Is There REALLY “No Such Thing as Bad Weather”?
I just got a question from a parent that may be on your mind, too:
My son loves nature and we’d love to engage him in outdoor therapy sessions. However he dislikes staying outside when it’s cold/windy so I’m a little concerned about him not being able to enjoy the sessions when winter comes. How do you keep it fun and engaging when the weather isn’t nice?
It’s a great question. Let’s get 100% real for a minute:
Nature-based therapists and educators all over the world like to say “there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.”
Which is true. (In fact, we highly recommend the book inspired by this saying.)
But one of the funniest quotes from the nature-based therapists I personally interviewed for my own doctoral research was:
“I know we always say ‘there’s no such thing as bad weather’...but it is so NOT true!”
She was laughing while she said it but she was just being totally honest! Some days can be HARD to be outdoors! Strong winds. Pounding rain. Blustery snow. Smokey wildfire air.
Now, there are sometimes legit reasons to NOT go outdoors...but in general: getting outdoors in most weather usually has a net benefit for human health.
The ConTiGO (Connection & Transformation in the Great Outdoors) Approach we developed at Outdoor Kids is based on the philosophy of growth mindset. We grow and learn the most through failures and hard things. If you think about it, there really is no growth without some difficulty. An example for us adults is how vigorous exercise feels hard when we do it…but we know it is good for our health!
I once heard someone say something like this on a podcast: “We’re setting children up for success, but not for suffering.” (I WISH I could remember who it was…) What he meant was: our children today aren’t usually being prepared to do hard things and learn from failure.
Of course we want kids to have fun in our therapy sessions! We absolutley do things to give children the best chance of success at outdoor play in non-ideal weather. Things like:
We ensure children have the right gear for the weather. (Read our blog post here on how to dress for wet or cold weather.)
We pre-plan activities for the next session WITH the children, so they have buy-in and feel a sense of agency over what the plan is for the session.
We take the weather into account when planning activities. In winter, we include a lot of movement to keep us warm, we build fires, and we have warm snacks on hand. Having other kids in the session also helps to keep things fun!
But even when we do all of these things to set a session up to be fun, not all nature-based therapy sessions are going to be fun. In fact, we’ve consistently seen that the MOST learning and the biggest therapeutic breakthroughs happen for children when things go “wrong” or nature offers up some challenges that make the day kind of hard. (Nature is a great therapist that way!)
When kids have challenging experiences in the supportive environment of a therapy session, they end up feeling that sense of pride and accomplishment that comes from doing something hard and tiring...those are the very things that make them (and us!) grow, learn, and feel ALIVE.