I had put the school on to trainer Lee Campbell through our association during the Heart Foundation Canberra Celebrity Healthy Heart Challenge (and I'm quite sure Lee was far more impressed by my efforts on this afternoon than my efforts in the whole 12-week heart challenge). It wasn't my idea to do a survival-type course, that idea blossomed way back in the email chain but, upon noting it, I was determined to do everything I could to make sure it happened. (And actually, other mothers worked much harder than me to make sure it happened.)

I was a little selfish in supporting such an activity. Too much time is wasted sitting around at end-of-year picnics, watching the boys go off with their usual set of friends, doing what they usually do. Some boys go off with a soccer ball, others loll about on the grass, they get into their little groups and generally it's two hours of your life you never get back. (Note: sometimes it is perfectly OK to loll about and do nothing.) Sure it's nice to catch up with other parents but really, it should be about the boys.

And by supporting the idea that we do something that might test them a little, I hoped that they might get something more out of it than muddy clothes and a few scratches and scrapes.

Yes I am a little pathetic when it comes to things like this, reading so much more into it than what anyone is probably actually getting out of it. I romanticise things, if that's the right word, looking for the nobility in a game of rugby, the exhilaration from a hockey win. Watching kids having to use their bodies for a cause has always done that to me.

Remember when your kids were learning how to walk? Of course you do. It seems like only yesterday doesn't it and now they are almost in high school. Remember that look on their face when they took their first steps, realising that they could use their bodies, control their bodies, and they were proud and scared and free all in the same moment.

This whole afternoon was like that. Boys of all shapes and sizes, sporty boys, the smart boys, the ones in-between, the ones who are neither, all threw themselves through muddy tunnels and over walls and along ropes without once saying I can't do this.

The afternoon was held to celebrate the end of their primary school years, to send them off into high school, towards adulthood, towards real life, and part of me hoped that they'd take that same attitude with them through this journey.

Life will throw obstacles in their way, that I can guarantee each and every one of them, there'll be walls that look as though they'll reach the sky, there'll be days where you'll feel as though you're dangling from ropes over a precipice and the landing looks rocky and hard. There'll be days where you'll think to yourself, I cannot do this.

But I hope they all remember this afternoon. How, with the help of their friends, with the encouragement of a parent, with the firm instruction and not so gentle shove from someone who knows what they're talking about – in this case Campbell – that they are capable of so much more than they think they are.

Don't get me wrong. I am not one for mollycoddling kids, for telling them that they can do anything they want to do, they can be anything they want to be, that they can have it all. You can't, if we're really honest with them they need to know that life doesn't turn out that way.

Life, like this obstacle course, is hard sometimes, damn hard, and you'll be cut up, bruised, and gasping for breath at points all through life, but, if you believe in yourself, just a little even, you'll be OK. You will get over that wall.

Campbell rang me later that night to see what the general consensus was among the boys and the parents. My own son said it was one of the best days in year 6. I felt the same way. Campbell got talking about how important it for kids, for everyone actually, to approach things with a purpose. Whether it be a wall, or life, a job, a relationship. If you don't have a purpose you'll spend a life lolling about and then it will be over before you know it.

Approach things with a purpose. If there's one thing for all of us to take from this afternoon it's that. That and mud doesn't wash out all that well.