Raising Wolves in a Time of Sheep

There’s a movie I watched once… Captain Fantastic, with Viggo Mortensen, that planted a seed deep inside me. If you’ve seen it, you’ll know why. A father raising his children in the wild, teaching them self-sufficiency, philosophy, strength, and critical thinking while deliberately rejecting the modern world’s soft comforts and numbing distractions.

I remember watching that film and thinking That’s what I want for my boys.
Freedom. Capability. A mind that questions instead of conforms.
But the more I lean into that philosophy, the more I feel the weight of a question that lingers in the back of my mind.... Am I doing the right thing?

We’re not raising them in the bush like Viggo’s character. But in our own way, we are stepping off the map. Homeschooling instead of relying on a system we no longer trust. Prioritising conversation over curriculum. Teaching them to think, not just to obey. Letting them get dirty, solve problems, get hurt, and find their way back from it… because resilience isn’t taught in a classroom. It’s earned on the edges of comfort.

But that edge is where the doubt creeps in.

Nietzsche once said that schools kill individuality. He wasn’t wrong. The modern education system was built for an industrial age… to produce reliable workers, not curious thinkers. Compliance was the goal. Still is. And yet, here we are, pulling our boys out of that system, but still waking in the night asking ourselves: Will they hate us for it later? Will they resent us for not giving them the ‘normal’ life of their peers?

Because there’s safety in normal. Friends who think the same. Schools that teach the same. Society smiles on the familiar, even if it’s shallow.
We fear alienating them. Raising them to see the world so clearly that they no longer fit inside it.

But maybe that’s the point.

The world is changing. Faster than most people realise. AI, automation, and algorithms are reshaping industries and lives. Attention spans are shrinking. Digital distractions are killing creativity before it even forms. Social media is teaching kids to value themselves through hearts and follows before they understand who they really are.

In that world, fitting in feels like failure to us.

So we teach them differently. Not perfectly. But differently.

We teach them that discomfort is where growth lives.
That respect matters more than popularity.
That their worth isn’t up for negotiation by strangers online.
That strength isn’t dominance, it’s the ability to carry a load when no one’s watching.
That curiosity is sacred.
That the biggest lessons are taught through failure.

We think about our sons a lot. Not just who they are now, but who they’ll need to be when we’re not here to guide them. In a world that rewards compliance disguised as success, We often wonder whether raising them to think differently, to stand quietly apart, is setting them up for resilience… or loneliness.

Sometimes I picture them like stones in a river…part of the current, but not swept away by it. Visible, steady, but not trying to dam the water or change its course. Just holding their place, quietly shaping the flow around them.

That image brings me back to something my grandfather once told me. Simple words, but they’ve guided much of how I see the world, and now, how I raise my sons:

“Take the path least travelled, son. It leads to the best views that no one else gets.”

Obviously he didn’t mean just physical trails. He meant life. He meant thinking differently, choosing integrity over convenience, and accepting the loneliness that sometimes comes with independence, not as punishment, but as proof you’re on the right track.

That’s what I’m trying to pass on to my boys.

Not to teach them they’re better than others. But to show them it’s okay to walk within society without losing themselves to it. To be curious, not compliant. To think, not just follow. To feel the pull of the herd but know they can choose to walk slightly to the side.

And some days, I wonder…will that make them stronger? Or lonelier?
Maybe both.
Maybe that’s the cost of being the kind of men we hope they’ll become.

Some days, it feels like we’re raising wolves in a world of sheep. And some days, we worry we’re raising outsiders who’ll be lonely in a world that doesn’t understand them.

But then I see moments that steady me.

I see my 10 year old rise early with me, full of deep questions and reflections that most grown men never ask.
I see my 6 year old beam with pride as I praise his skills when he makes a bow out of a stave of wood, not because it can actually fire an arrow far, but because we’re there, doing it together.
I see my 8 year old, full of laughter and life, unshaped by the toxic comparisons most kids his age are already battling. His quiet moments are spent reading and creating.

That comfort and creativity are born from boredom.

These moments tell us we’re doing something right. Not everything. But something.

Parenting this way isn’t about rejecting society… it’s about preparing them for it. Teaching them to navigate a world that will try to define them before they know themselves. Giving them the tools to push back.

I think back to Captain Fantastic often. To the cost of that lifestyle. The isolation. The misunderstandings. The constant questioning.
But I also remember the strength those kids portrayed carried. The clarity.

That’s what we want for our sons.

We don’t want them to be better than others. We want them to be better than who they were yesterday. To see the world, not from behind a screen, but with their own eyes. To question. To think. To love deeply. And to be capable, resilient men who aren’t afraid to stand alone when they have to.

Maybe we are raising wolves.

But maybe, in the world that’s coming, that’s exactly what they’ll need to be.

And when they’re grown, if they ever ask us why we did it this way, we hope we have the courage to tell them -
Because we wanted you to be free, And freedom doesn’t always feel comfortable.

And that's living true.