Ep 58: The Great Outdoors and Teens

Linda McGurk, author of There's No Such Thing As Bad Weather, clues us in on the surprising benefits of outdoor time...and how to get your kid out there in the first place!

Full show notes

After another long day of quarantine, you exit your office and see your two teenagers sitting on the couch, engrossed in their phones. How can they look at the screen for so long? If you were them, you’d be running around outside, playing games with friends. You step towards the door, adn thoughts of fresh air run through your head. Outside, a cool breeze floats down the street, easing the feel of the warm afternoon sun. You think to yourself, we ought to be spending more time outside as a family.

In theory, getting the family out for a day of fun should be an easy task. In practice, though, you know it isn’t easy. How can you get your kids to recognize the importance of outdoor activities for a teenager if you can barely get them to put down their phone?

In the pre-internet era, you would try to find any reason to get out the front door. Nobody wanted to hang out at home under the watchful eye of parental supervision. Nowadays, the internet has transformed social life onto a convenient little screen, allowing friends to connect from the comfort of the couch. In turn, the outdoor experience has become lost to many teens. How can parents help reintroduce the importance of outdoor activities for a teenager?

Glad you asked! This week, TTT hosts Linda McGurk, an expert on both the outdoors and parenting. Linda runs the blog, Rain or Shine Mamma, where she shares her tips for maintaining her outdoor lifestyle with children. She also wrote the book, There’s No Such Thing As Bad Weather: A Scandinavian Mom’s Secrets for Raising Healthy, Resilient and Confident Kids.

Growing up in Sweden, Linda was introduced to the outdoors at a young age. In the U.S. she fell in love with the landscape, but was shocked at how often parents kept their kids indoors. Drawing on her Scandinavian childhood, she began to raise her kids in harmony with nature to help them recognize the importance of the outdoors. Here’s an in-depth look at just one of Linda’s tricks to reintroducing the importance of outdoor activities for a teenager.

Screen-Free Sundays

The concept of Screen-Free Sundays is a little surprising to hear. These days, one can barely go an hour without looking at a screen, whether it be a tablet, phone, or TV. How are teens going to spend a whole day without their screens? How can you introduce them to the importance of outdoor activities for a teenager?

The goal of Screen-Free Sundays isn’t to pry screens for the hands of your teens. Rather, the goal is to regulate screen time to prevent teens from staying glued to the couch for 5 hours straight. Linda notes that the concept of Screen-Free Sundays, probably won’t go over well when you first bring it up, especially if your teens normally have unrestrained access to devices on a normal Sunday.

Linda did not have immediate success when initiating the first couple Screen-Free Sundays. Her youngest daughter fought the immediate changes to her lifestyle while Linda remained steadfast to having a screen free day. The refusal of either side to compromise on the screen free policy caused disaster in the McGurk household. “It was hard to go ‘cold turkey,’” McGurk says.

Linda was able to find common ground with her children with devices on Sunday through two distinct approaches. By using these techniques, Screen-Free Sundays became a hit as the importance of outdoor activities for a teenager became realized by both the kids and the parents. Now, Linda enjoys planning which excursion to go on every weekend. In summer popular activities are picnics or hikes, while the winter provides a great atmosphere for weekend ice-skating.

It’s wonderful to hear about how successful Linda was when implementing her strategies to get everyone outside. But what were the strategies Linda used that led to success? And how can you help your kids recognize the importance of outdoor activities for a teenager?

Tip #1: Confidence in Compromise

Initially, Linda struggled to implement Screen-Free Sundays with her family. We all know it’s challenging to get people off their phones and demonstrate the importance of outdoor activities for a teenager, but in practice it can be hard to think up ideas to get everyone off the screen and outside.

Linda had more success when she compromised and allowed her teens to have some screen time on Screen-Free Sundays. The trick was to gradually phase out screen time for her teens. This allowed the whole family to ease into the screen-free lifestyle. Initially, she allowed her daughter to watch her favorite TV show as her designated screen time. This helped her daughter get through the day without causing an outburst of anger or tears.

Parents can apply this strategy to their implementation of Screen-Free Sundays. Instead of demanding everyone to stay off screens the whole day, perhaps you could restrict screen time to an hour of the day instead of forcing everyone to stay off the whole day. Alternatively, parents can restrict screen time to a single device for a set time period. No matter what method you choose, easing teens into Screen-Free Sundays is a must if you want to demonstrate the importance of outdoor activities for a teenager.

Tip #2: Inclusive Ideas

To emphasize the importance of outdoor activities for a teenager, it’s important to get the whole family involved in planning Screen-Free Sundays. A trick to getting the teens on board, Linda says, is to have them write down ideas on sticky notes for screen-free weekend activities. The week before, a note is drawn from a bowl to allow everyone a chance to plan for the Sunday. Having a bowl of ideas is crucial because it engages the whole family for input on activities during Screen-Free Sundays.

The Idea Jar helped engage Linda’s kids when it came to Screen-Free Sundays. The opportunity to have input into the family’s plan helped everyone buy into the concept of going without a screen for a day. The bowl gave a voice to her kids, allowing them to feel included and valued in family discussions. The jar also motivated her kids to get off the couch and reminded them the importance of outdoor activities for a teenager.

While it might seem fun to implement an Idea Jar for the family to use, the jar gets at a core function of parent-teen relations: communication. Parents and teens often have trouble communicating because teens believe they deserve more autonomy and responsibility and want adults to treat their voice as equal in discourse. The Idea Jar is great because it creates a platform for equal discourse that is less likely to result in a yelling match between parents and teens.

While Screen-Free Sundays can be one solution to demonstrating the importance of outdoor activities for a teenager, it might not be the right solution for your family. In the rest of the podcast, Linda and Andy discuss many additional concepts to help you get your teens outside. Some additional concepts discussed in the podcast are…

• ‘Friluftsliv’: leaving civilization and reconnecting with nature
• Modeling outdoor lifestyles
• Balancing screens and chores
• Free play and the outdoors for childr...