Skating lessons

Ice skating comes easy to T, most of the time. She's my most coordinated child, the one that almost always lands on her feet on those rare times that she falls. When something doesn't come easy, though, she's not always sure how to handle it. To her, everything is either "easy" or "hard." "Easy" is anything she has mastered. She has a very short memory, though, for the effort that mastery may have taken. Because of that, "hard" frequently implies "not worth my effort," unfortunately.

With ice skating, at least, my best strategy has been to have her teach me how to do the "hard" moves. It helps her because she has to concentrate on all the details well enough to tell me what to do. I'm quick with questions when she's vague and enthusiastic with my effort, so she is motivated to create a good description. By going through the same learning process she is, I gain a perspective so that we can talk about it, too. Sometimes it's just a commiseration -- "Wow, this is tough" -- but other times we can help each other when we figure out something. And, for me, I also get the added bonus of learning something new. (Yeah, I'm a life-long learner.) One of my best successes with this was T-stops, which both T and I can now do naturally.

Now, though, we're getting near the limits of what I can physically do myself. I might be able to pull off, at least in an awkward fashion, the Mohawk turn that she's trying to learn. My backwards skating is pretty weak, though... I might not be able to get it. The next level is only going to be harder. I'm going to need to learn a new strategy soon. Research, I guess...