Staggered at people teaching their own kids

[valli]

Around here most of the lesson programs take kids starting at 4, although a few mix daycare and skiing at 3, but they don't learn much skiing. As a younger sibling, my younger daughter started begging to ski when she was barely able to talk, at 18 months. We told her she could ski the following year, when she was two, and she remembered. We thought she would ski briefly and then want to come in, but she skied the entire day. She has great balance and could turn on easy greens, but she still needed work stopping at 2 and 3 and was fairly fearless, so DH and I would use the leash. Now she's four and is taking lessons, and can stop on her own, so the leash is gone. Her sister is seven, and we put her in a lesson (under protest!) at Squaw Valley yesterday. My husband ran into her on KT-22, which is the advanced/experts only lift. She was on her fourth lap with her ski instructor. We were very happy with her instructor, he got her comfortable skiing advanced terrain and really using her poles, so today nothing seemed intimidating to her. Soon I'll be hearing, "follow me, Mom!" But I do teach her some of the time, since she doesn't like taking lessons all the time and they get expensive. We try to mix lessons and family skiing, but lessons are really helpful when they need to learn a new concept or bump up to the next level.