I did not set out to create a father-child retreat. I was simply looking for an extraordinary summer camp experience for my daughters.
There were plenty of camps available, many of them excellent. But nearly all followed the same model: parents dropped off their children and returned when the experience was over. Camps and childcare give children independence, friendship, and adventure, while providing families with support they often genuinely need. Still, I found myself wondering whether we were overlooking another opportunity.
Summer passes remarkably quickly. Our children's summers pass even faster. While we were working so hard to find meaningful experiences for our children, was there a way for fathers to experience some of that adventure alongside them?
The more I searched, the more I realized that I was looking for something broader than a family vacation or a traditional camp. I imagined a place where fathers and children could share extraordinary experiences, while fathers could also speak honestly with one another about raising children - the doubts, mistakes, responsibilities, and opportunities that rarely become part of ordinary conversation.
I wanted fathers to receive guidance from someone who understands child development and father-child relationships, but also to learn from one another. I wanted them to discuss the real issues that accompany fatherhood: how to be present, when to push and when to listen, how to help children take thoughtful risks, how to repair a relationship when something goes wrong, and how to pass our values to the next generation.
I called friends who work in higher education, including a specialist at Trinity College Dublin whose work focuses on father-child relationships, and described the idea. I also spoke with people in the travel industry who regularly organize distinctive family trips and experiences. They all gave me essentially the same response: they had not encountered anything quite like it. That did not prove the concept would work, but it confirmed that the absence I had noticed was real enough to explore - and that there was an opportunity to create something genuinely memorable.
The research suggests I was not alone in feeling that absence. In a Pew Research Center survey, 63 percent of fathers said they spent too little time with their children, most often because of work obligations. In a separate Pew study, only 8 percent of fathers said they often turned to friends for parenting advice, while 31 percent said they never did. More recently, the U.S. Surgeon General identified parental isolation and loneliness among the significant pressures facing parents and called for greater investment in the social infrastructure that brings parents together.
We expect fathers today to be present, thoughtful, and emotionally available. Yet I found remarkably few places where fathers could practice that kind of parenting alongside their children while learning honestly from other dads.
That realization became The Ard.
The Ard takes its name from the Irish word for high ground - not a place from which to rise above others, but a place from which to gain perspective.
We created that place on a 163-acre estate in West Cork, Ireland, surrounded by forests, trails, open wilderness, and a 40-acre lake. Liss Ard Estate naturally slows people down. It felt removed enough from ordinary life to allow fathers and children to see one another - and perhaps themselves - differently.
The Ard was not designed as a conventional camp, nor was it simply a luxury family vacation. Fathers did not drop off their children, and the adults did not retreat to the sidelines. We attended together, put our devices away, and participated fully in the experience.
Our days moved between creativity, play, and adventure. We took piano lessons, designed family shields, foraged for lunch, and played together on the estate's lake. We ventured out for a water park and an afternoon of horse racing in an unmistakably Irish setting, gathered around a campfire for s'mores and stories of Irish myths and legends, swam together at midnight in a bioluminescent bay, and spent another late night stargazing from inside James Turrell's Irish Sky Garden.
The experiences were memorable, but they were never the ultimate point. Each one gave fathers and children something to discover together - a moment when a child might need encouragement, a father might need patience, and both might see the other differently.
Just as important was what happened between the adventures. Time was intentionally left open for wandering, boredom, spontaneous games, and conversations that could not have been scheduled. The Ard was designed around structure without overscheduling: enough intention to create opportunities, but enough freedom to let unexpected moments do their work.
While the children had periods of free play and exploration, the fathers gathered for guided conversations with a specialist in father-child relationships and child development - and with one another. We spoke about risk and courage, identity and values, repairing relationships when something goes wrong, and what it means to leave a legacy - not simply something for our children, but something within them.
These were not lectures about how to become perfect fathers. They were candid conversations among men who understood that fatherhood involves uncertainty, missteps, and constant adjustment. Fathers who might ordinarily discuss work, sports, travel, or business were given a trusted setting in which to talk about the responsibility that mattered more than any of them.
The goal was not to provide every answer. It was to help us begin asking better questions - and to give us a community of other fathers we could continue turning to after the experience ended.
The philosophy behind The Ard was simple: presence matters more than polish. Children do not need fathers who perform perfection. They need fathers who participate, who listen more than they speak, and who are willing to move at the pace of their children's attention.
Presence matters more than polish.
The Ard did not promise transformation. It created the conditions for connection: devices set aside, schedules loosened, fathers and children sharing meaningful challenges, and dads speaking honestly with other dads. What grew from those conditions belonged to each family to carry home.
The experience ended with fathers and children planting a tree together on the grounds of Liss Ard.
It was a simple act, but a fitting one. Relationships, like trees, grow slowly. They are strengthened through attention, patience, and time - often in ways we cannot immediately see.
Long after the families returned home, the tree would remain. The children could someday come back to Liss Ard, see how much it had grown, and remember the experience they shared with their fathers.
We were not simply planting a reminder of a week in Ireland. We were planting something for the future.