Petoskey — Kids are in trouble. They are wasting their days inside on iPads, frying their attention spans and crushing their imaginations.
Screens make good children into worse children. On a robust diet of iPad consumed in a climate-controlled living room, children grow up dull, weak in spirit and body, unsettled, distracted, and poorly behaved.
The more TV, iPad, and YouTube kids consume, the worse their manners become. They take cues from the stupidity on the screen. They become what they watch.
You don’t need to reinvent the wheel to save your kids, you just need to get them outside.
When it comes to summer, there are a few simple rules that, if followed, essentially guarantee your kids will be outside as much as possible.
Rule 1: If it’s over 50 degrees, the kids are outside. If they aren’t doing chores or cleaning up inside, they are doing something out in the open air.
Rule 2: Unless it’s rainy or windy, breakfast, lunch, and dinner are all outside on the porch.
Rule 3: Half an hour before they go to bed, the kids must organize the toys outside so we can start tomorrow morning fresh. This keeps them outside right up until it’s time to sleep.
In spring and fall, it’s colder, but it’s not a problem. Sunny and 55 is fine with a sweater and jacket. Rain causes a few problems, but they are solvable, or at least treatable. To get your kids outside on the rainy days you need four things:
2. A plain raincoat with a hood.
3. Rain pants/rain overalls that tuck inside the boots.
4. Rain mittens.
The first two are fairly common. The last two are not, though they should be, because they make being outside in the rain possible, pleasant, and even fun. Of course, if it is a torrential rainstorm, the kids aren’t outside. But these rain solutions are great for 95% of the soggy days. With these four items, they will be bone dry when they come in after an hour-and-a-half out back.
In winter, kids just can’t get outdoors as much. At a point, it can be downright dangerous. Even still, we aim for at least two hours a day outdoors. But again, you need the right gear. If you want your kids outside in the cold, you can’t limp them along with cheap gloves, beanies, a coat, and a pair of jeans. That doesn’t work for a life outside.
There are five key things your kids need to get outside reliably in the winter:
3. Oversized balaclavas. Both a hat and scarf in one, it helps when there is one less thing to lose or misplace.
4. Mittens with strong elastic and adjustable Velcro or straps for added security. These are key to preventing the perpetual problem of snow up a kid’s sleeve.
5. Boots that don’t need to be tied. Boots with laces are a pain to get on and off, and any added difficulty in the winter decreases the likelihood of the kids getting outside.
Bottom line: If you want your kids outside in January, their gear should make them look like they are fixing an oil pipeline in the arctic circle. That’s how you know you are doing it right.
If you want outdoor kids, you need to say goodbye to your perfectly manicured grass and pristine backyard. You can have iPad kids and a great lawn or a hellscape of a backyard and healthy kids who grew up breathing fresh air. You can have a brain-fried zombie or a kid covered in a perpetual layer of dust with a farmer’s tan.
“I’m raising kids, not a lawn” is one of my favorite sayings. It gets right down to the point of the matter. Raising kids means more chaos and more mess, though some try to resist the fact. Some, I suspect, secretly like their kids zoned out inside on iPads, because it means the living room is cleaner and the lawn is nicer. Meanwhile, their kids are less present than they ought to be.
Getting your kids outside means a backyard covered with toys. Balls and bats strewn all over. Sand spilling out of the sandbox. Mud concoctions. Squirt guns constantly being filled with the help of the cooler. Holes in the ground where they were digging for fossils. Worn away grass. Bent tree branches from climbing. A patio covered in sketches of faded sidewalk chalk. A few sticks of that same chalk scattered across the yard, churned up by the mower every other week.
Getting your kids outside means giving them a childhood more like the one you, your dad, or your grandpa had. It means giving them the space to imagine and create. The mental quiet needed to be themselves and no one else. The freedom to run and get messy without planned instruction or overbearing rules. The ability to feel the earth in their hands and on their knees. The chance to watch a bird land on a branch no more than four feet away, chirp a bit, then fly off again.
Sometimes I catch one of my kids sitting out there in back, just looking up, unblinking, watching the branches swaying, the clouds moving across the sky, or the snow falling silently on a frozen morning. An encounter with the natural world, God’s creation, a sliver of something divine. This is something important, something you can’t get on an iPad. This is one of the things that makes better kids, who grow up into better adults.
Getting your kids outside means more of everything. More natural beauty, more reflection, more running, more chasing, more yelling and screaming, more fun, more games, more dirt, more suntans, more wind in the hair, more chaos, more mess—more life.
O.W. Root is a writer based in Northern Michigan, with a focus on nature, food, style, and culture. Follow him on X at @NecktieSalvage.
