5 Tips For Camping With Children

The team behind Up All Hours, a new parenting platform for the sleep deprived parent, have put together their top tips to help you ensure the best night's sleep possible in the great outdoors with your little ones! Camping is every kids idea of heaven but often every parents idea of hel! Fear not we have some great top tips to make sure everyone gets a good night’s sleep and is feeling fresh for all the fun that camping has to offer! 

1. Home comforts: Keeping things as similar as home as you can is key, so make sure you take their familiar bedtime set up; be it a favourite comforter or perhaps a duvet or pillow. For younger ones taking a travel cot is a Godsend, it takes up a lot of room but it means that they feel comforted and cosy.

2. When the dawn breaks: The problem with camping is that when the sun is up your little ones will be too. Adjust bedtime to ensure that you are all fully prepared for the dawn chorus of “When is breakfast?!”. If you are seasoned campers make sure you check out the black out tent which ensures that the sun is kept out for as long as humanly possible meaning the whole family gets some much needed shut eye.

3. Run them ragged: The great thing about the great outdoors is that all the fresh air and activity lends itself very well to exhausted children! So, make sure that the kids have lots of activity during the day and odds are that they will conk out at their usual bedtime.

4. A full tummy is a happy tummy: We all know kids are the fussiest eaters on the planet so make sure you take a couple of meals with you they you know they will eat. They are far more likely to nod off with a full tummy. If you are bottle feeding don’t forget about disposable bottles and ready made cartons of formula which makes the whole bottle feeding process much easier, when you have no running water and are in the middle of a field!

5. Layering is key: What to put kids to sleep in when camping, can be tricky. They go to bed in the heat but then as the sun goes down so does the temperature, often dramatically. Make sure you plan on different layers for the night. Maybe put them to bed in their pj’s and a sheet but have duvet and blankets ready in the car for when the temperature drops. Equally I would try and keep a set of PJ’s and a blanket in a bin bag in the car to ensure that you always have a dry layer to put them into at bedtime in case rain hits and the tent becomes wet!