I'm not what you would call "outdoorsy."
Before I had children of my own, I'd go on hiking on occasion, but more often than not, I would stay inside. I do enjoy the 5th-grade outdoor education trip that I've been on most years. It includes long hikes, some at nighttime without flashlights. These are challenging hikes, and at times they have been cold and wet, but I'm always glad that I go on these trips. However, I do spend a couple afterward thinking how I'm never going to go on one of these trips every again.
I've definitely spent more time outside since having my first son Ollie. Going on walks and parks is one thing you do as a parent with a baby or young child. The child needs fresh air, and so do you. A parent can easily spend all day inside, and that can make a person stir-crazy, so taking a baby in a stroller around the block helps the parent and the child.
As Ollie got older and the other two came along, getting outside was one of those things we did more and more. All our children are early risers, and we found that if we got them out of the house early in the day, they would be in a better mood for the remainder of the day.
So, while it's tough to get moving on a weekend when your kids get you up at 6:45 am, the effort to get moving and out of the house is almost always worth it.
When the pandemic, we responded by getting our children out to nature even more. It was unclear a year ago what was safe. Taking our children to the book store, library, and other indoor outings seemed like they were not a good idea or off-limits, so we went to forest preserves instead.
Almost every weekend, and many weekdays when we could, we got out children outside, even when the weather wasn't great. During the summer we spent more time at the beach than we have in any previous summer. We have continued to get outside almost every weekend morning, even when there were two feet of snow on the ground.
Yes, our children are in better moods if they spend the morning outside, but it's more than that. My children are rarely bored when we are in nature. They are less likely to get bored in an outside playground than at home, and they are even more unlikely to get bored if we are exploring the woods of a forest preserve.
Ethan and Ollie are fascinated by poking sticks into pools of ice, climbing over fallen trees, and finding new paths in the forest. They find sticks to play with and examine how plants grow, and while they scare off most animals with how noisy they are, they enjoy seeing birds and bugs that they find.
I find myself standing in the woods, often tired but feeling content that I'm away from it all, hearing the activity of my children behind me. Buffy at my side, I feel that we are doing right helping our children have a good relationship with nature. Sometimes when you do things for children, you end up doing something for yourself that you would never otherwise do. Spending time in nature is one of those things for me that my children have helped me do for myself, and especially in all of the chaos of the past year, it has brought me moments of peace.
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