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What Age Can Kids Start Climbing?
Children can climb at Boulder Shack from the age of 2. What they can do at each age, and five things bouldering gives them.
Indoor bouldering is climbing on low walls over deep mats, without ropes or a harness. Children take to it quickly, because climbing is something most of them were doing anyway.
What age can children start?
At Boulder Shack in Southampton:
- Ages 2 to 5: Climbing Tots, a session of climbing and games led by an instructor, with a grown up alongside the whole time.
- From age 4: children can climb whenever we are open with an adult supervising. One adult for each child aged 4 or 5, and one adult for two climbers aged 6 to 17. See family climbing.
- Ages 5 to 17: the Junior Climbing Club, a weekly coached club in three age groups.
- Ages 14 to 17: once a coach has signed them off, teenagers can climb without a parent.
The kids' climbing page has all of it by age.
1. It builds fitness
Bouldering works the whole body. It builds strength, agility, flexibility and coordination, and it suits every level, because the easiest climbs are there to be walked up.
2. It builds confidence
Getting to the top of a problem that beat them last week is a real achievement, and children know it. That confidence tends to travel with them into other things.
3. It teaches problem solving
Climbs are called problems for a reason. Working out which moves get you to the top takes thought, spatial awareness and a few wrong answers first.
4. It is sociable
Children climb together, work out problems together and cheer each other on. They make friends doing it.
5. It teaches them to try again
Everybody falls off. Learning to fall safely, get up and have another go teaches resilience in a way that is hard to teach by talking about it.
Where to start
The easiest start is to come down together: watching costs nothing. For a birthday, our instructors run kids' climbing parties, and there is more on in the school holidays.
