Adventuring, exploring the world around us its what we like to do as family but what dose it mean ?
For us it is family time, family bonding, it is how we want to spend our time with our children and build memories with them. We want to explore the world around us, seeing new places, walking new paths as a family.
Definition of 'adventuring' adventuring in British English (ədˈvɛntʃərɪŋ) NOUN the act of doing adventurous things or having adventuresThey would like to do a bit of adventuring as part of their holiday.Collins English Dictionary. Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers.
Both my husband and I grew up with a passion for the outdoors, we both spent many a weekend as kids camping, at the local batch, tramping or just exploring outdoors.
This is something we wanted to continue with our own kids, we wanted to create a passion in them that hopefully would carry them through to adult hood.
Driving Force
Ever since the kids were little we have always tried to get outside and check out new places, even if it just meant getting them outside to a park, our daughters first ever camping trip was when she was only 4 months old.
But in 2018 our son, aged 7 at the time was diagnosed with ASD (Autism) and along with that also came a diagnosis with both sensory processing disorder and a anxiety disorder this became the driving force behind what we do.
Although this diagnoses was not big news to us, we had known he had some struggles for some years now.
What it did means was we could finally move from trying to work out what was going on in his head, to now understanding it and trying to help him (and us) cope and manage it.
The answer for us, was nature - exploring, adventuring, getting outdoors became even more so a way a life for us.
Our New Way Of Life
We quickly found that the more our son got outdoors and got physical the better he coped with the confusion going on in his head. He was a lot calmer and was able to deal with things a lot better, it is not perfect but it helps hugely.
We also found that allowing him to face some of his anxiety in the safe environment of his family, also helped him develop better skills to deal with anxiety when he faced it in social settings like school.
Because of this understanding we started to make an effort to do more outdoors as a family, and we didn't mind it at all.
Get Adventuring
So little by little we started to add more and more of the outdoors into our lives. Making the effort each week to go for a walk, starting just little 15-20min walks and increasing them little by little. Building the kids passion and own desires to get outdoors, don't be fooled it is not always smiles and roses. There is whinging, there can be tears, but we always leave our adventure wanting more, leaving with memories, more resilience and new skill sets.
Adventuring to us is an adaptive to term we use as a family, its means trying new things, exploring new places, sometimes doing things outside out comfort zones.
I encourage any family to give it ago, just start small and build on it bit by bit, you never know you might find your passion just like we did.
