We're excited to share another interview this week! This one is really interesting because we have a husband and wife giving two perspectives on how they make outdoor parenting work. Transitioning to parenthood:
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This week I'm excited to introduce our friend Shannon. She and her wife are masters of organizing group camping trips, which we have been lucky to be part of for many years now. (They created the camping spreadsheet I shared last week). They have also started taking their kids backpacking and skiing, while impressively managing sports and activity schedules. She is right about how friends help kids hike more - when my kids hike with them they go much farther! Transitioning to parenthood:
For our second interview we are excited to share Karl's experience as an outdoor dad. We have known him and his family for a few years. They are part of a group of families we go on group camping trips with a few times a year, until they moved back to Colorado. I have always been impressed with how they find the time to get into the mountains so often while they both worked full time jobs and also with the impressive hiking stamina of their daughter.
Transitioning to parenthood:
See all of our interviews here, where you can browse through them by keywords and locations.
We are so excited to introduce our first interview of an Outdoor Parent! We are hoping to do about two of these each month and use this information to improve our information pages. If you're interested in being interviewed, please contact us.
Transitioning to parenthood:
See all of our interviews here, where you can browse through them by keywords and locations.
This week we have an update to our General Advice section: first aid planning. This list is based on my experience and my wilderness medicine training that I take every 2-3 years and I updated it based on the course I just took in January. As always, we love hearing feedback from readers so we can make this page as helpful as possible. First aid planning is more than just building a good first aid kit. Our recommendation is for at least one and preferably both parents to take first aid and wilderness medical training to match what you would be expected to do if you were a trip leader on a professional course. This gives you peace of mind that you know what to do in an emergency and also gives your family the best chance of a good outcome. As a bonus, you are also able to help other people that you meet on your trip. All the classes recommended below include adult and infant CPR training/certification that is good as long as the overall certification lasts for, so you don’t need to spend time taking that as an extra class. If you just go on day trips or car camping, the recommended class is a 2 day Wilderness First Aid (WFA) class, making sure you get adult/infant/child CPR training. If you take your family on multi-day backpacking trips, the recommended class is the Wilderness First Responder (WFR). This class also trains you on the use of epinephrine which can get you special certification depending on your state which may allow you to purchase epi-pens to carry on your trips (not necessarily needed if your kids are already prescribed epinephrine by their doctor). We recommend recertifying on the schedule the provider requires. Hopefully you don’t have opportunities to use what you learn (because you plan well and have good luck) so the hands-on part of the classes give you good opportunities to practice what you learn. The most well known training organizations are:
We have taken classes with all 3 of them (although over a 25 year time span). They are all excellent, but have slightly different approaches. Our recommendation is to start by finding the organization that offers the most classes close to home, to make recertifying easier. Otherwise, you can look at the information on their website to see if one of them appeals to you more than others. Once you’ve completed your class, create your first aid kit and make sure you pack it with you at all times:
And don’t forget to restock your kit before you go out on a trip and audit it once a year for expired supplies. The biggest challenge to hiking or backpacking with kids is keeping them moving. It's so important, because we all need to be able to count on completing our hikes before dark or making it to our campsites in time for dinner. Here are the tips we have compiled over the years of hiking with our kids and with our friends:
Get the right pacing and timing of breaks:
Be prepared with multiple options of entertainment (rotate through these as needed):
How to avoid stopping in between designated breaks:
Our biggest advice is to keep experimenting and keep getting out there! We believe that you will eventually find something that will work for your family. If you have any specific questions, feel free to reach out to us. And as always, please give us more suggestions of things to add to this list. |
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OKHTwo Silicon Valley engineers who have had a love of the outdoors since childhood. Parents of two small kids, spending our free time exploring the outdoors with them. |