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Teaching children how to ski - a large dose of patience needed

For a parent, teaching children how to ski is rewarding and frustrating in equal measure. Rewarding because of the pride you feel when they manage their first few turns. And frustrating because there will be times when you’ll wonder if they’re ever going to be able to get up by themselves when they fall over.And they will - many times - during family ski holidays.

Young children learn how to ski by copying. When they’re small, they’ll understand making a slice of pizza shape with their skis to form a snowplough. It is quite a sight to be trundling along with your child whilst calling out, “Pizza!, More pizza!” to the bemused glances of other skiers.

Get a good start with some lessons
Each of our children started with both proper lessons from a qualified instructor that we reinforced by taking them out on the nursery slopes with us.

Until your child is able to stop and turn, and if you’re a competent skier yourself, you’ll most likely be skiing very closely with them. We’ve tried four approaches over the years with varying success:

Tandem snowplough
This can be absolutely exhausting for your legs because your weight is completely in the wrong place. Junior grasps onto your horizontal poles that you hold at arms length as you can see in the photo above. It is easy to demonstrate what they’re supposed to do by completely over-emphasising the movements. Your child then feels what’s going on. Our youngest would happily chant, “Down on the right…down on the left” with each turn.

A harness
A great idea in principle. You strap junior into a harness and grasp the reins firmly. Parent and child smoothly descend the mountain. That’s the idea, but until junior comprehends what stop and turn really means, he’ll be pointing straight down the slope whilst you heave on the reins. To be truthful, we ditched the reins and used the harness just to heave our children to where they’re supposed to be.

Tandem at your side holding onto your horizontal ski poles or a longer pole
Good for nice gentle, almost flat slopes. But on anything steeper you’ll find that turning with him on the inside of your turn is fine. With him on the outside, turning suddenly takes on a whole new dimension as he’s flung round, gripping onto the poles. Brace yourself for the inevitable crash.

Ski instructors often use a longer pole on gentle slopes as in the photo below.

You skiing backwards in front of your child
This always caused great fits of giggles with our children. On a gentle slope it isn’t difficult to do – especially if you have twin-tip skis. You’re able to see exactly what your child is (or isn’t) doing and he’ll do the right thing because he’s following you.

The gadget that makes learning how to ski so much easier
Without doubt, a ski clip made it much easier for our then three-year-old to learn how to ski. There are several types on the market but they all do the same thing. They attach to the tip of each ski so really aid making a pizza shape. No more crossed skis or tangled legs when your child falls over. This gadget saved the day many times on our ski vacations.

Shouldn't I just leave teaching to an instructor?
This might all sound like a lot of hard work – and it is – but the learning how to ski phase doesn’t last long and is far more effective when you take your children out to practice what they've learned in class. Even as three-year-olds, our children could handle very gentle slopes after a few days. Yes, there were a few times when we had to speed in front of them to catch them when they forgot how to stop. Did anyone call, “Pizza!”?

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