Take your kids camping and explore the great outdoors, physicist advises

• 16th Sep 2014

Too many children these days are "wrapped in cotton wool" and spend too much time stuck behind screens indoors, according to a film-making physicist.

Clive Neeson, 59, has made a new film entitled 'Last Paradise' which encourages parents to get their kids out into nature. Neeson, a physician from New Zealand, was one of a group of children who helped pioneer extreme sports such as big-wave surfing in his home country throughout the 1960s.

Having spent his childhood out in the open, Mr Neeson now believes that children choosing to stay inside rather explore outdoors is "the biggest thing to threaten our civilisation."

"The outdoors is the perfect environment," he told dailymail.co.uk. "If they wait to do it when they are adults using cars and other potential lethal devices then the consequences can be disastrous. We are failing a whole generation of children by wrapping them in cotton wool and not letting them get out there, get muddy... it's part of their basic education."

Sharon Bessell, a researcher at the Australian Research Council, has echoed Mr Neeson's views, stating that "sheltering" children can make them anxious in later life, canberratimes.com.au notes.

So what is Mr Neeson's biggest piece of advice to parents? "Take the kids camping," he urged, "and make sure it's the happiest time they've ever had in the great outdoors."