Pushing your kids.

My daughter is 10 and i am wondering how hard to push her before we go away again next year.

She took three days worth of lessons in Andorra but fell behind in her group and became a little upset so she quit the class. To be fair to her the instructor pretty much abandoned her and we found her crying, alone at the bottom of a lift after the class had departed.
She is ten but not particularly 'street wise' and does miss her parents when we are not around, it was a bad experience for her.

Anyway, since we returned she has had three hour lessons at Tamworth and can now ski.

I would like to see her confident at speed and be able to Ski parallel before we go to the Alps in January.

So my question is this:

Do i just take her for fun times and let her progress at her own pace? I pretty much started to go parallel without instruction as it felt natural.....should this develop for her too?

Or do i pay for more (expensive) lessons at the snowdome?

Do you think there is a limit to what can be learned on a short track indoors?


Here is a short video of her in action, which incidentally was shot, edited and posted on the new iPhone4 !!!! An awesome tool.

I think you need to find an instructor that teaches a "modified direct to parallel" beginner progression? I don't think you want to do any classes that will teach her to turn using the snowplow, as that will just reinforce that position. At the moment she is happy to control speed by snowploughing, but she needs learn the idea that turns control speed.

Thanks Trencher, that was pretty much what i was thinking. However i am wondering if it will be worth trying to achieve this here in the UK.
Do you think its possible to learn well on a slope >200m?
The frustrating part is having to spend half your lesson on the lifts back up.

I would love to get her up to a level similar to me so we could take private lessons abroad as a family and not have her split from us again.

Snapzzz,
I think your daughter is very brave, ski-ing again at all, after a frightening experience like that. An adult friend of mine was abandoned by her instructor on a blue slope half-way up a mountain and became so frightened that she won't ski at all any more now.

How did your daughter's instructor 'pretty much' abandon her? Did he ring you for you to come and collect her or what?

My daughter was only 9 when she had an awful ski instructor in Bulgaria, and half the class of young kids was in tears and frightened to death at one point. And a couple of them dropped out of the class. I think if I hadn't been there with them for most of the time (I could't ski myself because I'd broken my shoulder on the dry ski slope) my daughter may well never have skied again.

I guess it depends on your daughter's temperament, and naturally I don't know her. But I think myself the most important thing is for her to get her confidence back and start to really enjoy ski-ing. In the video I think she's doing a great job, ski-ing very carefully and under control. But she still looks a bit anxious.

If you can afford it and she's willing I'd continue with the snow dome lessons for a bit. And I'd aim for getting her to relax, feel confident, and enjoy herself. Once she's reached that point I'm pretty sure she'll progress really fast whatever method she's taught with.

After that awful instructor in Borovets my daughter had a really nice one in Zell am See and it was great to see her happily bombing about in her class on the mountain - a whole line of kids doing snow-plough turns and snaking down the mountain. She learned to do parallel turns without even realizing it - the teacher very craftily just made the turns gradually tighter until the whole class was doing them parallel.

I think myself that it's good for kids to ski with other kids in their own class. I'm sure my daughter grew up a lot on our ski holidays and increased in self-confidence. And she enjoyed mixing with the different nationalities in the lessons, and sorting out the foreign money herself at lunchtimes.

Anyway, best of luck with helping your daughter, and I think she's a real star going back to ski-ing after a frightening experience like that.

Ally

All kids are different however she will learn very quickly once she gets the hang of it.

In some ways a few private lessons when you are away will teach her far more that she would get in the Snowdome.
Group lessons haven't worked for her- and her confidence may be better boosted by one to one instruction rather than going is a snake with an instructor giving instructions to address the groups' needs rather than her specific needs.

Once she has gained in confidence group lessons may become fun rather than intimidating.

AllyG wrote:
How did your daughter's instructor 'pretty much' abandon her? Did he ring you for you to come and collect her or what?

Well. We were all split up as we are all at different levels. I was off up the mountain with my intermediate group, my wife was with her beginners and Megan was with the kids beginners. Just by pure luck my wife's group happened to pass by a lower lift station and my wife saw Megan stood there all alone crying. Obviously she rushed over to find out what the problem was and she found that Megan was all alone after the group had caught the lift and the instructor failed to notice that she was not put on the lift with them.
You know how much of a scramble it can be to get on those lifts if there are crowds don't you? Especially when there are tons of kids that have no manners!
Poor old Megan had no clue what to do as she hadn't embarked this chairlift before. She didn't know how to get on or what to expect at the other end. Thank god really she didn't just hop on because if the class had then left the top she would have been up the mountain alone.

We had words with instructor but as Megan was so upset we just called a halt to the class for her and let her play in the snow and mess on her skis at her own pace.

AllyG wrote:
I guess it depends on your daughter's temperament, and naturally I don't know her. But I think myself the most important thing is for her to get her confidence back and start to really enjoy ski-ing. In the video I think she's doing a great job, ski-ing very carefully and under control. But she still looks a bit anxious.

yes, she still is a little anxious and i have had words with her mother about this very subject.
I believe that confidence will come from pushing slowly beyond her current limits so that she realises she can progress but her mum drills caution into her and i find that counter productive.

AllyG wrote:
If you can afford it and she's willing I'd continue with the snow dome lessons for a bit. And I'd aim for getting her to relax, feel confident, and enjoy herself. Once she's reached that point I'm pretty sure she'll progress really fast whatever method she's taught with.

I think that is what i will do.
My plan now is to let her have a few more sessions finding her own feet and becoming expert at what she has learn't so far and then come october'ish sign her up for some more advanced lessons.
I truly wish that she would join the club but she is very shy.......

Group lessons didn't work well for us. Daughter (9 now) had bad experience last year, similar to your daughter - got left behind when group was taking the gondola.
This year we had private lessons, just the 3 of us. Instructor was brilliant with us. We had a 2-hour session every day. As daughter progressed a little faster than us, the instructor divided the lesson into 1 hour with daughter alone, while we practised by ourselves, and the second hour with us while daughter stayed with friends. On the last day, husband and I were both ill, so instructor took daughter for the whole 2 hours, all over the mountain on different runs, showed her how to use the chairlift, pointed out local wildlife - basically guided her everywhere. Daughter said it was the best ski trip ever! We'll do the same again next year.

Allie

Snapzzz,
What you said about that instructor really makes my blood boil :evil:

Good instructors know how many kids they have in their class, usually put special ski school aprons on them (so they can easily identify them), what their names are, and watch them going up on the lift with the instructor getting on last. As you said, it is very easy to get pushed back in the lift queues and lost in the crowd.

That instructor should be 'shot' (not literally, although I am very very cross with him).

Some instructors don't seem to realize how frightening the mountains can be for us Brits, and especially for our young children. My friend has mild PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) as a result of her experience and just freezes up (no pun intended) with fear on the ski slope now. Her last attempt at ski-ing ended in her having to take off her skis and walk back to the lift, even though she was on a green run.

The good thing about a snow dome for your daughter, in my opinion, is that she will see it as a safe environment, because she knows she is not going to be left on a mountain somewhere, crying. I am a bit worried that she might get all nervous again once she's back on the mountain, unless she's had plenty of practice first. I have another friend who has that problem. She can ski really well in the dome, but goes all panicky and nervous and skis badly once she's back in the Alps.

And although I have been on several ski holidays now, I still get all nervous when it's snowing hard, or foggy, and I can't see where I'm going.

Again, it all depends on her temperament, but she might do better if she's back in a beginners group when she's out on the mountain again. I have noticed that people differ in whether they do better if they're the best in the group, or if they're the worst. I really hate being the worst in any group, and especially in a group ski lesson. I'm okay in any position except bottom. But some people seem to thrive on being bottom, and see it as a challenge to improve and move up the group. I do much better when I know that the group is well within my capability, and I can relax and enjoy myself as I learn.

If you have a private family lesson you will all have to ski at the speed of the worst in your family group - which by the sound of it is your daughter. If you're prepared to sacrifice your own ski-ing lesson time like this, it might help her a lot. And you might also learn a lot by ski-ing more slowly and having a chance to improve on your technique. I'm sure we all have something we can improve on. I'm afraid that in the past, when in this position with my kids, I used to pretend to be worse than I was (at whatever it was) so that they could have the satisfaction of beating me. And now, of course, I don't have to pretend to be worse at ski-ing than my younger daughter - she can ski in rings around me :lol:

What you really need is a guaranteed excellent ski instructor for your daughter when you're off on your holiday. I think with some of the smaller ski schools you can pick your instructor, and go by personal recommendation, especially if you have private lessons. I have found with our group instructors that it's very much hit and miss. Most of them have been 'okay', we've had a couple of really good ones, and a couple of really awful ones.

I also think you should write and complain about that ski instructor. If we all make a big fuss when this sort of thing happens maybe the ski schools will take more care of our kids. I complained to our rep about the one in Borovets and she said that instructor would never teach kids again (although I don't know whether that actually happened or not).

Sorry everyone for the length of this post - you can always skip most of it :D - but I am really cross and upset about this. I feel very sorry for Snapzzz and his family.

Allie,
I'm glad your daughter got over her problem, and well done for helping her to fix it with private lessons :D . I guess individual private lessons on the ski holiday would be a good idea for Snapzzz's daughter, but they are just so expensive :shock:

Ally