How to Teach Your Child How To Ski

If you are an advanced to expert skier with a child that you want to teach to ski, here are the steps I used to teach my kids to ski.

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A Day off from work and school
• Ski equipment (skis, poles, boots, helmet) and clothing
• Patience

1. Skip the ski school until you get him on the slopes a few times. Why spend all that money if you’re not sure he are going to like skiing.

2. Access your child. Skiing is a very scary sport. If you have a timid child, it might be best to build up his confidence first before you get him on the slopes and while you are on the slopes. If you have an active, sporty child, your job will be much easier.

3. Prepare and excite your child. Tell him all the wonderful and horrible stories from your ski experiences. Tell him about the first time you skied. Tell him how many times your fell and got back up. Do this for the 7 – 10 days before the ski day.

4. The Big Day. Get up early and leave. Pick up breakfast at McDonald’s or a favorite place of your child’s that doesn’t take too much time. Make it a ritual. Make it something your child will remember. Believe me when I say your child will be more excited about eating out then about skiing.

5. Be prepared for a lot of work. You will have to pull, push, and drag your child around. You may even have to carry him. You’ll have to be patience and maintain your cool. Have low expectations and you won’t be disappointed.

6. Getting to the lift. Show your child how to get the skis on. He may not be strong enough to jam his heel into the binding, so you’ll have to help. Once he is set up, put your skis on your shoulder and have your child grab your poles. You then proceed to pull your child to the bunny hill lift. Tell him to stand with his knees bent and his skis straight. Get as close to the lift as possible before you put your skis on.

7. Getting on the Lift. To get your child to the lift chair, you’ll have to pull and push your child there. Don’t worry about missing a chair or two. The lift operator will stop or slow down the chair as needed. Let the lift operator know you need help. Make sure your child is on your dominant side. If your right handed, your child should be on your right. The lift may be too high for him, so when the chair comes, you’ll have to use your dominant arm to lift him up on the chair. Your other hand is going to be holding both ski poles.

8. Getting off the Lift. Just grab him the same way you did when you got on the lift. You may have to hold him up as you ski away from the chair. Again, signal the lift operator that you need some help.

9. The way down. Just put him between your legs, grab him under his arms, and aim for the side of the slope. This will keep you going nice and slow. As you get close to the side, turn to the other side, making big long S turns. You may have to pick your child up as your turn, but that’s okay. Don’t get too technical with your child. Just give basic instructions at first, like “We’re turning right.”, “We’re turning left”. Also give words of encouragement and excitement. Your ski poles will get in the way, but, trust me, you have to hang on to them. I kept them in my hands and just used my fists to hold my child under his arms.

10. Repeat this several times to get a feel for how your child likes it. If things are going good, continue on. If things are going bad, take a break and try again. As you do more and more runs like this, start demonstrating the snow plow and how to turn when doing the snow plow. I called the snow plow the “Make the V” or “Make a pizza slice”.

11. All by himself. On the run of your choice based on how your access your child (it was the second run for my kids), it’s time for him to try by himself. Get off the lift and ski to a point at the top of the hill with your child. Get some excitement going and have him really ready to do it himself. Once your are both together at the top of the hill, tell your child you are going to ski down a little bit and then he is going to ski right to you. At this point, ski down about 10 to 20 feet. Turn completely around or side ways and dig in. Have your child ski right into your arms. Tell him to snow plow. Brace yourself for impact and have fun! Repeat this all the way down the bunny hill. If things go well, you’ll have the happiest child on the slope.

12. Do the above step for several runs or until your child says “I want to do it by myself”. That’s the magic moment. When that happens, you know you’ve succeeded. Don’t say no, let him do it by himself. Just don’t ski past your child. You always have to be behind just in case he falls and you have to help him. Use every fall as a teaching lesson to show him how to get up.

13. Beyond the Bunny slope: Don’t rush it. I rushed one of my children and we were back on the bunny hill the entire next time we went skiing. Once your child has mastered the bunny hill and can get from top to bottom without falling down and can get on and off the lift without falling down, ask if he wants to try the top of the mountain. Don’t be surprised at the answer and don’t push him.

14. The top of the mountain. Once you do get to the top, let your child ski down. What I mean is don’t tell him what to do. Let him do it the way he wants to do it, as long as he is skiing safely. Another mistake I made was telling my child, turn left, turn right, slow down, stop, etc. Once I relaxed, my child skied much better!

15. Advanced teaching. At this point, your child is probably just going straight down the hill in a snow plow. He doesn’t fall much. He can stop, make a few turns, but basically just goes straight, using one leg to slow down. So the next step is to teach turns. This time you’re in front. You ski from one side of the slope, all the way across to the other and you tell your child to follow. When you get to the other side you change direction by making a wide turn and then ski all the way to other side of the slope. You continue this a for a few runs and you are teaching the beginnings of the S turn. This is something you have him do for a few runs nearly every time you go skiing, until he really knows how to do it.

16. More Advanced teaching. I had a bit of a problem with one of my children. He wouldn’t follow me and just wanted to go straight down. So here is what I did. I skied to the side of the slope (before my child got there) and had him ski across the top hill side of me and then turn down the slope. After he did that, I quickly skied to the other end of the slope and told my child to ski on the top hill side of me and then turn down the slope. This created some good turning techniques. It was like my child was skiing around gates.

17. The J Loop. One last thing I taught my child was how to slow down when he was out of the control. The simple way to explain this is the make the letter J. So as he is skiing down the hill, he needs to turn and try to ski up the hill. This will slow and stop him very fast.

Tips & Warnings

• Know your child! Is he getting hungry? Tired? Cold? Bored? Scared? Frustrated? You get the picture?! Act accordingly. After all, you don’t want to mess up his skiing forever.
• The first ski day should be a day trip or half day trip, not a ski vacation. After all, you don’t want to spend all that money and have a miserable time.
• Make sure your child is properly dressed. You know the drill: Ski Jacket, Ski Bib, Ski Gloves, Scarf, Ski socks, and Helmet.
• Don’t take your child on a cold day. The temperature should be in the high thirties to low forties and sunny.
• Don’t take your child on a crowded day. You want to have all the time you can with your child all day long. So no weekends or holidays. Take your child out of school for the day if you can.
• Start when your child is in Kindergarten. Only take your child a few times the first season he skis. In other words, don’t push it.
• Rent his equipment before you get to the slope, preferable the day before. This will really excite him. You can usually rent ski equipment at your local ski shop. No poles until you or your child needs them.
• After you child has skied several times, you might want to consider lessons. I personally did not give my children lessons.
• On the lift tips. Use every minute as a teaching experience, but don’t lecture. While you’re on the lift, look at the other skiers and explain what they are doing wrong or right to your child. When I saw someone snow plowing down the slope with his legs spread wide in a big snow plow, I called these people the “Upside Down Ys”. I told my child, that’s not the way to ski and then pointed out someone that was skiing better.
• If things really go wrong, you may have to put your child in ski school.

[cwengre]

on 3/17/2009 Very thorough article on teaching a child to ski.

[Coach4U]

on 2/22/2009 Good pointers.