Our youngest daughter was a quiet baby until she gained mobility. Crawling opened up her world. It wasn’t long before neither trees or walls were an obstacle. Energy oozed from this child.
So it made sense to me, when she was 4, to enroll her in ski school for the day while the rest of the family hit the slopes.
Ski school for pre-schoolers included lunch, games, and a lesson on the beginner slope. I knew she’d love the action.
When I picked her up at the end of the day, I discovered that she hadn’t gotten a lesson.
After lunch, the staff helped the kids get ready for the teaching session but our daughter announced that she’d rather not go out. So they let her stay inside with the movies and cookies.
We spent $150 on this experience.
On day two, I decided to take her to the beginner’s slope myself. As I zipped her snowsuit and buckled her boots, she calmly told me that she’d rather not go out. She had to words down exactly.
While visions of Bambi and Cinderella probably danced in her head, they didn’t in mine.
“You’re going,” I said. “You’ll like this.”
With a sigh, having lost the chance at chocolate chip cookies too, she tromped beside me to the slope.
The slope was nearly flat. I also had a gadget that wrapped around her middle while I skied behind her. I could keep her from zooming away and even from falling.
So away we went.
Within an hour, she could stop on command. Within two hours, she was begging me to take off the gadget because I was slowing her.
When the lifts began to close, she crossed her arms. “I don’t want to go in yet.”
“Really?”
“Yeah! This is fun!”
I knew the ski school staff couldn’t push my daughter out in the cold. But I could.
