Walking is a really effective form of exercise.

It is great for your health and family bonding. It gets us out of the house or workplace and into the great outdoors. It helps us get from point A to point B. It enables us to go to new places, see interesting sights and spend time with loved ones.

But it is not necessarily something we as adults do naturally. Often given the choice, we may choose to drive, get the bus or use the e-scooter to get us to where we want to go. We may choose to do activities where we spend more time sitting. The need to go for a walk can sometimes feel like a chore rather than something we enjoy.

Consider, how challenging it can therefore be for children. When given the competing options of watching Disney+, playing Nintendo Switch or reading a book in their bedroom, or going for a walk, children may be unlikely to choose going for a walk.

Regular walking is a habit that parents need to encourage. It takes time and perseverance. You need to start off with small walks, breaking it up with a little time spent walking followed by time in the buggy, being carried or being pushed on their bike. You need to be able to distract them and change topics when complaining or tiredness becomes an issue.

Pushing beyond this early resistance gets helps your children get to the point where they can walk for longer, over bigger distances, and needing less resting time. Magical weekends spent walking in the countryside together as a family awaits!

Here are some tips I used to help make walking more attractive to my children, helping it become an activity they look forward too, and more often, an activity they proactively ask for! Hopefully they help you too.

Freedom to Explore…

Think carefully about the location of your walk. Choosing locations that are safe and secure. Think quieter parks, no traffic, few cyclists and dogs on leads only. This allows you to give your child more room to explore on their own terms.

They can go in the direction that looks most interesting, interact with nature, play, climb, jump, splash in the big puddles or walk through the mud on the side of the path that you avoid. This makes the walk much more interesting for your child and you can be content that they can explore in a safe environment.

For us, as we live in the UK, we tend to gravitate towards National Trust locations. There is so much variety in these locations, lots to explore, often activities for kids are included and the grounds are always well maintained and safe.

Give Children a Choice…

Giving you children a choice in where you go for your walk. This choice gives them some control over the days activities by involving them in the planning. This encourages them to proactively think about where they would like to go, lets them pick a place they enjoy, and are more likely to enjoy once they get there.

Picnic…

Pack a nice picnic with your children, including some of their favourite foods, a snack and their favourite drink. Pick a location to walk where there is somewhere suitable for a picnic towards the halfway point of your walk. Bonus points if it is near to a play park.

The purpose of going on your walk then becomes finding a nice spot for their picnic. When they get tired, you can encourage them to keep going with the promise of a lovely picnic by the play park.

Simple Activities…

You can break up your walk with little activities that might entertain or distract your children. Forest Bathing is a lovely activity you can include and encourages interaction with Nature and can be a form of relaxation. Using each of your senses (except taste) in turn, you ask, what can you see? What can you hear? What can you smell? What can you feel under your feet?

Bring an empty Tupperware box with you and set a task to collect as many different seeds, or leaves as possible. When you go home afterwards you can look them up together if there are any you don’t know. Bring some blank pages with you and some crayons, and you can even do leaf or bark rubbings and compare them.

Outdoor toys…

There are many outdoors toys that are small enough and portable and can be used to break up a walk. A bike or scooter, football, rugby ball, bat and ball, frisbee, kite, remote control car, skipping rope, etc could be used to add some variety to a walk. Bring a different toy or activity each time, you can even let them pick before leaving to give that sense of control over their activities. Bring them less as your child becomes more consistent and content with walking.

Summary

Over the years, I have tried all of these with my children. The most successful for us by far was the picnic. A long walk with a picnic is out go to option for a Sunday. Rain or shine, we dress for the weather, pack our picnic and off we go… Our kids favourite way to spend a day!

If you try any of these tips and they work, let me know in the comments below.

If you have any other tips that work for you add them below!

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