Building Resilient Boys Part 2: Adventure and Outdoors
I’ve asked my good friend Tom Gold of TheTreeLine.co.uk to guest post and write the second part in my series on Building Resilient Boys.
Tom is a published author and blogger as well as being an outdoorsman and adventurer. His blog and YouTube channel focus on survival and bush craft with minimal kit and expense.
Tom has studied forensic psychology, worked in a secure psychiatric prison and spent time in the United States.
There he worked at a correctional boot camp in Arizona. His experiences led to the writing and publishing of his first book: Wilderness of Sinners (buy it here on Amazon).
His latest book ‘The Big Book of Bushcraft for Boys’ will be published later this year.
-Neil
One of my earliest memories is being put into one of those dumbwaiters, a sort of miniature wooden elevator, at an old house we were staying in.
I remember my dad closing the door then just darkness and the squealing of ancient wooden pulleys and ropes. Then the door opened and there was my mum. I was very pleased to see her.
I know what my dad was doing of course.
He was building resilience in me because he knew I’d need it where I was going and he knew that he wouldn’t always be there to keep me safe. I’ve heard this same style of parenting labeled as being ‘dehumanising’ or ‘brutalising’ and I suppose that taken to extremes that’s what it will do, but only in the absence of trust.
I always knew that despite the jokes he made, if it came to the crunch my dad would do whatever it took to keep me safe.
These sort of experiences were a regular feature of my childhood and there’s been many times since that I’ve been glad of the pressure he put me under.
The Utterly Devoid of Fear Club
My Grandfather was killed in action in WW2 not long after my dad was born, meaning that not only did he have a difficult childhood but when it was his turn to be a dad he had to pretty much figure it out for himself.
He had however, in the intervening period, learned a lot about resilience. The whole country had, and boys from his generation were brought up on being brave, not giving up, never shedding a tear and being men before their time.
What surprises me, looking back, is that my dad, reared on this diet of stiff upper lip stoicism, managed to do such a good job when we were little.
Sure, he had some pretty clear expectations about how we were to behave if we hurt ourselves or got bullied or got cold but he always came home from work with a big shout of ‘Hello people!’ and we would come rushing out to see him, knowing that his time was ours until bed.
The weekends would almost always involve some sort of dangerous activity whether it was burning out a wasps nest, splitting logs or setting up a ‘death slide’ like the one we had seen the Marines use on Blue Peter.
He was a big believer in rough and tumble play and regularly encouraged us to take risks:
- Bouncing on the bonfire to pump air into it (which really works by the way).
- Jumping into his arms from the top of the stairs.
- Walking along the top of fences and walls.
During the summer holidays he, and some of the other dads in the village took us on adventures which would involve exploring derelict buildings, abseiling in the disused quarry, swimming in the reservoir and paddling our leaky overcrowded dinghy down the mile long Crick tunnel on the Grand Union Canal.
My dad called it ‘The Utterly Devoid of Fear Club’ or UDF club which I later found out came from the Eagle comic which he had read as a boy.
These trips could be scary, even downright terrifying. I was five or six at the time, but I came to trust my dad without blinking. By the same token I was always determined not to look scared in front of him.
Building Resilient Boys Through Bushcraft and Adventure
The adventures I go on with my own boys who are eight and nine, bear a lot of similarities to the UDF Club.
Though nowadays I insist on things like life jackets, harnesses and proper ropes.
It’s just as much fun though and I know that every time they overcome their fear or step out of their comfort zone they are growing as people.
Most of us learn our ‘dad skills’ from our own fathers and this is where I need to be careful because my dad’s post war British values may not always be relevant in the world my boys are growing up in.
For instance his solution to online bullying would be to not waste time on the internet in the first place.
For this reason its important to me that there is always a point or an objective to what might be seen as resilience building activities. Going for a hearty walk in foul weather isn’t always going to meet with unanimous approval.
But going geocaching or ‘wild edibles’ foraging or raft building promotes learning as opposed to simply instilling moral fibre.
It also shifts the focus from ‘experiencing potential danger’, which can easily lead to trivialising it.
In the summer my dad came to stay and the boys and I took him on a canoe trip on Loch Lomond (one of the larger lakes in Scotland).
We stopped on one of the islands and spit roasted some venison and baked some bannock for lunch before cutting some yew branches to make bows with. Paddling home, my dad just beamed the whole way.
It was his kind of day out.
P.S. For more Father/Son posts and part 1 in the series, check these out:
