An upcoming series on the benefits of outdoor play for child development

We spend so much of modern childhood thinking about what our children need to do: read, count, learn, practice, participate, achieve. We sign up for activities and fill calendars and look for the next enriching thing to offer them.

But childhood has another kind of curriculum.

It is outside.

It happens barefoot, or in sneakers that are perpetually full of sand. It happens with a pocket full of rocks and a stick that has somehow become a fishing pole, a sword, a magic wand, or the most important piece of a very complicated fort. It happens when a walk around the block takes forty-five minutes because there was an ant to watch, a puddle to jump in, a leaf to collect, and a tree that absolutely needed climbing.

It is rarely efficient. And that may be part of the point.

There is so much noise in modern childhood. Screens, schedules, notifications, activities, instructions. So many things asking for a child’s attention before they have even had the chance to wonder where their own attention might take them.

And when the little hands at the dinner table start causing a raucous, or the wail for attention comes from the other room, it can be awfully tempting to reach for the quickest form of entertainment. The easiest answer. The thing that keeps everyone occupied.

There are infinite ways to raise a child. But in a world increasingly filled with indoor distractions, it can take a little more intention to leave room for the kind of childhood that happens when no one is telling them what to do next.

Enter the Mosey Outing Club’s Club Minutes!

Just in case you need extra motivation, we’ll be sharing a series of well-researched stories to make the case for raising a child outside. We’re hoping to filter the noise, and give you something simple to hold onto: a felt understanding of why a childhood spent outside matters.

In the words of Dr. Ben Palmer Fry, an educator & conservation worker, “nature breeds curiosity; it helps to grow explorers rather than robots. It reminds us that we are part of something bigger. It grounds us, calms us.”

Outside, children get to meet the world.

Not the world as it appears in a book.

Not the world as it appears on a screen.

The actual world.

The muddy, windy, beautiful, inconvenient, fascinating one. The one with bugs and rocks and trees and puddles and cold hands. The one that doesn’t always behave. The one that asks something of you. The one that lets you wonder.

And maybe this is one of the greatest gifts of outdoor play: not simply that it helps children become stronger, smarter, more confident, or more socially capable—but that it gives them a relationship with the world while they are still small enough to believe that a stick can be anything.

We don’t need to make childhood bigger.

Maybe we just need to make a little more room for it.

In the coming weeks, Club Minutes will take a closer look at the many benefits of a childhood spent outside, including:

Fostering bold imaginations

1. Developing your senses

2. Physical and Cognitive Development

3. Managing risk and building confidence

4. Independence, grit, capability

5. Building social skills, problem solving, and collaboration

And because there is no single right way to raise a child—or to be a wild one—we want to hear what you’re curious about, too.

What questions do you have about getting kids outside? What parts of raising the good kind of wild child do you want us to dig into?

Tell us in the comments.

We’ll do the research. You go outside.