As a parent, how many times have you heard those words uttered from your little ones mouth? In our household, nearly every other sentence begins with ‘Mummy, can I …?’, and it is often finished with ‘watch this?’ or ‘have that?’ or ‘eat this?’. So you can imagine my surprise when my 4-year old little boy suddenly said out of the blue ‘Mummy, can I go camping?’
Camping? But we’ve never even talked about camping, how does he know about it. So I asked a few questions. ‘What sort of camping?’ ‘The sort with tents of course’ came the reply – huh, silly me! ‘I want to camp outside in the forest and catch fish and cook my own dinner’. Where on earth had all this come from? Not from me that’s for sure. I am the sort of person who likes her own creature comforts. I did the camping thing when I was a girl guide and as the famous old saying goes, ‘been there, done that and got the t-shirt to prove it!’ My camping days are long gone and I don’t mind admitting that I waved goodbye to it with no regrets. So I asked my son where this latest idea had come from, and the reply? ‘I saw Hey Arthur! on television and he went camping with his mum and dad’. Well thank you very much Hey Arthur! now I’ve got to sort this one out. I had two options open to me, either suppress his imaginative side and tell him not to be so silly and that it simply wasn’t possible, or encourage him and indulge this latest craze. Hmmmmm, I could feel a telephone call to his dad at work coming on. We talked about it and funnily enough my husband was just as enthusiastic as my son (it must be a man thing!). We decided that he should try sleeping in a tent in the garden first, just in case the dark and sleeping under canvass was too much for him.
We looked through the Argos catalogue and found a two-man tent for around £25.00 and a sleeping bag with a built in mattress for £19.99, and we were set!
On Good Friday we spent the day working in the garden and enjoying the sunshine. As the afternoon progressed we decided to start getting things ready for the camp. We had previously asked out little boy what he was going to do for a tent. ‘Well, I’ve got my little play tent that I could sleep in and all I would need is a blanket’. Bless him; he had it all worked out! Good Friday, we told him that if he was a good boy all day, then he may get a present (that present being the tent and sleeping bag). At around 4.00pm he asked it he had been a good boy. We told him that he had and to go and look in the hall. There, in the middle of the floor, was the tent and sleeping bag. Well, his reaction to this was a pleasure to watch in itself. He physically shook from head to toe with excitement and couldn’t wait to get everything set up.
Whilst my husband and I put the tent up in the garden, our son was upstairs getting everything ready that he wanted to take into the tent.
Ten minutes later he came downstairs and proceeded to put the following into the tent; his beloved tin full of plastic animals, a spiderman torch (that beams a spider high into the sky, a must for little boys camping!), a big carton of orange juice, some maltesers, a big plastic bat (to scare away any burglars!) and his bob the builder bag – he was ready! Later on that evening, we got the barbecue out
and let him cook his own dinner (beef burgers in a bun) and he was in his element. At 8.00pm he was in his pyjamas with a jumper on over the top and his socks on ‘you need to wear your socks mummy so that your feet don’t get cold!’ My husband and son ventured into the garden with a torch and I followed to say goodnight to them. I must admit, it did look rather cosy in there as they snuggled into their sleeping bags. I kissed them both goodnight and went indoors where I had a nice glass of wine in front of the television; it was lovely being on my own, in the warm, but I have to say that I was missing them both and wondering how my little boy was enjoying his first camping expedition. 7.30am the following morning I ventured out in my slippers to give them a cup of tea and to find out how they had got on. He was absolutely full of it (tired from the lack of sleep, but still full of it) and had enjoyed every minute, although he did come back into the house shortly after to nip into my bed for a cuddle!
The tent has been up and down like a yo-yo ever since then. He has got it into his head that it is only fair that mummy and daddy share being in the tent, daddy one weekend, mummy the next.
So far I have had legitimate excuses for not sharing a night under the canvas, but I have to say, I am actually looking forward the next time when I can sleep under the stars with my son, and I would never in a million years have believed that I would be saying that! Even his granddad has been drawn into the excitement and the next time we go to nanny and granddads, the tent is coming too and granddad will be the one next to the excited 4? year old and plastic bat!
To see the excitement that this tent has brought to my son makes me stop and think. Some of the ideas that our children come up with may be a little strange and sometimes extreme but we should really try to encourage them and develop them. I have to say that it is probably the best £25.00 that we have spent on him to date. It doesn’t have to cost a lot, but the pleasure that he has got from this little tent will go on and on. When he gets older, he is already planning to introduce his baby sister to camping, ‘I’ll look after her mummy and make sure that she isn’t scared!’ All it takes is a little effort from the parents and our children can enjoy a whole host of experiences. You never know, they may even suggest something that you end up enjoying as a whole family. Go on, live a little, indulge your children, it really is fun!
Have you got a true story to tell?
Share it with us at Parents and Kids.
|
|
|
