Turns out my kids listen, just not to me

I learned last week that my four-year old can listen and follow instruction. This is reassuring as a parent since she starts kindergarten this coming school year and we’ve already had a bit of a disaster experience putting her into ballet. That isn’t to say that my four-year-old is a disobedient child, on the contrary, as four-year-olds go she does an average job of being attentive. But we were pleasantly surprised when we sent her to Whistler Kids adventure ski camp last week and on the last day she came down the mountain in full control of her skis as if she’d had a full winter’s worth of practice. On her end of camp report card she was even given an “excellent” score in listening. After looking back on the week, talking with the instructors, and spying on her from the base of Whistler Kids, I think I’ve stitched a few learnings together.

For starters, she gets bored without action. The first day left me concerned as they never made it off one ski and onto two. Knowing my daughter’s attention span I was worried this was going to be another ballet experience and we’d find her rolling in the snow and disrupting the class with her boredom. Thankfully, by the second day they were on two skis and according to the instructor doing exceptionally well. (Note to parents putting your kids through ski-school: make sure you put your child in a really silly helmet-topper or super bright ski suits. From even a short distance all the kids looked identical)

Secondly, despite her saying she doesn’t want to do something, she actually does. After each day of skiing, she’d bewail the prospect of returning the following, yet every morning we’d put the ski suit on and drop her off and every morning and afternoon we’d spy on her and she’d be focused and happy as a clam doing whatever excercise the instructor had in store. Looking back, this should not have come as a surprise to me as she is the daughter of Mike The Glum.

Focusing for her is finding a rhythm or groove to fall into. On the last day of ski school her class was practicing turns and stopping. I got to watch some of her practice sessions in the morning and she must have done two to three times as many runs as the other kids. She’d ski to the bottom, take the magic carpet back up to the top, rinse, repeat, hardly taking a breath in between. Her GPS said she skied two and a half miles that day and I believe it.

Finally, she is ready, able, and willing to eat mac & cheese and pizza every day for a week. While I won’t be winning any dad of the year awards for letting her, she certainly loved it.