outdoor challenge

I’ve come to believe that what teenagers need most right now isn’t the pursuit of happiness – it’s quests involving hardship.

This isn’t a call to make teenagers miserable, or to romanticise suffering.  It’s an observation about development: that becoming capable often requires experiences that don’t feel good while they’re happening.

The outdoor world has a useful name for this pattern: it’s called “Type 2 Fun.”

Type 1 Fun: enjoyable while you’re doing it, enjoyable in retrospect. Thorpe Park, a game of Werewolf, Oreo Biscoff banoffee thickshake.

Type 2 Fun: very tough while you’re doing it, deeply satisfying in retrospect. Summit pushes, ice plunges, studying for a driving theory test.  Breaking up with a psycho girlfriend?

Type 3 Fun: not fun during, not fun after – best avoided.  Likely to contain injury, genuine danger, trauma. For me, opera also falls into this category.

Most teenagers can live almost entirely in Type 1 territory. And that’s a problem – not because pleasure is bad, but because it can become the only reference point they have for what “good” means.

One of the most meaningful challenges that teenagers are faced with is dealing with the lack of meaningful challenge.

Why modern teenage life skews so heavily toward Type 1

Being lost used to be a thing, and quite a useful educational tool.

A generation ago, being lost meant sitting with not-knowing. Looking at a map or the Streetmap screenshot you’d printed, figuring it out, maybe asking someone. There was a gap between ‘I don’t know where I am’ and ‘I know where I am.’ You had to sit in the discomfort of being lost while you worked it out.

Now there’s Google Maps, and no more gaps. The discomfort is relieved in seconds, we have lost the feeling of being lost.

That pattern is everywhere – instant gratification provided by apps, for food (Just Eat), entertainment (Netflix), and Everything Else (Amazon Prime).

Type 2 Fun requires living in the gap. And if you’ve grown up never experiencing it, you don’t know it exists. (I’ve written about how boredom – that uncomfortable gap where nothing’s happening – has been almost completely removed from teenage life).

Why Type 2 Fun matters for development

Type 2 Fun isn’t just “character building” in some vague moral sense. It teaches four important lessons that Type 1 Fun cannot.

This delayed gratification, effort now, reward later, is the first one. When there is a gap between satisfaction and payback, the satisfaction is often much deeper and more lasting.

Accurate self-assessment is the way I’d describe the second bit of wisdom.  First-hand experience.  They discover what they’re actually capable of under real conditions, not what adults tell them they’re capable of in comfortable settings.  This can build the sort of confidence that is not inflated or brittle.

The third one is the difference between discomfort and danger.  Most teenagers conflate the two. Type 2 Fun teaches that feeling bad doesn’t mean they’re in trouble – it often just means they’re doing something difficult.  In a world where they have been exposed to constant updates of global crises and conflicts, it has become very important for teenagers to have a realistic perception of danger in their immediate lives, and not “crash out” at the slightest blip (as my son would say).

The final main gift of Type 2 Fun is real confidence.  Enough of that “you’re amazing!” and “you got this” kind of confidence handed out for participation.  Earned confidence is what’s needed: I didn’t think I could do that, but I did.

Adolescence requires genuine challenges where the outcome isn’t guaranteed – the ones that carry enough risk to actually feel dangerous to them. Without these, young people remain psychologically dependent even as they mature physically. They stay stuck in childhood’s safety rather than stepping into adolescence’s necessary risk.

Type 2 Fun provides this.  Real difficulty where discomfort teaches what comfort never could, rather than staged or exaggerated victories.

This kind of experience matters at any age – but there’s a particular window in early adolescence when it lands with unusual force.  I’ve written separately about why timing matters so much between ages 8–15.

What Type 2 Fun actually looks like

Once a year, at the end of October when the night stretches fourteen hours, I run what I call a “fire quest.” At the end of a series of expeditions through the year, teenagers voluntarily tend a fire from dusk until dawn – no food, no phones, no sleeping. Just the fire, the dark, and hopefully a glimpse of the moon to give an idea of the passage of time.

At dusk, I hand each participant an ember from a central fire. They carry it through the Wolf Pack portal – a three-metre archway carved with a wolf’s head, lit by tiki torches – and out to their spot in the woods. If they’ve prepared well (tinder ready, kindling laid, logs stacked), the ember becomes a fire and they settle in for the night.

If they haven’t prepared well, the ember dies. And they have to come back for another one.

One lad spent five hours failing. Lost in the dark, not enough kindling, fire dying repeatedly. Tears, frustration, resignation… but he kept coming back. At midnight, with a bit of guidance and some birch twigs, his fire finally caught. He tended it until dawn.

Five years later, he told me it was one of the kicks in the backside he needed to learn to “lock in” rather than airily waft through life.

That’s Type 2 Fun. Miserable during. Profoundly rewarding after. I’ve written the full Fire Quest story, including why it’s structured the way it is for maximum Type 2 impact, here →.

Why parents struggle with this

The cultural pressure on parents is relentless.  “Failures” in parenting are not looked on well, and the common sense is “We just want our kids to be happy.”

I understand the instinct. Watching your child struggle is uncomfortable. The protective instinct is strong, and legitimate. No parent wants to cause their child unnecessary pain.

But there’s a paradox: happiness and wellbeing aren’t the same thing.

For fathers especially, this often means learning when not to intervene — and trusting that difficulty can be doing useful work.

The more directly you pursue happiness, the more it eludes you. Happiness isn’t a target you can aim at. It emerges as a byproduct of engagement with something difficult and meaningful – not from optimizing for feeling good.

Teenagers who are protected from all discomfort don’t become happy. They become fragile. They learn that discomfort means something has gone wrong, that struggle indicates failure, and that they need rescue.

Wellbeing – the capacity to handle what life throws at you – requires encountering difficulty while you’re still developing.  Risk is an important factor.  This does not mean danger (they are often mixed up), and certainly not trauma.  Just genuine challenge where the outcome matters.

Parents or teachers who instinctively reach to smooth every rough edge aren’t creating happiness, even though their instincts and the cultural messaging encourages them to.  They’re removing the conditions where real satisfaction develops.

The trust required

Type 2 Fun demands trust from both sides.

From teenagers, it’s trust that the adult leading this is competent and knows it will be worth it, that they won’t be rescued at the first sign of discomfort, and that the challenge is hard but survivable.

From parents, it’s the trust that struggle isn’t the same as harm, that their child is more capable than they (or the parent) currently believe, and that discomfort today builds capacity for tomorrow.

This is what much of my outdoor events are designed around: conditions for Type 2 Fun – then stepping back and letting it do its work.  (But it must be said, on Feral Fathers weekends, there is rather a lot of Type 1 fun too).

Not all fun is created equal

Type 1 Fun has its place. Thickshakes are lovely. Thorpe Park is brilliant. Easy days and relaxed, fun moments matter a lot.

But if that’s all teenagers ever experience, they never discover what they’re capable of when things get hard.

Type 2 Fun is this pattern compressed into a weekend or a week.  The teenager leaves home, enters an environment where comfort isn’t guaranteed, faces genuine difficulty, and returns different.  The growth did not come from being taught something, but because they lived through something hard.

This is why time outdoors matters so much: it creates conditions where difficulty is real, bounded, and meaningful – without needing to be manufactured.

That’s the kind of experience I value most for teenagers, and why I wholeheartedly say to parents that I wish hardship for their children, not happiness.

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About Feral Fathers

Feral Fathers weekends are built around outdoor challenge – not pure Type 2, but Type 1 with teeth. Climbing trees, building fires and dens, sleeping out, open to the weather, being in a tribe. Fun during, fun after – but harder-edged than indoor life.

My expeditions are more Type 2 territory. Challenging in their nature, dealing with the physical and emotional demands and the unpredictable environment… and deeply satisfying after.  Once you get going, you’re committed.

Woodland weekends in Sussex (ages 8+). Multi-day expeditions in the hills (ages 12+).  Expeditions for teenage groups.

Learn more about woodland weekends → 
Learn more about expeditions →

Email: cpacke@yahoo.co.uk | WhatsApp: 07940 272474