In reply to Dominicandave:
I wonder what you'd think watching my 8 yr old wander up the bottom of a crag where a group are busy climbing, picking which routes she fancies trying once the leaders are done, or being taught how to place a nut, or proudly seconding and carefully retrieving gear. She gains from god only knows how many decades of accumulated experience, from instructors who teach her for the pleasure of it, 60+ ex mountain rescue MIA's, 74yr old real mountain men, inspiring women breaking new ground before they retire, 17yr old's doing their first leads and me, her Mum, still being coaxed onto rock because it's where she's going and I'm her Mum.
I don't know if that sounds like it would tick your outside box? What I do know is that I wouldn't be writing it if it wasn't for the wall, for the indoor meeting place where people get to see you can belay and that the kid is a climber not hoisted up. My daughter doesn't have a shed load of outdoor climbing friends her own age - there just aren't that many but she keeps adopting new big brothers and sisters who love her, are passionate about climbing and aren't her Mum. I'm meant to be something but not everything, I'm there for wood ant bites and scary inverted falls! I think if I was everything in anything my daughter did it would be shortlived because even at 8 her journey to independence is well underway and she is very much her own person.
Walls are a meeting place for shed loads of climbers, in my daughter's climbing life they've become the community raising a little climber and our ticket outside.