If you are anything like us, you’ll probably have a list as long as your arm of all the incredible places you want to travel to, whether alone, with a friend or partner, or with your family in tow. We’ve been really lucky so far in having taken our boys to some pretty awesome places like Sweden, Iceland, Denmark, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Japan; that’s a pretty impressive set of passport stamps for a 3 and 5 year old!
But we always wonder how much are the boys really appreciating what they are experiencing? It feels pretty silly asking ourselves this question sometimes. They’re just little kids after all, with little life experience to draw on and compare new experiences against. Fellow parents know that kids are on auto-pilot most of the time; they’ll take part in whatever is going on, they go where you drag them. So how can you make sure they appreciate it when they’re experiencing something amazing?
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| Our Boys Surveying Their Valley |
It’s hard to say. One way could be to ensure they experience as much of their day to day surroundings as possible, exploring your town, or valley, or county, inside out. We usually find something to be exciting or amazing because it’s different to what you are used to experiencing.
We’ve been doing a fair bit of walking on the mountains around our town lately. We’re lucky that we grew up and now live in the beautiful
South Wales valleys, surrounded by mountains and forests to explore. We’re lucky that our children can experience the sort of childhoods we did.
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It was during one of these family treks that I came to this conclusion. It's important to let your kids first explore their horizons before you try to expand them. You've got to know what's in your backyard to appreciate the joy of eventually jumping over the fence. In the process, you'll probably find there's plenty adventure and wonder to be found just around the corner (or behind our house in this case) as there is on the other side of the world.
I’m hoping that once our boys have seen all that our Valley has to offer them, it will dawn on them how amazing those adventures in Kuala Lumpur or Reykjavik really are!
Here are a few snaps from our recent mountain walks.
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