Anyone who hikes with kids is certainly familiar with this: during a tour, the children sometimes walk with more or less motivation. This can have various reasons. Boring paths, too little time to explore, the wrong clothes or even too long tours take the fun out of a hiking day for the children. If we parents also lack good ideas on how to get the children out of a hiking slump and motivate them to hike, it becomes difficult to make progress.
Below I have written down the best tips and tricks to motivate children to go hiking.
Before the hike
At this point, I’m afraid I have to disappoint all parents who thought that when hiking with kids, it was enough to just reach into the hiking motivation trick box every now and then. The “work” begins even before the actual tour. The good news is that if you invest a little more time in advance, you’ll have less to motivate along the way.otivieren müssen.
Finding an exciting hike
Exciting hiking trails are the key to motivating kids to hike. With an adventurous trail, they forget that they are walking at all. Especially uphill, trails that can be scrambled on are the best motivation. When planning, we parents have to find the right balance between varied tours and safety on the mountain. No easy task, but the time invested is worth it.
Involve the children in the planning
I plan our tours with tour planner apps. Nevertheless, I own a lot of maps and show my daughter the planned route there. Then we discover together what is marked along the tour: a managed hut, watercourses, playgrounds or lakes. With this knowledge, she has (fortunately) never said that she doesn’t want to hike.
Reading tip: How to plan a suitable hiking tour for children
Allow enough time
For children, hiking primarily means “playing” and they want to discover nature along the way. There’s no time for that if we parents are constantly pushing them to keep hiking with time pressure on their backs. On a hiking day with children, less is more. It’s best if we parents plan a short tour and bring along a day full of time. The fun of being on the trail should always be a priority for children.
Provide an exciting hiking destination
The destination is the way. Actually, the saying is the other way around, but an exciting destination such as a hut, a lakeside or a ruined castle adds variety to a hike and should be considered by us parents when planning.
You have already made enough day trips and are planning an overnight stay in a hut with your children? Here Stefanie gives you 10 tips for a hut tour with kids.
Let them pack their own backpackack packen lassen
For some children, having their own backpack packed by themselves is a good motivation to get going. However, children should be allowed to decide for themselves whether or not they want to carry a backpack. Some kids love shouldering this responsibility, while others feel too restricted with the luggage on their backs while playing.
On the way
Getting into hiking
You’re at the trailhead for your shared hike and the kids start to nag. Getting going is not always easy for kids, because the change from car or bus to hiking is sometimes too fast for them. In addition, many children usually have a snack in the morning and they simply feel hungry. On top of that, unfortunately, most hiking trails don’t start out adventurously, but instead begin as a yawningly boring farm road.
So that the hiking day doesn’t start with frustration for everyone, we have a snack before the hike. Furthermore, I directly provide for distraction (many ideas for this will follow shortly), so that we get into hiking at all. This is the first step.
Also interesting: The 10 most frequently asked questions about hiking with children
Pay attention to the needs of the children
“I can’t walk anymore!” We parents are certainly all familiar with these statements from our kids while hiking. It’s always worth taking a close look in this situation, because smaller children in particular can’t always name their needs correctly. If they are hungry or thirsty, or if they are too cold or too warm, they will stop first. Of course, it may also be that they really need a short break.
Für AProvide distraction
Very often when hiking with children, an “I can’t walk anymore” simply means “I’m bored.”
What can we parents do when our kids don’t want to hike anymore while on the trail? A hiking slump can be bridged with distraction. You remember: Hiking is first and foremost “play” for kids. In the following, I have written down many motivational tricks for the road. Pick the tricks that best suit the age and temperament of your children.
Wandern mit Hiking with kids: The best motivational tricks for on the road
Games in nature
- Hopping: In this game, you must not step on the ground. Instead, you hop from stone to stone, stepping on leaves, branches lying around or grass.
- Collecting treasures: Children are constantly picking up things off the ground. Look for and collect small natural treasures along the way, such as a particularly beautiful rock, a gorgeous pine cone, or an interesting piece of bark.
- Balancing: Tree trunks are wonderful for balancing. Depending on the path, there may also be a small wall at the edge of the path or the transition between farm track and meadow must be hit precisely. Attention: In no case climb on stacked tree trunks, because they can start rolling.
- Finding walking sticks: It’s simply better to hike with hiking poles. However, a suitable stick must first be found and the search provides distraction. The stick can then be used to stimulate the children’s imagination, because it can very quickly turn into a rocket, a flying broom or a unicorn (sorry, I’m a girly mom). Older children can practice carving on the stick during breaks.
- Pick berries or herbs: Keep an eye out together for berries or herbs that you can pick and ideally eat right away. Of course, you should only snack from the wayside if you are absolutely sure that the plants are edible.
Riddles and guessing games for hiking motivation
- Solving tasks: In our country, this hiking motivation for children is called “play barrier”. Everyone has a stick. One person walks ahead and blocks off the path with the stick. As soon as the other hikers arrive at the barrier, they ask: “What do we have to do?”. In order for the barrier to open, small tasks must be solved. Examples to help you? Hop on one leg, sing a song, count to three in English, make up a magic spell, name five animals that live in the forest, etc. The beauty of this game is that it can be adapted individually to the age of the children.
- I see something you don’t: A classic among guessing games.
- Guessing animals: In this game, one person thinks of an animal and teammates must guess it based on its description. For example: “I know an animal that is green and says quack”.
- Guessing an object: One child thinks of an object. The other hikers have to find out which object it is by asking questions about it. The questions must be asked in such a way that they can only be answered “yes” or “no”.
- This or That: This game is about giving an answer as quickly and spontaneously as possible. For example, I say: pizza or pasta, sea or mountains, summer or winter, lake or swimming pool, etc. The children’s answers can sometimes be very interesting for us parents.
- How well do you know me-questions: In this, we ask each other questions such as: “What is my favorite color?” or “What is my favorite food”.
- Forming word chains: House-door, door-lock, lock-yard. Of course, fantasy word chains are allowed here.
- Geocaching: We started geocaching (a GPS scavenger hunt) at some point and I admit it: it’s addictive. We parents have also found that caching can do wonders for kids’ motivation to run, not only when hiking, but also when strolling through town or the village.
Sometimes it may also be something sweet
When we go hiking, we often have a snack, which is also sweet. However, we have not introduced a reward system. I’m not a fan of holding a bag of gummy bears in front of the kids like the famous carrot in front of Donkey’s head and then only handing it over at the hiking destination. Instead, here’s how it works for us:
- “Candy Gas Station”: We carry a small tin of gummy bears, small cookies, nuts, etc. Every now and then we make a so-called gas station stop and everyone gets to choose something from the box. It is clear that “gas stations” are only at curves or particularly beautiful places, which we must find together.
- The Wanderwichtel: Sometimes, there are really small gnomes in the forest or in the mountains. And these hide now and then nibbles behind stones or under bushes.
Motivating children to hike: The main thing is fun
- Build bridges: In this game, an adult walks in front and stands wide-legged on the hiking trail. The children have to walk or crawl through the leg bridge and the next adult is already standing a few meters ahead and has built the next bridge.
- Hiking in a different way: Always hiking straight ahead is boring? Fortunately, there are many different ways to walk: Walking in single file, walking backwards, stomping through the forest like elephants, walking in serpentine lines one after the other, etc.
- Play hide and seek: In this motivational game, it’s quite important that we parents get very theatrically scared when the kids hop out of their hiding places.
Stories and songs
Continuing stories: We parents start with a story, which the children then continue to tell.
Singing songs: How many songs do you actually know? What always works well for us on car trips also works when we’re hiking: We warble songs loudly through the mountains.
Making up your own story: For very creative parents.ive Eltern.
Acting out the kids’ favorite characters: You know Mathilda the porcupine from the book “Little Dragon Coconut?” It can curl up into a ball and roll down the hill at lightning speed. Or is the dragon faster after all? We have tested it many times. Surely all children have characters that are “in” at the moment and can motivate them to wander.
Go hiking with other children
Going hiking with other families can be the best hiking motivation for children. I write deliberately can, because children and adults must fit well together. Small hikers can demotivate each other and I personally have no desire to go hiking with parents who allow little on the way and put the playful aspect in the background.
After the hike
After the hike is before the hike. My children have a kids’ hiking diary that we keep more or less regularly. The kids enjoy it and look forward to the next hike when they fill it out.
Hiking with children rarely happens on its own. We parents have to make sure that the mood doesn’t change and that we don’t get bored. That can be exhausting at times. But at the end of the day, all of us, children and parents, should return home with many wonderful hiking memories. Then nothing will stand in the way of the next hike with kids.
Have fun planning, hiking and motivating.
