When the tent hurts

Landon asked me if we could go camping and sleep in a tent.  So I took him to my parents' lake house (where our tent lives) for the weekend.  We got there late on Friday and since I know my capabilities, I told him we'd have to set up the tent in the morning and we could sleep in it on Saturday night.

 

After some initial arguments, he finally agreed that he'd rather not have the tent cave in on us in the night because I'm not great at putting up tents in the dark.  Especially tents I haven't actually put up in several years.

 

We set up the tent the next morning and he played in it all day.  In and out as much as possible.  And even helped set up and then deconstruct the bedding.

 

When it came time to go get in the tent for the night, I put the dogs in first and went back to get him.  I brought him out to the tent and we settled in.  He snuggled up to me and told me to turn the lantern off.

 

And then we had this conversation:

 

"This hurts."

 

"What hurts?"

 

"The tent hurts."

 

"The tent hurts?"

 

"Yeah, I wanna go back inside and sleep inside."

 

"What do you mean the tent hurts?"

 

"It hurts."

 

"Ok."

 

And so our greatly planned and much anticipated sleeping in a tent adventure ended less than 15 seconds after it began.

 

The next morning we finally got him to explain what happened.  He was apparently afraid of the dark, although never thought to mention that we should turn the lantern back on. Also it turns out that had we stayed in the tent, we probably would have been wet in the morning, thanks to 1.5" of rain - HARD rain - over night that left puddles in the tent when I went to take it down the next morning.

 

Our new great plan, (If you tell him your plan and ask him what he thinks, he will sometimes reply with "That sounds like a great plan."), is to set up the tent in our living room next weekend and sleep in the house in the tent.  Then the next weekend we will graduate to the backyard.  And then we can try at the lake again.