Parents are told, repeatedly, that a healthy family is one that makes the time
to sit together at the dinner table. If sharing a meal can have such a positive
impact, imagine the benefits a family can reap by riding a chairlift together.
The chairlift is a place that’s at once social and personal, stimulating
and serene. Ride a chairlift with a kid and you’re confined with each other,
with an endless array of things to talk about or to share silently. There you
can sit—patiently waiting for the perfect snowflake to land in your lap,
following animal tracks that weave through the trees, contemplating the clouds
above or the fate of the guy below who’s about to crash—and feel connected
to nature, and to each other.
Of course, it’s seldom easy. Getting to the mountains requires advance
planning and deliberate action. You can bet there will be whining, fighting and
foiled plans along the way (this is a family vacation, after all). And, at least
at first, you’ll need to contend with more buttons, buckles, straps, zippers
and miles of Velcro than you’d have imagined possible. But the payoff for
parents and kids who ski together is long and rich.
Skiing is a great way to show our children, and to remind ourselves, that there’s
more to fun than showing up tobe entertained, more to parenting than chauffeuring,
chaperoning and cheering from the sidelines, and more to bonding than sharing
a platter of spaghetti. You progress from propping up your kids to holding them
back against gravity, to coaxing them down the steep section, to begging them
to slow down before the jump. Skiing with your kids is not just a metaphor for
life as a parent—it is parenting, distilled to its essence, stripped of
distractions and full of reward.
Skiing’s paradoxical gift of togetherness and independence stems from
the fact that one shared slope delivers a unique experience to each skier, neither
dictated by another’s schedule nor constrained by another’s abilities.
A toddler towed around in the driveway senses the possibility of speed. A 4-year-old
feels the first rush of freedom, then delights in endless opportunities for exploration.
Older kids gather speed, confidence and new friends. Meanwhile, parents can share
in the moment from a perch close enough to give comfort or far enough away to
foster independence. At every age, the mountain is our kids’ own, just as
it’s ours, and however the family may wander and roam, we always reconnect
on the chairlift.
Edie, the U.S. Ski Team's top finisher in the 1988 Olympics, admits she
wasn't attracted to her husband till she saw him ski. She is a SKI senior contributor.
