On the Learning Curve . . . Together
Rod Kramer only agreed to take the lessons to please his teenage son. He never figured on having so much fun.
“I hated [the idea of] snowboarding. I’m a skier,” the Colorado resident explained. “But we learned to snowboard together, falling down and laughing and feeling inept. I had a ball.”
That was two winters ago. Kramer and his 16-year-old son Andrew have since become committed and accomplished snow-boarders. The best part, they agree, is sharing that learning curve.
More parents and kids are using vacations to learn to scuba dive and rock climb, windsurf and sail, even to skeet shoot together.
“It’s growing every year,” said Joan Boza, a spokesman for the Cloister golf and tennis resort in Georgia, where skeet and trap shooting is an especially big hit. (Call the Cloister at [800] 732-4752.)
The demand for parent-child lessons has prompted L.L. Bean to add family kayak, canoe and fly-fishing weekends to their Outdoor Discovery Program for 1998. And the parent-teen wilderness courses offered by the nonprofit Outward Bound, the largest adventure-based educational organization in the country, continue to grow in popularity, said Outward Bound spokesman Barry Rosen. There are now more than 30 courses designed for families.
Rosen noted that in situations where parent and child are both novices--dog sledding in Minnesota, white-water canoeing in Texas or rock climbing in North Carolina, for example--parents will find they can learn plenty from their kids.
“It helps for the kids to see that adults don’t know everything,” adds Rod Kramer, who teaches mountain biking and sees parents and teens in his Dirt Camp classes around the country. (Call [800] 711-DIRT for information about summer Dirt Camp at ski resorts. Call L.L. Bean at [800] 341-4341, Ext. 26666. Call Outward Bound at [800] 243-8520.)
“Sharing a new sport is an excellent opportunity for your kids to get to know you as a person, not just a parent telling them what to do--as someone they enjoy spending time with,” agrees Los Angeles psychiatrist and UCLA professor Dr. Bari Stryer, an expert on children and sports.
That’s as long as you refrain from being so competitive with your child or so critical about his efforts that he feels he can’t live up to your expectations or admit he’s scared. “What’s important is having a good time together,” Stryer said, “Not winning.”
A new sport can offer a stepfamily more than just a fun time. Just ask Melissa Gullotti. “I was 8 and really mad about my parents’ divorce and my dad’s remarriage, but when I saw my stepmother rip down the slopes, it helped me to respect her. Skiing became something we shared as a new family,” Gullotti said. Now 26 and an advanced skier, Gullotti works at Vermont’s Mt. Snow, where many families learn to ski, snowboard and mountain bike together. (Call [800] 245-7669 and ask about arranging a family lesson.)
Other families, including those with younger children, will devote entire vacations to a sport they love--honing their hockey, tennis or baseball skills at parent-child sports camps or resort programs.
“It was the sweetest time I’ve ever had with my son,” said Bruce Adams. Adams, a University of Maryland public policy researcher, took his then 6-year-old son Hugh to a father-son baseball camp near the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
“I see the closeness a sport can bring. It’s a big-time bridge between a parent and a kid,” Walter Woods said. Woods is a New Jersey high school athletic director who has been running the All-American Baseball Camp for the past 10 years. (The father-son program is offered just once each summer. Call [908] 615-9749 for more information.)
Be clear from the beginning about your motives, said Dr. Ian Tofler, director of child psychiatry at Children’s Hospital of New Orleans and an internationally known sports psychiatrist. Don’t see your child’s efforts as the answer to your own frustrated attempts to excel.
He notes that most kids under 10 don’t care nearly as much about winning or losing as they do just playing the sport. Younger grade-school kids may not be developmentally ready to seriously focus on rules and strategies.
“If a father stalks off and is a sore loser, it’s not very helpful,” Tofler said. Take the opportunity to demonstrate a few life lessons: the importance of good sportsmanship and how to acknowledge defeat or admit the need for help.
If you’re lucky, a few days of lessons could start a family tradition. It did for Jim Gross and his 15-year-old son Peter. The New York real estate executive and his son have been heading to the weeklong Can/Am Hockey camp outside Toronto for the past eight summers. (Call Can/Am Hockey at [800] 678-0908.)
The kids, Gross reports, always win the father-son games.
Taking the Kids appears the first and third week of every month.
