The throw was magnificent.

It happened on Mirissa beach in Sri Lanka on Christmas Day 2017, late afternoon - that syrupy hour when the sun goes gold and everyone feels they’re in a travel brochure. My brother Tom was barefoot in a Hawaiian shirt, operating under the quiet confidence of a man who has thrown a child many times before.

We were directly in front of a busy beach restaurant and his son Leo was wearing a Superman cape.

This detail matters.

Tom bent his knees and committed, launching Leo skyward with the sort of conviction normally reserved for a trebuchet.

Leo rose.
And rose.
And then rose a bit more.

One woman audibly inhaled. Cutlery hit plates. Somewhere behind us a German man stopped clapping his flip-flops together.

At the apex of the throw, gravity paused to consider its options.

Leo inverted.

Cape fluttering. Legs pinwheeling. That horrible slow-motion rotation where your body goes cold and the brain calmly inventories injuries.

Tom reached up, too late, then adjusted mid-panic and somehow, through a combination of luck, instinct and a violation of wrist anatomy, caught him upside down before he hit the sand.

Silence.

Then Leo laughed.

Not a polite giggle. Not a “that was fine” laugh. A full-body, hysterical, do-it-again-right-now cackle that echoed off the palm trees and instantly forgave every poor decision that led to this moment.

Tom grimaced, flexed his wrists, and did that thing dads do where they smile through pain to suggest that was the plan all along. I put my camera away and we scurried away from the stunned onlookers before someone called the authorities.

This wasn’t a one-off. I’ve seen children launched skyward in pools, lakes and holiday resorts across multiple continents, usually by men who look both relaxed and faintly unqualified. My friend Ruari and I used to meet at Bondi Icebergs in Sydney, where we’d spin-pass his two-year-old between us to the soundtrack of lungs-at-risk laughter from the human projectile. And at the local park in summer, i’m sure you’ll recognise the unspoken rule: when a fellow father clears an above-average toss height, he earns a quiet nod of approval.

Is this all about macho strength and showing off? Is it Dad’s reliving a brief and deeply unimpressive athletic peak?

No, it’s about play. Rough, physical, roll-about-on-the-carpet-then-piggy-back-till you drop trust-based play, and the way it becomes one of the simplest, most reliable forms of connection between fathers and their kids.

There’s science behind it too. Roughhousing (including the airborne variety) lights up the vestibular and proprioceptive systems - the internal kit that helps kids understand balance, movement and where their body is in space. Translation: being flung briefly towards the sky is a crash course in gravity, trust and self-belief. It also triggers a juicy chemical cocktail of dopamine, oxytocin and endorphins, which is the brain’s way of saying “this is exciting, you’re safe, and you should remember this”.

(Assuming you can catch.)

There’s a gap forming in modern parenting - let’s call it the Fear Gap. It’s the space between what kids are ready for and what adults are comfortable allowing. Kids tend to stop when their courage runs out. Parents stop when their fear kicks in. The two are not the same thing.

On a micro level, you see it in the throws that don’t quite happen. Zoom out and it’s in the “don’t climb that, it’s too high”, the “don’t swim there, it’s too deep”, or the “wait for me!” that stops them taking five confident steps on their own. Not because the child is done, but because the adult is. (You can trace this pattern further and further through society - The Anxious Generation does a stellar job of mapping the fallout.)

Rough play sits right in the middle of that gap; a live negotiation between excitement and safety, trust and control, and when it’s done well, often mid–tickle-monster frenzy, it teaches kids something subtle but powerful: I can feel scared and still be okay.

When kids ask for higher, they’re not chasing danger, they’re checking the system. Do you still have me Dad? Are you watching? Can I trust you big guy?! Each extra inch is a question, not a dare, and every clean catch answers it.

There is, of course, a line. You don’t cross it with a rulebook or a height limit but instead you read it using awareness and good ol’ common sense. The laugh tightens. The body stiffens. Eye contact breaks. The moment those signals shift, it stops being play and starts being something else. The real skill isn’t throwing higher; it’s knowing when not to.

By now you’ve probably gathered I’m a big advocate for The Throw. It brought the three of us a lot of joy over the years, and only one of us any lasting back issues. My kids are six and eight now, and that particular chapter has closed, replaced by turnbuckle-style sofa jumps and play fights that look chaotic but operate by their own careful, unspoken rules.

The day comes for every dad when the throws stop. Sometimes it’s because your vertebrae are filing a formal complaint, but more often it’s because they stop asking. The best version of that moment is when they don’t need to anymore. The shape of the play changes - from throws to bikes without stabilisers, tree branches instead of shoulders, longer swims, faster descents - but the work stays the same: testing limits, building trust, finding safe ways to feel brave. And for a while longer at least, that’s enough.