SNOW SUNDAY: FORCING YOUR KIDS TO SKI

30 Mar SNOW SUNDAY: FORCING YOUR KIDS TO SKI

Parenting is a pretty selfless endeavor. Most of the time. But there are days, when it’s sunny and warm, and I just need to get out and put my skis on, that I actually force my kids to ski. They are only four and two years old, so by ski, I mean “ski.” They put on their gear and we take a couple of slow cruisers, the youngest between my legs, the oldest in a snowplow next to us.

This is not always a fun day. Sometimes one of them will have a classic, screaming tantrum, the kind that makes other parents think, “Thank god that’s not my kid,” and that makes people without kids grateful they never had any. They lie down on the slope, screech, maybe even take their skis off in the middle of the run. I can see the ski instructors’ eyes narrow as they pass by, appalled. I bet that mom is forcing her kids to ski.

Yup, busted. And while it does feel a little bit like being the obnoxious stage mom who pushes her toddler into beauty pageants, or the overzealous dad who picks a fight with the referee at his child’s baseball game, I am still glad that I do it. It’s not just about the skiing, it’s about being outside, getting some exercise, learning something new—and most of all about being together. Without an iPad or a cell phone or a DVD in front of us.

I don’t know what Dr. Spock ever wrote about force-feeding your children so I have no idea what he would say about forcing them to ski. But the scariest part about it isn’t that I might be inflicting them with some deep resentment for mountain sports—it is exactly the opposite: What if they love skiing too much?

Take these Telluride kids, for example. They were forced to ski as toddlers. Look at them now:

Keaton McCargo, World Cup Freestyle skier/Telluride kid

Greg Hope, Wagner skier/backcountry skier/Telluride kid

Gus Kenworthy, World Champion Freeskier in halfpipe/Telluride kid

If your reaction to these photos was “Awesome!” then you are clearly not their parents. No matter how proud you are of your children, no parent wants to see their kid upside down, suspended in the air above snow or rocks. Keaton’s mom says she tried to ski with her on a leash as a child, to keep her safe. It only made her want to go faster, and now she is on the World Cup Freestyle Team, traveling the globe and competing against the most elite bump skiers in the world—she just took gold at a junior World Cup event this week. Greg’s mom says she tried to instill a love of the outdoors and winter in her boys, “building igloos, skiing, sledding, exploring deep into the woods.” Now Greg is sponsored by Wagner skis, going on photo and video shoots in the backcountry, hucking backflips off of cliffs with an avalanche beacon strapped to his chest. And the parents of Gus confessed to Telluride Magazine that they took him skiing before he was even walking, in a backpack, and that even then he loved it. Today Gus is the highest-ranking half-pipe skier in the world: he’s not just on the U.S. team headed to the next Olympic games, he’s ranked first.

So even though I may not be comfortable with the idea of my kids being upside down above a half-pipe, a cliff, or a mogul run, I do hope that they develop the confidence, passion and skills that these Telluride kids have.

And if that means dragging them along skiing, then that’s what I’m going to do.