Editor’s note: This is the second in a three-part series we’re calling Loving Them to the Outdoors and Beyond, in which we explore the power of the outdoors to help us connect with—and care for—each other.

This school year, I sent my baby—I mean my rapidly growing young adult—to high school.

It was bittersweet.

It also prompted a conversation I always thought I was ready for:

Is it time for a cell phone?

Strangely, he didn’t really want one.

“Mom,” he told me, “the kids who have phones seem to have way more drama than I want in my life.” (Meanwhile, my nine-year-old has been angling for a phone for the last two years.)

Since we had an old iPhone lying around the house, we decided to reactivate it as a calling-and-texting-only phone. The goal was basically to make it so boring that he would forget it existed.

Which is pretty much what happened.

But then he asked me a question I definitely wasn’t prepared for.

“Mom, have you ever thought about putting limits on your screen time?”

Yikes.

Do I have limits?

Am I modeling the habits I hope my children adopt?

Through the ODC’s Unplugged: Disconnect to Reconnect initiative speaker series, we learned this simple idea: it isn’t only about reducing screens. It is about what we replace that time with.

And that responsibility belongs to us.

Our kids are watching how we live.

As my grandma used to say, some lessons are caught, not taught.

Do they see us put our phones away?

Do they see us notice their cartwheels?

Do we stop when we hear a song we recognize and proceed to tell them some long story about life in the 1900s?

Do they see that we know how to be bored?

Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, has written about the power of adults showing genuine enthusiasm for nature. That idea has challenged me to move beyond being the screen police.

Instead of simply managing my children’s behavior, I’m trying to model the kind of life I hope they embrace.

And, inconveniently, that means working on my own habits too.

I want the real world to be hard to resist.

The good news is that this doesn’t require elaborate wilderness adventures.

It can mean planting flowers, riding bikes after dinner, playing basketball in the driveway, walking the dog, sitting along Lake Michigan, eating outside, or simply paying attention to what is happening right in front of us.

The goal isn’t perfection.

It’s presence.

As a working parent, I know that kind of intentionality is hard. But I’m becoming convinced it is part of my job description.

I used to tell my kids, “I love you to the moon and back.”

These days, I find myself thinking a little differently.

I want to love them toward curiosity.

Toward connection.

Toward adventure.

Toward a life that feels bigger than whatever is happening on a screen.

I want to love them to the outdoors and beyond.

In the final article in this series, Travis Williams, CEO of the ODC Network, explores what screen culture is truly costing our families—and how simple, everyday outdoor moments can help us reconnect.