One of the things I love most about Outside Kids is hearing from other dads in the trenches with me. My friend Jamie Brewer sent me this piece out of the blue, and I knew it had to be shared. It’s funny, honest, and full of lessons that remind us the antidote to screen-zombie kids is often as simple as… going outside. - Henry

I was in LAX the other day and saw a confronting image of a young boy. He looked like a ChatGPT image adaptation depicting “a Generation Alpha iPad kid.”

He was around five years old, had short black hair, and was shaped like a perfect sphere. He was extremely overweight, struggling to stand on a moving travelator, and he wore his iPad around his neck on a custom leash. It rested on his belly, standing by for easy access at all times.

Granted, it was an airport and most kids love their devices during long travel, but I could tell by the way he wore his iPad that this was something he was very used to. It was the way he lived his life day to day. He seemed happy enough, but I felt sad for him.

I have a ten-year-old boy and, like most Western kids of his generation, screens are a big part of daily life. Like a lot of parents, we’re guilty of enjoying a meal at a restaurant while our child buries his nose in a screen. But I’ve noticed a big shift in this behaviour over the last 18 months or so.

There’s now an embarrassment and a stigma attached to being perceived as “an iPad kid” in public. This is a decision our son has come to naturally and of his own volition, and I think it partly comes from a shift in his thinking and associated pride of wanting to be the opposite of an iPad kid.

Around four years ago, we moved from Sydney to the Northern Rivers in New South Wales. We made the move for several reasons, but a big contributing factor was that we wanted our child to enjoy more of the outdoors. We hadn’t been excessively outdoorsy people up until that point, and I’m not saying that we now live our lives like a scene out of Captain Fantastic either, but we made a conscious decision to shift the pendulum and prioritise the things we know are important in parenting.

Here’s a handful of things I’ve learnt over my first decade as a dad:

If you’re outdoors, you can literally gamify all activities. Think the floor is lava, but for everything. How many skims can you get on the lake with a flat stone? I bet you can’t run to that tree in under 20 seconds. Let’s see if you can go on the flying fox all the way there and back without touching the ground.

I challenged my boy to this once, and he pinched his poor testicles in between the rope and the base plate of the seat. When I asked him if he was okay, he yelled, “It feels like my nuts are going to vomit!”

My boy showed an early interest in golf when he was around four years old. We got a chopped-down sand wedge and he’d practise hitting balls a short distance. He absolutely loved it initially and I wanted to see where it led. I would take him to the park, set up his bucket of balls and watch him practise.

Now, for anyone who plays golf, we all know it can be an incredibly challenging game at times. You can go from flushing balls to barely hitting them within a minute or two. This can be irritating as hell for an adult, but a tantrum-inducing explosion of frustration for a four-year-old.

I was in our local park when this happened and a man in his early fifties observed the meltdown as he was walking past. He said he had older boys and gave me a piece of advice that, in hindsight, seems excessively obvious:

If they’re into sports, let them try everything when they’re young and don’t push them to focus on one activity too early.

From that point on, rather than going to the park just for golf, we’d go to the park for “P.E.” We’d take a curation of soccer balls, cricket bats, frisbees, etc.

Getting fed up with rugby passes? Let’s have a running race. Wanting to smash Dad in the shins with a baseball bat because you keep missing? Let’s hit the swing! Don’t provide so many options that it becomes overwhelming, but keep it varied, keep it fun.

This is another one that seems obvious and can be hard when you’re trying to get everything done on a given day, but this practice will set your kids up to be calmer and more mentally and physically healthy adults.

Minimise screens to set times of the week, but put no restrictions on reading, drawing, listening to music, and (excluding bad weather and bedtimes) no restrictions on playing outside.

This will create a healthy association with the natural dopamine fix you can only get from doing outside activities.

Force them to use their precious imagination. Let them fail in a way that can’t be learnt through screens.

Ask yourself: what’s more damaging — a grazed knee, or developing a lifetime of digital dependence? Do you want your kids to have muddy feet and leaves in their hair, or do you want them standing still on a travelator wearing an iPad, getting lost in a blue screen of technological reliance?

I’m not suggesting that our world and lives are going to get any less digital than they already are, but that’s exactly the point, and why we should always be in surplus of trying to do the opposite.

Be outside and prioritise play. This is the best thing for you and your kids. Make time for this above everything else.

It’s great for bonding, for your own physical, mental and emotional health, and playing with your kids allows you to be a kid again too. And what’s more fun than that?

I’m open to pitches if you have something you’d like to share from the wild frontier of fatherhood. Shoot me a message to discuss!