Wild Things

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Boys and Adventure

I just bought a new book called “Wild Things:  The Art of Nurturing Boys” by Stephen James and David Thomas.  They break out a boy’s journey into five stages based on ages:

The Explorer:  (2-4)

The Lover: (5-8)

The Individual: (9-12)

The Wanderer: (13-17)

The Warrior: (18-22)

At the heart of all of this is adventure.  I believe that everything about raising a boy has to do with bringing adventure into his world.  At the heart of this is the hero’s journey which is described many ways.  But, it’s basically story structure.  The protagonist goes on a journey (adventure) that changes his life.   There’s always a transformation in this character because of the struggle .  Life isn’t about the destination.  It’s about the trip;  at least in this world.

Shrek

I remember seeing the musical “Shrek” several years ago.  Shrek takes the classic hero’s journey to save a damsel in distress from a dragon.  It’s such a great adventure.  Somewhere in the play he sings a song called “Who I’d Be”.   The song captures the very essence of a boy’s heart.  He wants to know that he has what it takes.  Here’s part of the lyrics:

So yes I'd be a hero, and if my wish was granted

Life would be enchanted, or so the stories say.

Of course I'd be a hero, and I would scale a tower

To save a hot-house flower, and carry her away

But standing guard would be a beast, I'd somehow over whelm it,

I'd get the girl, I'd take my breath, and I'd remove my helmet.

We'd stand and stare, we'd speak of love, we'd feel the stars ascending

We'd share a kiss, I'd find my destiny

I'd have a hero's ending, a perfect happy ending.

That's how it would be

A big bright beautiful world

(From “Who I’d Be”, from Shreck: The Musical. Song by Brian d'Arcy James and Daniel Breaker)

A soaring song filled with truth and emotion.  

Growing Up In The Smith Home

This article is a personal one filled with some ideas I have for filling a boy’s home life with adventure, especially when they are younger.  Most of these ideas are things I’ve done with my own boys.  Whether it’s environments, language (semantics), or activities, the idea of adventure must be woven into your intentions for unlocking your son’s dreams.

Holidays, Vacations, and other Family Gatherings:  Anytime you have the whole family together, there should be something exciting happening.  Probably just getting the house ready and a meal on the table is all you think you’re capable of doing.  But with just a little bit of forethought, you can make this so much more in bringing a sense of adventure to your boy’s life.  

• Birthdays.  My boys grew up in a land far, far away.  We loved themes of adventure.  We had pirate ships, cowboys and Indians, Olympic games, Star Wars, and all kinds of wild adventures.  I remember during the Olympic theme we rigged an awards platform and raised flags up and down a pulley system from the deck to the upstairs bathroom while the National Anthem played.  An attack from an alien ship littered the boys on the tennis courts with tennis balls as they tried to escape the clutches of the dark side.  It just went on and on.  Don’t let Chuck E. Cheese create your boxed fantasy!  Create your own.

• Vacations:  These family events should be well thought through in terms of their sense of adventure.  Forget rest and relaxation!  You can always come back home to do that.  The vacations that kids will remember most are the ones where they went where no man has ever gone before!  Wherever we went, we went to explore.   Part of this is always an element of ‘surprise’.  Surprises are one way to infuse a sense of adventure into your life.  I remember one trip where I was able to take my son to the Rocky Mountains.  Of course, he didn’t know where we were going.  I did all the packing and he just got on the plane with me.  After a few days of hiking, canoeing, rock climbing, and fishing, we got on the plane to ‘come home’.  But we had the layover in St Louis.  Wasn’t he surprised when I took him out of the airport in St Louis and we ended up at Busch Stadium to see his favorite baseball team, the Cardinals, play baseball.  We’ve got hundreds of stories like that.  I like to insert stories I’ve heard along the journey too.  I remember one man who was having a tough time connecting with his son.  The boy was almost a young man and the dad was concerned about their relationship.  It didn’t seem like they had anything in common.  But the boy liked to watch his team, the Chicago Cubs, play baseball.  So, to be more ‘present’, the father started watching the games with him.  This led to going to a couple games at the park.  Eventually, it led to following their team all over the country until they had been in every major league baseball stadium.  The dad wasn’t a baseball fan.  But he saw it as a way to connect to his son.  Turning into an adventure sealed the deal and they shared plenty of time together during those formulative teenage years. to do that is to go on an adventure together. Once I had grandsons, I changed the nature of my own birthday celebration each year to “Pappy’s Great American Birthday Adventure”.   I hope to continue to make it a time away where I can get as many of my family members who care to join me out in the open spaces to play and discover new worlds.  

• Holidays:  Like birthdays, holidays should be fertile ground for planting seeds of excitement.  One of my ‘CLASSIC’ inventions was called “Christmas Chaos” This was the epitome of all things WILD.  It boiled down to a scavenger hunt for Christmas gifts.  But, it was so much more.  Every Christmas that I can remember, the boys would wait at the top of the steps to come down and ‘find’ their presents under the tree.  But, the presents were never there.  What WAS there were the remnants of mischief:  Scattered items, clues, pieces of a bigger story, theme interpretations, signs, etc.  Something (or someone) always seemed to find their way into our house to disrupt the greater Christmas good.  It would send the boys on an epic adventure to locate their gifts.  And these WERE epic adventures:

-the story of Kung-Fu Kringle, brother to Kris who scatters the gifts around the house as a way to confound his brother, mommy’s favorite.  He leaves his clues (Chinese Proverbs) in fortune cookies.

-the year that Santa teamed up with “Stork Enterprises” for distribution and delivery of gifts.  Unfortunately, the GPS system didn’t integrate well with drop systems and gifts were wrapped in baby cloth and hung randomly on tree limbs around the house.

-Who could forget Corona Claus?  It was the year of the virus and Santa couldn’t come into homes.  So, he had to do a flyby.  Gifts were strung to trees using masks.

-One year, Santa was into golfing.  Things were going so smoothly that year that Santa found himself with enough extra time to get nine holes in.  But, he got so carried away that he played longer than he should have, so he just left the presents around the golf course and used a golf card to chart where the gifts were.  That’s the year they had to get in the car and drive to the golf course, walk nine holes with a wheelbarrow and gather up their presents!  What proved most interesting was that it was a beautiful day in Virginia that Christmas day and people were already on the course, even though it was closed.  YIKES.

There was Tool Story, Scrabble Santa, Balderdash Santa, National Treasures, Air Force Flyboy, Cupid Claus and a variety of other great stories.  I would love to share with you the adventure of Santa Wars.  That involved quite a script with a large cast of characters and a trip on the Millennial Falcon.  Was it a lot of work ?  SURE.  But, my boys still talk about those days and I suspect they’ll have many stories to tell their children on Christmas day.  Not to mention, that my oldest son already does “Christmas Chaos” with his three boys.  The adventure continues.

Always Say “YES” to catch.  I KNOW your busy.  There really are a million things you have to do.  But you will never regret taking time to play with your kids.  Even if it’s a short time, make the time when your son asks you to throw him a ball.  Every sport I ever played with my boys I framed through competition; not with each other, but against themselves.  They had to catch ten ground balls in a row and make the throw.  If you missed, you started over.  Fifty catches without a drop.  A ping pong volley that bested all the volleys before it without a miss.  You get the idea.  And here’s an interesting thought:  Should you let your child beat you when you play sports/games with them? I do  not know what the ‘right’ answer is.  I only know what I did.  I might let them get close, but I never let them beat me, if I could help it.  I wanted them to know that when/if they did beat me, they didn’t do it because I wasn’t trying.  And, of course, I knew the time would come when I would never win again.  So, I have to get my licks in before I started taking them on the chin.

Wrestle Time and Rough Housing:  When I came home and said, “It’s Wrestle Time, it’s like someone rang the bell and the announcer said, “Let’s get ready to rumble.”  The boys would squeal and come from the four corners of the house.  My son has a friend who has a boy. He’s whiney.  His mother hovers over him and tries to protect him from all harm.  No wrestling is allowed.  The father is a very imposing figure and quite present in the home. I’m not sure why he stands back and tolerates this environment.  It will have  terrible repercussions for the boy later in life.   Lots of research suggests that regular roughhousing sessions make for happier, more successful children.   In fact, in Top Dog, a book about the science of winning and losing, authors Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman argue that roughhousing can give your kids a competitive edge and help them learn to thrive in an increasingly dog-eat-dog world.  I was a wrestler in high school and so I DID have some moves.  Eventually, I would try and teach the boys as they got older.  But when they were young, it was no holds barred.  And pillows were definitely fair game.   Were there tears?  Of course, there were.  There were bumps and bruises and scrapes.  This may be another good place to insert an important idea:  How do you handle tears caused by physical accidents when you’re playing?  Well, first you need to make sure that there’s nothing serious going on.  A quick visual assessment should suffice.  You get pretty good at identifying ‘cries’ and what they’re about.  Here’s my default position:  If there was no blood, I didn’t make a big deal about an accident.  “Are you okay?  Then, pick yourself up, wipe yourself off and let’s get going.” Sounds tough.  It’s appropriate.  I cringe when I see parents overreact to ordinary bumps and bruises.  They happen and it’s better to learn early that the world doesn’t stop when you get hurt.  My mother used to say, “It will get better before you get married.”  Strange.   

• This might be as good a spot as any to talk about ‘safety’.  We have become a community of risk-averters.  I’m certainly not going to recommend that you do things that aren’t safe.  We had a friend that sometimes joined us on family vacations in Canada who would say to us, “Let’s play a game called ‘Wise and Unwise’.  It became a bit of a standing joke.  We might see a rock or cliff that begged to be climbed.  What were supposed to do?  Ignore the call?  Of course not.  Onward and Upward!  My friend’s voice would trail off in the distance as we scampered away from her.  “Let’s play a game called “Wis…….”  Oh well.  And no one ever died.  Thankfully.  To eliminate risk from the equation is like taking the sugar out of your birthday cake.   We have raised a generation of mama’s boys because we follow them around like B-9 in the “Lost in Space” television series.  “Danger Will Robinson!  Danger!”.  It sucks the life out of a boy.

Turn off the TV.  Get off your cell phones.  Get outside. There’s so much to say under this one heading.  I once was in Indonesia speaking at a Children’s Pastor’s Conference and an American was there speaking on ‘screen’ addiction.  His name was Brad Huddleston.  He speaks on technology and culture in terms of the neurology of the brain.  His class was astonishing.  Turns out that there’s no difference between snorting half a line of cocaine and an hour of playing video games.  You should look into his books, “Digital Cocaine” and “Digital Rehab”.  

• I have friends who lost their youngest son to video games.  He was as hooked on them like any other drug and the damage was just as severe.  His brain has been fried in critical places. Parents that care about their children’s well-being will limit screen time.  As it relates to raising boys, screen time is a passive existence.  It only engages a person as a consumer to provide entertainment or propoganda.  But it’s a passive process.  And then there’s the issues of cyber bullying, pornography, and liberal thinking (The news, for example!) .  Even in my own life, I have seen my creativity be greatly diminished by wasting time scrolling through mounds and mounds of data on screens.  I find that my cell phone is actually an appendage to my hand and when I’m without it, I feel naked.  I don’t think I would feel that way if I lost my wedding ring!  This is one of those subjects where I’m guilty too.  

• Not only is it bad for your brain, it is bad for your soul.  Get outside and breath the fresh air.  In the movie, “Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers”, Theoden, King of Rohan, has been under the spell of Sauron. When we first see him, he’s a ghost of his former self.  Gandalf the White Wizard sets him free from the spell that controls him and the film imagery slowing morphs him back to his old self.  It’s a startling contrast.  Gandalf’s response is “Breathe the free air again, my friend.”  The free air is the fresh air and it’s outside.  Play fosters creativity, cognitive development and emotional and behavioral benefits, just to name a few advantages.

Engagement with a company of men.  This is a key tenant of our ministry.  Affirming boys in manhood can’t happen apart from the company of men.  Women can only arouse masculinity.  Men affirm it in others.  There is no circumventing this requirement in raising boys.  The reason I include it in this article is because the nature of that chosen weekend each year was chalked full of activities that were part of the GRAND ADVENT”URE.  We competed in everything.  We even had a Rock, Papers, Scissors tournament!  Golfing, Fishing, Corn Hole, Paper Football, Ping Pong, etc.  We included spelunking, rock climbing, ropes courses, hiking adventures, canoeing and more.  Every time we came home from one of those events, my wife was waiting at the door to hear our stories.  We were indeed fortunate to ‘stumble’ onto this key component of raising boys to become godly men.  Once we went, we were hooked.  I remember one of the men in our group took his oldest son the first year.  The second year, the younger son begged to go along.  His dad told him he wasn’t old enough.  The son sulked and cried the entire weekend and when the dad got home, his son wouldn’t speak to him.  He never missed a weekend event after that.  Even my own boys kept going to these weekends after they had graduated.  It was almost like a military reunion of men that fought in battle together.  And now, those boys, to include my own, have boys.  And here we are again.

I could obviously go on and on with this article.  But, I’m sure you get the idea by now.  You can also add family projects to this list that are adventurous and family-oriented.  I remember when we developed our own coat of arms!   Most of this activity involves the idea of heraldry and speaks into the vision a family has for its future.  These  Coat of Arms have several elements and the detail of each element requires careful thought and design because they all bear to the imprint of the Coat of Arms:

Helmet

Crests

Mantles

Shields

Mottos

Supporters

And they can be even more intricate.  But color selections and design choices all have significance.  The finished product can be put together with several online programs and the Coat of Arms can then be made into just about anything that can be prominently displayed on your person, home, vehicle, etc.  The history of this heraldry was something that the father passed down to his first-born son.  So, it also has significance for our purposes too.

You Raise Them Up To Let Them Go

When my youngest son turned 18, he went through the ‘Manhood Ceremony” with our men’s group.  It was the final ceremony in our guided journey of bringing boys into biblical manhood.  And it was quite a spectacle.  One of the requirements was for the father to present the boy with something of value.  It didn’t need to be ‘expensive’ necessarily, but it DID need to be thoughtful.  I framed a picture of him standing on one of our favorite overlooks in Algonquin Park in Canada;  a spot we’ve been to many times.  He’s looking out of the valley and onto the horizon.  At the top of the picture I had printed the phrase, “We’re going on an adventure….” A line that captures the beginning of an amazing, incredible, journey taken by Bilbo Baggins in “The Hobbit” by J.R.R.Tolkien.  That’s it.  That’s the heart of it.  You raise them up to let them go.  Just make sure they’re going somewhere EXCITING.