the best approach is one of compromise.  For example, my husband and I love to get away from it all.  We’d be happy to fill our days with hiking, biking and enjoying the wilderness.

Our kids also enjoyed this when they were younger, spending hours upon hours playing in the dirt, searching for bugs or climbing the nearest tree.  But that was then.

Now our older kids have other ideas of what constitutes “fun.”  These usually involve either something electronic, something they can do with their friends or something extremely expensive – usually available at the local shopping establishment.

Read the rest of this post at: You Want Me to Go Where? Camping with Teens at Woodall’s blog.