San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
How to get kids off their phones and outside for the summer
When facing the inevitable question of how your children are going to spend their summer break, Lara Hitchcock has a novel idea.
“Disguise an activity as something else,” said Hitchcock, a parent of two boys and who also provides oversight for 3,000 kids as executive director of the PresidioPoint Bonita YMCA in San Francisco.
“I love hiking, but my kids don’t always want to hike,” Hitchcock said. “If I use the word ‘hike,’ they don’t get super excited. But if I say we’re going to try and see the elk (at Point Reyes), they’re in. It’s a hike disguised as something else. Find that one thing that is fun, and it adds value for the whole family.”
For many families, the answer to how to get your child outdoors is camping. This weekend, the Great American Backyard Campout kicks off the summer for children and their families. In the Bay Area, about 100 tents with young campers will be set up near Point Bonita in the Marin Headlands as part of the event, Hitchcock said.
For the YMCA, getting kids into nature is a priority. The YMCA of San Francisco serves approximately 7,000 children with summer camp programs, both day and overnight, roughly 3,500 children each day across Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo counties, Hitchcock said. That adds up to more than 17,000 weeks of camp over the summer, with some kids attending more than one week of camp.
Two other experts, Noam Zimin of the Boys and Girls Club and author Steven Griffin, who co-wrote a series of children’s outdoors books with his daughter Elizabeth May, had other suggestions to get kids off their phones and
into the outdoors.
First, make sure you go. Make sure it’s fun. Let them bring their friends, listen to what they have to say, watch what they want to do and be willing to integrate technology.
Getting there
Transportation is a key to sharing outdoor adventures, according to a consensus among the experts.
“You have to have a way to get the kids to nature,” said Zimin, who reserved a bus last month to transport 50 children to Lake Siskiyou for a youth fishing event.
Local park agencies, youth organizations and even libraries can partner to transport youths to parks for nature.
“We try to overcome any barriers that might exist that prevent kids from getting outdoors,” Hitchcock said.
Even then, it often falls to parents to provide transportation, that is, to ferry kids and their friends to outdoor space, or to help them find local options, she said.
At that moment, Griffin advises that parents “should listen close to what their children say,” he said. “Too often we tell them stuff instead of listening to what they tell us. Every step of the way, you have to be tuned into them.”
“Voice and choice” is a mantra among youth leaders.
In one example, Hitchcock said her family ventured to Ferndale (Humboldt County) last month and stayed at an old farmhouse. Instead of completing a list of planned activities in the region, her two boys and their friends instead discovered giant bales of hay.
“They were running around, climbing the bales of hay,” Hitchcock said. “Especially with our city kids, there are so many first-time experiences, and they are full of curiosity.”
On the drive home, Hitchcock’s son Oliver, 10, said, “I love being in nature,” she recounted, and then as a point of reference, compared it to a computer system. “He said it ‘felt like a system upgrade,’ ” she said.
My brother Bob said his evolution as a parent vaulted into a new universe when he went fishing on a river and found his two boys more interested in looking under rocks for bugs. “That is what they were excited about, looking under the rocks,” he said. “It was a good lesson to always let kids be kids.”
Integrating technology
Youngsters are surrounded by technology 24/7, and parents can use that as an advantage, Hitchcock said.
One surprise is that turning off the phone — “green time, not screen time,” as it’s called — can release kids from the peer pressure of “catching up on your texts,” as 11-year-old Kaila described it while at the Outdoor Advanced Leadership Academy in the Suisun Marsh.
Another strategy is to integrate outdoors adventures games, such as geocaching and Turf, both available as phone apps, as a way to explore and find your way in a park or wildlands.
“It’s a way to encourage them to get out, walk, scooter, bike and explore,” Hitchcock said. “Never give up on their curiosity. A trip isn’t about a payoff at the end for kids. It’s
about the things they discover along the way.”
On outdoor trips, Zimin said adults need to bring water and snacks. Hitchcock added that sunscreen is a must. And Griffin said each child must feel 100 percent safe at all times.
He said the only way to talk to a child is seated at the same eye level, and that it can be a turnoff when huge adults talk down to them. Then, while seated, show kids how to do things, rather than tell them how to do them, and then let them try, no matter what the result.
“Our first instinct as parents is, ‘Don’t get dirty, don’t get wet, don’t do anything where you might fall,’ ” Hitchcock said. “But it’s all exploration, healthy risk, and in the end for kids, sometimes it’s more fun just having permission to get dirty.”
At a camp last week, a little girl, Georgia, just 8 years old, showed up covered with mud and dirt, Hitchcock said. “She had the biggest grin you’ve ever seen.”