This is what grit in a kid looks like.
Nothing forced.
No tutors.
No coaches.
No overbearing parent.
Just desire and opportunity.
My youngest daughter has been an indifferent ice skater, content to slide around with a green-plastic frame. She doesn’t fall. She goes pretty fast. But she really isn’t skating. She’s sliding. And that’s been fine.
I’m no speed-skating champion myself so I haven’t pushed her. But I have enjoyed being on the ice with her. We skate at a rink that is outside, so it’s great for time together and fresh air in the winter.
She’s on the older side to be using a frame. Some smaller kids would skate up and ask her why she was still using it. This didn’t bother her. It was how she wanted to go around on the ice.
It did present one problem. If we didn’t get to the rink right as skating started, we might not get one of the two frames. Then she’d skate holding my hand, which sounds sweet but was actually scary: I can barely stand on my own skates let alone help someone else around.
But the first time we went out this season, she wanted to skate on her own. (She’s also historically not wanted to have a lesson, saying she wanted me to teach her. Again, sweet if I had the skill!)
So, we came up with a little drill where I would stand increasingly further away and she would skate into the frame. Further and further, over two days, until she was going across the rink. Then back and forth and by the third day around the outside of the rink. She beamed with pride.
Then she saw another girl her age spinning around. That was when she asked for a lesson.
Why didn’t I push her? This was for her, not anyone else. I supported what she wanted to do when she wanted to do it. I was also happy that this was a thing we could do together.
Did I know she’d one day teach herself to skate? She is a determined kid. But if it never happened, I wasn’t worried. I didn’t learn to skate until I had kids, so she’d be fine.
As working parents, my wife and I are heavily scheduled during the week. We’re models of efficiency by necessity if not desire. It would have been easier for me to push our youngest into a lesson and be done with it. She would have been taught how to skate. On the ice with me, fighting to balance, she learned something more: the rewards of being determined.
