From climbing trees to riding bikes, most kids are born with a natural tendency to explore. Encouraging that sense of adventure can improve your child’s confidence and resilience. Help cultivate your kid’s adventurous spirit by following the tips below.
1. Let Them Do Things Alone
As your child grows older, they’ll have opportunities to bike to a friend’s house or walk to the park. Going places without your watchful eye can be nerve-racking for you and your child. But giving them the space to participate in low-risk activities alone is a great way to build their confidence.
Before sending your kid on a solo adventure through the neighborhood, it’s important to discuss safety. Playing with recreational equipment like scooters and skateboards is fun but also dangerous. So ensure your child wears a helmet and knows about street safety. You may also want to consider purchasing a smartwatch for kids. These watches help you stay connected while your child is playing and notify them when they venture out too far.
2. Take a Family Vacation
There’s no better chance to share new experiences with your child than on vacation. Exploring unfamiliar cultures can be intimidating. But once your child has traveled, they’ll build confidence knowing they can navigate new situations.
When planning your vacation itinerary, keep your kid’s age in mind. Younger children will grow tired quickly. So if you’re traveling with little ones, you should plan for frequent snack breaks and nap time. However, tweens and teens have much stronger stamina and are happy to stay busy all day.
3. Go on a Weekend Microadventure
Ski trips and South American hiking excursions are expensive and hard to fit into a busy life. However, microadventures allow families to explore the great outdoors more frequently. Microadventures are weekend getaways that are cheap and local but still exciting. These mini excursions make it easier for families to make outdoor living part of their everyday lives.
When planning your microadventure, think about beautiful places within a few hours of your home. State parks and forests are awesome locations for family camping trips, and calm rivers make for great family floats. If you can’t get away for an entire weekend, plan a family hike or kayak with your kids for a few hours.
4. Stop Overbooking Their Calendar
All too often, parents fill their child’s schedule with extracurricular activities. After school, kids run to piano lessons immediately followed by soccer practice and homework. While these activities are valuable, overbooking your child’s calendar robs them of much-needed free time.
The world is a competitive place, and parents want to make sure their kid is prepared. So the desire to keep them busy makes sense. However, when children spend more time participating in unstructured activities, they become better at self-directed functioning. Letting your kids simply play encourages them to develop their creativity and become self-sufficient. Next time you think about adding another activity to your kid’s calendar, schedule some downtime instead.
5. Try Food From Around The World
Exploring foreign cuisines with your family expands your child’s taste buds and exposes them to new cultures. Even if you can’t afford a trip to Japan, your kids can still try sushi and learn about Japanese traditions.
To facilitate your child’s curiosity about new places, have them help you choose meals from around the world. While a simple Google search will come up with hundreds of recipes, sometimes kids find videos more engaging. Try a video cooking website like Tasty to discover tons of delicious recipes from around the globe.
6. Teach Them to Do Hard Things
Parents tend to protect children from challenges. After all, nobody wants to watch their child fail. However, if you never let your kid do hard things, they’ll become dependent on you and scared to take risks.
Instead, encourage children to tackle challenging situations. Let them learn how to rock climb or longboard. Know that they’ll probably get a few bumps and bruises in the process, but that’s the point. Doing hard things is, well, hard. But overcoming those challenges will make your kids brave and excited for their next adventure.
7. Get Them Outside Daily
Kids spend hours every day looking at screens indoors. Watching their favorite television character have outdoor adventures isn’t the same as having one of their own. Getting your kids outside daily instills a love of the outdoors that they’ll take with them into adulthood. But how do you get them outside?
One simple solution is to bring their favorite activities outdoors. Set up an area in your backyard where your child can color, read, or do another activity they love. Let them bring their phone outside to take pictures or use apps like Sky Guide to identify constellations. They might not be climbing a mountain or fording a river, but they’re still gaining an appreciation for the outdoors.
Encouraging your children to try new things and play outside can help build lifelong skills. These skills will make them more confident, less risk-averse, and more adventurous. Using the tips above, you can help your young explorer build a childhood full of exciting experiences.
