Give children the opportunity to go out and play

Ex-army commando Neil Sinclair’s books on parenting hark back to a simpler time of climbing trees, skimming stones, and building forts, writes Áilín Quinlan.

WHEN ex-army commando and best-selling parenting author Neil Sinclair talks to young fathers about the joys of stone-skimming he’s often met with bewilderment.

“They say ‘what’s that’? It’s not that they can’t do it — it’s that they don’t know what it is,” says Sinclair, who has warm memories of his own dad teaching him how to skim stones.