Picture this. The Subaru, laden like a gypsy caravan, comes to a stop in front of the muddy Rio Grande, at the upstream end of Big Bend National Park, Texas. Doors fly open as if a bomb has gone off inside, spewing children’s books, garbage, toys, packs, paddles, and people—some quite short and exhibiting the frenzied energy stored up over the 2,500 miles between Montana and Mexico.
While Marypat and I start organizing the bomb debris, the boys, ages two and three, work on their own agendas, with the dialogue going something like this:
“I gotta go pee.”
“Where’s my bear?”
“Can I have a sucker?”
“I gotta go pee, now!”
“Just a second, Eli.”
“I wanna take all these books.”
“Don’t touch that, Sawyer! It’s a cactus. Remember, we talked about that.”
“Dad, I want new pants.”
“Why?”
“Cause I peed in these ones.”
“Where’s my bear?”
And so on.
Before we escape onto the river, Eli has sunk to midcalf in riverside mud, Sawyer has had his first close encounter of the cactus kind, and Marypat has the same hopped-up look as the patients in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest right before they got their daily dose of Thorazine.
The good news is that if you survive the drive to the put-in and the leap over the transitional abyss from vehicle to boat, time on the water will be pretty blissful. Believe me, days in the canoe, or in waterside camps, are nothing compared with sibling warfare in the back seat, motel meltdown, or herd containment between car and canoe. If you don’t believe me, try four days in a small, overloaded station wagon with two young children.
OK, blissful might be stretching it a tiny bit. Canoeing with toddlers is probably the most difficult family paddling stage. They’re mobile enough to be big trouble, but not coordinated or focused enough to help. Oh, they’d like to help, but their idea of helping requires more supervision than feeding time at the pigsty. They’re young enough to need a great deal of attention and energy, but old enough to strike off on their own in alarming ways.
Parents end up doing everything for everyone. You tie all the shoes, stuff all the sleeping bags, put toothpaste on every toothbrush, pack every duffel, cook every meal, paddle every stroke.
Languid mornings with journal and sketch pad, energetic excursions up side canyons, social evenings around the campfire—all are relegated to nostalgic memories and distant hopes. But then life with toddlers, even at home, isn’t exactly stress free. The same frenzied pace and nonstop demands are right there front and center in civilized settings too. Life with toddlers is labor intensive, period. Canoe trips are no different.
And if you wait till they’re old enough, you’ve lost the bet. By the time they’ve graduated physically to the point of relative self-sufficiency, you’ll be competing with soccer practice, dentist appointments, and birthday parties. If you haven’t established a tradition that the kids embrace, a tradition that includes tents and boats, you’ll be lucky to get one weekend a year.
Paddling as a family is different from paddling with other adults. Face it and get on with it. Besides, the kids will surprise you with how readily they take to outdoor life, with their exuberance about the small adventures in a day, and with how much they reveal to you about the wonder and magic around you. When was the last time you were amazed by an ant carrying a leaf? Remember how much fun it was to build dams across a little creek or race sticks down a side channel? Here’s your chance.
The trip on the Rio Grande was nearly two weeks long. It took three or four days to really get into the rhythm. Kids, like adults, need a transitional window. They’re adjusting to the pace, adapting their worldview, getting used to sleeping in a tent and eating outdoors the same as we are. If you go only for an overnight, none of you make the leap to the trip cadence. By the same token, too long is too long. I think ten to twelve days is about the outside limit for kids under six. You can go longer, but the few times we have it’s seemed like pushing things, and the kids have been overjoyed to get back home and reacquaint themselves with their toys and their rooms. It’s been clear that they were more than ready to return.
The toddler stage is also the one that requires the most flexibility, the most distractions, and the greatest patience. Break up the day’s travel with a long lunch break. Make stops to explore and scramble and chase lizards. Build sand castles. Make up stories and sing songs. Short days with plenty of breaks work better than either long days paddling or entire days spent in camp.
The single most failproof distraction is rocks. Toddlers love to throw rocks into the water. It’s universal. Eli and Sawyer would stand on the riverbank and heave rocks for hours on end if they had the chance. During the day, we’d fill their buckets with little stones and they’d plunk them over the side as we paddled. Mostly they were content to play with sticks, rocks, and mud, but a few cars and plastic animals were valuable, and we trailed a couple of inflatable toys alongside the canoe that they could reel in and toss out again.
Food diversions were critical. Suckers, fruit candies, licorice, jerky, dried fruit, mixed nuts, lemonade. Once a day, at some critical juncture of family duress, we’d hand out one of those caramel suckers that last forever and make an incredibly sticky mess. The half hour of relative peace was worth it.
Inviting other families with children is another valuable strategy. The kids interact, at least from time to time, so parents are free from constant demands for attention. Couples can also play tag team, taking turns watching the kids and going off on adult excursions.
Several seating scenarios are possible with two kids aboard. Most of the time we put the boys in the center of the canoe, one ahead of the other, in small, low-slung director’s chairs we picked up at a local discount store. Dry bags and duffels surrounded them, and they each had a small backpack full of diversionary material. Usually we offset their seats so they could lean over the side and retrieve their inflatable toys or throw rocks overboard.
When they were getting along and wanted to play together, we turned their seats to face each other, and they’d sometimes go for miles inventing games with their animals or coloring. When separation was critical, one of the boys sat on an ammo can in front of the bow paddler while the other held sway in the center of the boat.
Canoe seating arrangement with two toddlers aboard.
Once Ruby was born, and until she turned about two, we crammed all five of us into one beamy seventeen-foot canoe. The two boys ran rampant in the center of the boat while Ruby stayed tethered to the bow parent. Our longest stint with five aboard was a twelve-day cruise down the Yellowstone River. That was plenty. Don’t get me wrong. We had fun. It was worth it. But twelve days was plenty.
The good news is that the toddler stage doesn’t last forever. In fact, two or three years after the kids are out of diapers, they’re ready to move past the passive, sit-in-the-boat gig. By the time they turn six they want to paddle, can actually be of some minor help in camp, and might even be tricked into doing a few chores for fun.
TODDLER TIPS
Most of the same safety advice holds true for infants and toddlers (see this page). But with toddlers containment is much more of a problem.
Little ones love to play at the water’s edge and throw rocks and sticks into the current. It’s a good policy to insist they wear life jackets near the water.
Bring lots of Band-Aids in the first-aid kit. Also a small container of eyewash, as well as tweezers to get out splinters or cactus spines.
Bring a few bird, animal, and plant books along. Young kids like to keep a list of exciting things they see and start to identify species.
Work hard on getting kids water-safe. Get them in swimming lessons, go to the pool, take them to local ponds and creeks.
Until children are about five, they don’t require lots of extra food at mealtimes. We usually padded the meal plan we used for two adults by about one small portion, and it covered the two boys. The major difference in the menu is the treats and food diversions.
Even at a pretty young age the boys liked to help in camp. They could do some small things like collect firewood and carry the sleeping bags to the tent, and the routine of camp chores is a good ritual to introduce early.
Leg loops on life jackets are still critical at this age. If anything, skinny youngsters with little body definition are even more prone to having life vests slip over their heads than infants are.
Break up a trip with varied activities. Follow a long travel day with some day hike explorations. Stop at a beach to swim and get the kids tired, then they might nap long enough to make some miles.