Take your kids camping this summer. You won’t regret it if you do, but you should regret it if you don’t.

Camping with kids is a demanding job, from packing to unpacking, because the things we help them do in the woods are the same things we help them do at home — except without the home. They still eat three meals a day — without a kitchen. They still have restroom and sink facilities — without a bathroom. And they still go to bed at night — without a bedroom. Parents are brilliant geniuses on camping trips.

Because of all that, camping is where we teach our kids things they can’t and won’t learn anywhere else. We haul them into the woods, then explain the family’s survival depends on how well they pitch in. With that kind of persuasion, most kids will step up and learn how to do things that are actually worth knowing. Things like …

How to pack for a camping trip. It only takes one campout without enough clothing, enough shoes or a warm enough jacket to turn a kid into a camp packing expert.

How to pack enough sleeping gear, meaning something to sleep on and something to sleep in — not just pjs, but a sleeping bag and blankets. Teach them what “enough” blankets means, especially when your campsite is next to a river. You campers will understand that.

How to gather firewood — tinder, kindling, logs, etc. — and how to properly stack it.

How to build a fire. Ideally with one match.

How to cook over a campfire without burning something like a hand, the meal or their eyebrows.

How to prepare a piece of ground before putting a tent on it so they don’t poke holes in the floor of the tent or in their back once they’ve settled in to sleep.

How to set up a tent. No matter how complicated it may be.

How to properly open — and close — a pocket knife without needing a bandage.

How to make a perfect s’more with the graham crackers splayed open and chocolate laid out before they grab a fork and marshmallow. How to toast a marshmallow so perfect it might not make it to the crackers. And how to not launch a flaming marshmallow into someone’s hair, face or the woods.

The importance of checking flashlight batteries before the sun sets.

How to get their sleeping bag rolled out, set out their clothes for the next day and get their gear organized before the sun goes down, and why. (Because doing all of that inside a tent in total darkness is a hard lesson that won’t likely be repeated).

How to tell — and tolerate — a proper camping ghost story.

How to put a fire to bed before they put themselves to bed so they don’t get awakened in the middle of the night by the visit of flames on their tent.

Extreme camping parents will add how to dig a latrine — including all the reasoning that goes into the site selection — how to use an outdoor latrine and how to close down that latrine when it’s time to go. Home. Not that other “go.”

How to leave the campsite the way they found it — or better. And why.

There’s a moment when the campfire is dying down, the night air isn’t too cold yet, and the family, drawn to the fire like moths to a flame, huddles around and just stays. Talking, listening, thinking, being. It doesn’t always happen, but it won’t and can’t if there’s no campfire to surround.

My grown-up kids say that’s the best part of camping — that’s the reason they take their kids camping. They know camping is all about setting up times and places and moments for the family to come together — to grow together.

When your family works together that hard to get to that point, your family will keep the moment going.

I’d bet my Coleman stove on it.

D. Louise Brown lives in Layton. She writes a biweekly column for the Standard-Examiner.

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