During our holiday in the snow this year, I saw all the cute little kids moving around on their skis and I realized we had come a long way. Our children are now 10 and 8, and both love to ski, but this hasn’t been the case right from the beginning 😊.
We were those parents too, that carried around all the equipment and the small child at the same time. We have been to locations where the meeting point was quite far from our apartment and waking up the kids, preparing them, getting all their stuff together and motivating them to go out in the cold wasn’t always a piece of cake.
We have had them in classes where everyone spoke another language than theirs. We have had our little one finally explaining us after 2 days of skiing that his shoes were actually too small. We have had our five-year-old skiing down the slope by himself, leaving his ski class behind to search for his parents (luckily the teacher caught up with him!) and we have had our little one ‘forgotten’ by the teacher in a restaurant until another restaurant client decided to call his parents… And no, the sun doesn’t always shine… Group ski class is every day, also when it snows and also when temperatures drop to minus 10. And those photos will not end up on Facebook and Instagram… Everyone only posts the photos of the sunny days.
I remember that plenty of times when I had left them at their little beginner ski class, and I finally got back to get my own skis, ready to hit the first slope of the day, the teacher called me to say my child was crying and I had to take all the equipment off again, to go and collect him.
But, keep your hopes up 😊 They eventually grow out of all of that and become more independent. They will prepare themselves in the morning, and not necessarily wave at you when they pass you on the slopes.
This year, I was watching those cute little 3-year olds following their teacher in a queue, while I was waiting for my eldest son to get back from his off-track class with the ski school. He was skiing off-track for 2 hours and they ended up getting back by bus. Awesome! He said 😊.
When we go skiing now, they all have to wait for me. I’m the worst skier in my family, but I know why… I was so busy getting them on skis that I kind of didn’t have the time to learn it properly myself… I can ski, but they have definitely out-skied me by now…
Chronological order of my son’s ‘skiing career’ 😊:
