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Wondering how to get your kids started skiing? Ann graciously offered to share some tips with us… thank you, Ann! – Kat
Even though some fall leaves are still hanging on, ski season is right around the corner! Skiing makes cold and gray winters not so blah, and if you ski (or you want to learn), it’s a great way to spend time together as a family.
If you’re thinking about having your kids try skiing for the first time, here are all the basics from someone who’s been there!
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How to Know Whether Your Kids Are Ready to to Ski
Because I recommend the professional instruction route (more on this later), your kids should be old enough to separate from you for however long the lesson is. For little ones, that’s about an hour or two. For bigger kids, it can be up to all day. (Most places also require they be able to use the bathroom on their own.)
Also, it helps if their gross motor skills are well developed and they can pay attention. So, anywhere from around 4 onward can be a good time to start, depending on the kid. We started our oldest when she was nearly 5.
Where to Buy Ski Gear for Your Kids
Skiing has several downsides, including the cost and the vast amount of gear. That said, the right gear can keep your kid warm, dry, and happy instead of cold, wet, and miserable. Kids grow fast, so there is tons of barely used gear — your local Buy Nothing group, Facebook Marketplace, and eBay are great places to check out. If you happen to live near a ski shop, they often have used gear swaps/sales as well.
I highly recommend getting a thin base layer/long underwear, a midlayer (like a fleece), a water-repellent jacket, water-repellent snow pants, water-repellent mittens (bring more than one pair in case they get too wet, or lost), and tall wool socks. They should also have ski goggles and definitely a helmet. (Many rental shops include free helmets with rentals.) Also, for their first time, renting skis is the way to go. Poles aren’t needed for beginners.
Don’t forget water, snacks, lunch (resort food is often mediocre and expensive), tissues, and sunscreen (yes, you can get really sunburned skiing!).
Where to Take Your Kids Skiing
If you live by a top-notch resort, I’m jealous! But, for the rest of us, I recommend your local mountain if you have one. For first-timers, I don’t feel like it’s worth the expense and hassle of traveling to a premiere ski area. Local ski mountains (and their surrounding towns) tend to be cheaper — they often have deals on night skiing and during other non-peak times. January is Learn to Ski and Snowboard Month, so that’s a great time to find discounted ski packages.
The Best Time of the Year for Skiing with Kids
Speaking of non-peak times, ski resorts have gotten really crowded. Many places even have capacity restrictions, so you might not even be able to go during peak times without a season pass or reservations. Try to reserve lift tickets/lessons/equipment ahead of time, and arrive early so there’s time to orient yourself, stand in line for rentals, and take last-minute bathroom breaks. Our local resort recommends at least two hours before a lesson starts. Skiing requires a bit of stamina, so pick a time of day when your kids have energy and aren’t cranky.
If you can, it’s best to avoid the week between Christmas and New Year’s, MLK weekend, Presidents’ Day weekend, and the local spring break. Some less crowded times are the week before Christmas, Super Bowl Sunday, late February, April, and mid-week in general.
How to Teach Your Kids to Ski
If you or another family member can ski, it’s super tempting to save some money by going the DIY route. Based on my experience, I’d still go with professional lessons. Yes, DIY worked for the Williams sisters and Tiger Woods, but most of us are not their parents (or have kids like them).
My spouse had “the worst three hours of parenting” of his life trying to teach my youngest to ski that ended with a ski flying down the bunny hill. To this day, my youngest is adamant he will never ski. So, yes it’s expensive, but sometimes it’s worth it to avoid a scarring experience.
What to Do If You’re Not a Skier Yourself
If you’re going skiing for a few days, what about non-skiers? Many ski areas have tons of things to do for the non-skiers in your group.
We went to Colorado last year for about a week to ski. My husband and I took turns watching our youngest while the other parent and my oldest skied. (You can also find a local sitter, or some resorts have daycares.)
Some fun non-ski things for small kids are horse-drawn sleigh rides, playing in the snow, riding the gondola, and story time / crafts at a local library. For older kids and adults, look for snowmobile rides, dogsled rides, cross-country skiing (a bit easier to learn than downhill skiing), snowshoeing (also easy to learn), drop-in yoga classes, spas, tubing, and ice skating.
I didn’t learn how to ski until college. It’s now something I love and want to pass on to my kids!
Stock photo via Stencil.
Boston Legal Eagle says
We (ok, I) got our oldest ski lessons last winter, when he was 6.5. I would recommend no earlier than 5 – there were a lot of 4 year olds taking lessons in this particular ski lesson area we went to, who were taking many breaks or were just not feelings it/not learning. Which is fine and age appropriate, but it’s a lot of wasted time and money! And the 5-6 year olds will pick it up fast. My older kid is a bit of a daredevil, so I knew he would love it. TBD on my younger, more cautious and less outdoorsy kid. Husband doesn’t ski either so, it may be 2-2 at the mountains in the future.
For gear, I’d recommend renting for sure. There’s a ski store nearby that rents skis and boots for the season, which ends up being cheaper than renting from the mountain each time. Land’s End and REI has good ski gear. I did end up buying my kid his own helmet because he can use it for a few years, and the rentals can be kind of meh.
Emma says
Our local ski slope has a “kid zone” for kids 3-5 that’s more like a daycare. There’s a tiny bunny hill with a little magic mat and inflatable shapes and they can do an hour of skiing there, and then they can go inside and get a snack and play with toys, or just play in the snow for a while. This means their parents and older siblings can get a half day of actual skiing done. I wouldn’t do real lessons under 5.
Anonymous says
I highly recommend renting off-mountain. You will get better rental gear for less money, and you won’t waste time and energy waiting in huge lines at the rental shop on the mountain. If you plan to ski several days during the season, a junior season lease can be a great deal.
Anonymous says
On balance, my kid learned at 4.5 and she was great after 3 days of lessons. She’s the youngest though and didn’t want to be left out :).
We ski New England, so it’s ice and wind. My advice is to pick a time when the weather is ideal and ease into the nastiness.
My 9 year old was skiing two of the front 4 at Stowe last year and she started at age 7 because I was too busy having babies to teach her before then.
For gear: in New England, you can rent or buy used skis and boots. We buy because I have 3 kids. The gear is critical- we ski in cold, rain, icey weather. My kids all have hestras or the equivalent warmth gloves. We have high quality base layers and warm socks. We own our own boot dryers and use them.
Anon says
I’m not trying to be snarky, but if you don’t ski yourself, why would you take your kids skiing? Maybe I’m missing something, but my husband and I are not skiiers and have never considered taking our kids on a ski vacation – it just seems like a big waste of time and money.
Anonymous says
The issue arises when you have a non-skier married to a skier. In our family this was resolved by never going skiing, since we don’t spend money and time on things that both parters haven’t agreed to. As the would-be skier, I was sad about it, but on the other hand my husband doesn’t drag me along on expensive vacations to do things he wants to do that I don’t enjoy. I do know other families where one parent skis and the other doesn’t.
Emma says
I’m also a skier and my husband is… a very lukewarm skier. The key, as Ann mentioned, is a resort with other stuff to do that can keep the non-skiers occupied. My parents also often come with us and don’t ski, but will happily provide childcare. It’s nice to have something they can do, a nice restaurant or coffee shop they can go to, etc.
Emma says
Also, I guess to answer the broader question – some people might like to try new things? I know a family that got into skiing when the parents were in their 30s and the kids were young. They lived in New England and decided it was going to be their family activity. The mountains are beautiful, and particularly if you live a cold climate, it’s a fun way to embrace the winter. For us it’s mostly a weekend activity, not a “spend a lot of money to fly for a week somewhere” activity. I get that it’s not the case for everyone depending where you live, but some people (like my parents) really enjoy spending time in the mountains even if they don’t ski. They will sometimes snowshoe and like winter hikes and just sitting around in the beautiful scenery.
Anon at 1:29 says
That’s fair. We live in a pretty flat part of the Midwest, so it would be hard for it to be a weekend thing for us. I do love the mountain ski towns – we were in Banff a few years ago and Aspen this year for fall break – just not attempting to ski, which I feel would be likely to end in broken bones for me. And personally I don’t really understand paying high season prices if no one in the family is going to be skiing. Of course if some people want to ski it’s a different story.
Boston Legal Eagle says
Same here, although I’m trying to get my husband back out there! But it’s also been a nice activity for me to do with my oldest that we can bond over. And husband gets time with younger kiddo. We are also in New England so it’s not a big trek and it’s cold in the winter, so it’s great to still be outdoors and enjoying it.
AwayEmily says
I’m the non-skier (well, non-downhill…I adore cross-country). My husband loooooves skiing and started taking my then-6-year-old last winter. It’s not my favorite, honestly — I feel like it’s a waste of money and time (it takes 45 minutes to get to the ski place from our house). But it’s something they enjoy doing together and a lot of other kids she knows also do it, so whatev. I don’t think I’d be up for them going on a $$$ ski vacation, but a season pass to our local dinky resort + some used equipment works out to around $500, which I can stomach for some quality father-daughter time. And I get to stay home with the other kids and do arts and crafts by the fire.
Boston Legal Eagle says
“And I get to stay home with the other kids and do arts and crafts by the fire.” – I think you and my husband and my youngest would get along so well :) But it’s nice to have the balance in a partnership!
Anon says
yes, this is us. DH is an avid skiier. i am a very lukewarm skiier. if we lived in the north east this would be a bit easier because we could ski for a day, but now we live in TX so we will be flying to park city for a family ski trip in January. is it my dream vacation – no. is it very important to DH? yes. so we compromise. i know how to ski even though i don’t love it and i’m glad it is something i know how to do. if our kids hate it we will probably wait a year or two in order to try again.
Spirograph says
I’m glad this works for your family, but I felt sad reading it! Ski trips are expensive for sure, but there are fun things to do in winter sports areas that aren’t skiing, and you don’t have to pay ski-in ski-out prices, just get an easy drive to the mountain… If I didn’t want to do mountain sports, I would still go and sit in the lodge while my husband enjoyed the slopes! Or go snowshoeing, or cross-country skiing, or snowmobiling, or tubing, or window-shopping, or build snowmen with the kids. Similarly, I know lots of couples where one scuba dives and the other hangs out at the beach for a couple hours.
This outs me to anyone who knows me in real life, but my husband told me very shortly after we started dating that downhill winter sports are his favorite thing and if I wasn’t willing to learn or at least indulge him, this wouldn’t work. I was game and the rest is history.
We don’t live close to good mountains, but we do try to take a (drive-able) ski trip each year, and hit the local mountain a couple times if the snow is decent. Many resorts have full day childcare that just does an hour of “try out skiing” for very little kids, and those worked well for our kids as an intro. I 100% agree that paying for lessons is a better way for kids to start than learning from parents. By age 5 or 6 my kids were ready for at least half-day ski school. We bought gear second hand (Play It Again Sports and similar is good for this) and got a couple years of hand-me-down out of it. We haven’t gone anywhere truly frigid, and have gotten by with the same stuff we keep around for snow play at home — regular bib snowpants, squall coats from Lands End and waterproof mittens, + a good base layer of thermal long underwear.
Anon says
Yeah, it seems sad to me too. I’m not a skiier but I’m very passionate about international travel and if it were up to my husband we would never go anywhere. I’d be pretty upset if he told me I couldn’t travel, since we can comfortably afford it. The idea that both partners need to be enthusiastic about something to spend any money on it is pretty misguided to me, unless finances are extremely tight.
Anonymous says
I learned to ski when I was in a kids lesson and my parents were in adult lessons. We went because they felt like trying it out and seeing if they liked it. If you can only learn to do something if your parents already know how to do it, that seems pretty limiting. Lots of things take time and money, but that doesnt mean its not fun to try it once and see what you think, as either a kid or an adult.
Anon says
Because it’s some of the most fun they can ever have in the outdoors. That’s all there is to it for me. My husband learned as an adult so we could go together and those are our best days. We remember them for years to come and can’t wait to share it with our kid. You know that feeling when it’s Sunday night and you feel blah and dull and like you didn’t do anything with your free time and you have to go back to work again? Spending the weekend skiing gives you the exact opposite feeling.
Spirograph says
I learned as an adult,too, and although I was suuuuper whiney about it on day 2 when I was cold and sore, I love it now. Other than some shots from our wedding, the only other photo of me and DH in our bedroom is the two of us standing on top of a mountain at Heavenly. Best days for sure.
Skiier says
Skiing is just so much fun! Having always lived in the Northeast, skiing makes winter an exciting and fun season. My husband–who grew up in the south–and I and our two sons spent many hours on the slopes, and felt so bonded, had such laughs and tall tales, ate so many on-the-mountain waffles, and looked forward to skiing all summer and fall. Now we head west for a big ski trip for Christmas every few years…they are all grown up, we all fly in from our cities, we meet at the airport and then head to the mountains. While it is a big project when kids are little, it helps if they are 5 or 6 or 7, can handle their clothing and the bathrooms, and can help carry the gear. It is an expensive sport–we keep the prices low by buying everything used, and economizing as much as we can. It is hard to take it up as an adult unless you feel confident as an athlete and enjoy tackling new activities. Get lots of warm clothes, and go for it!