How did you or your child get interested in skating?

[SkateDad]

A comment in another thread got me thinking about this. I'm brand new to skating and seem to be walking around blind and ignorant about most things skating. IMHO skating in general doesn't get much press with the exception of the Olympics, so I am curious how other families got interested in skating?

For my daughter, it was almost a necessity. She tried all kinds of sports but the overwhelming theme after a short time in any of them was "I'm too hot playing this" and admittedly I wasn't enjoying the time in the baking sun at the ball diamond, or in the sweltering gyms for gymnastics. So, skating was a win win for us and (knock wood) so far my daughter still loves it and never complains about the heat.

[sarahspins]

Honestly the cooler temps are what really sold me on skating... it's too hot here to do much outside for 4 or 5 months out of the year, but even when it's 115˚ outside, it's still a cool 62˚ in the rink   I had wanted to take skating lessons for as long as I can remember, but kept getting told no because it was too expensive, but after many years of pleading, I got started by going along with a friend after school when I was 13.  I soon had my own skates and we took group lessons together.  I breezed through group lessons and moved onto private lessons, and my friend eventually lost interest in skating, but I stayed with it until college.  I also used to play tennis (I would still play but I have no one to play with since my sister moved away), and I am a part time cyclist when it's not so unbearably hot outside.

My kids.. honestly I've been trying to get them hooked on skating for a while, but none of them really seem to share my interest.  They all have their own skates and they'll all get out on the ice with me, but that's really the extent of it.  I have enrolled my two youngest  (4 and 6) in group classes that start next month just so they might feel more comfortable skating around on their own - I don't expect either of them to really want to stick with it, but it will be nice to be able to bring all 3 kids skating with me, especially during the summer.  My youngest is better on the ice than my 6 year old, but even he has a 10-15 minute time limit where he gets fed up with falling and wants to get off the ice.  My oldest could skate all day if I let him, but he hasn't really shown any interest in wanting to take lessons. 

My daughter (now 6) has taken dance and gymnastics, and she quit dance because she ended up splitting her chin open twice (both times it happened when she was wearing tap shoes, and quitting was her choice - I felt like both accidents were really just flukes), and then after taking gymnastics because her big brother does it, she decided she didn't like gymnastics because of the pressure at her gym to compete.  She enjoys gymnastics, just not the competitive aspect of it, and even though the meets are optional, she left more than one class crying simply because she didn't like being put on the spot to do something (they always turned the last 10-15 minutes of glass into a little competition for prizes), so we pulled her out since she wasn't having fun (this decision was made over several months).  She knows that she is free to go back any time she wants to, but so far she hasn't asked (the same goes for dance too). 

My oldest started gymnastics about 18 months ago because he wanted to be a ninja.  No, I'm not kidding   He really just wanted to learn to do flips and "cool tricks".  He quickly progressed and made the boy's team at his gym after only a year, and he's fairly well committed to staying with it now.  I don't know that he is super into it, but he does enjoy going, and as long as he is having fun we're happy to keep him in it.

[SkateDad]

...My oldest started gymnastics about 18 months ago because he wanted to be a ninja.  No, I'm not kidding  

That's awesome Sarah...what little boy doesn't look super cool in a ninja outfit? 

[hopskipjump]

Dd was in gymnastics but at 4 was already being put on pre-team with the goal of level 4 at 5years old from her coaches.  She started to hate it. Finally at 5.5 I took her out.  She still needed something - she has always had lots of energy so I signed her up for parks and rec skating a few months before she turned 6.  It was cheap and close by!  After a 4 week session she signed up through the rink for alpha.  I bought her skates the second week because she had tiny feet and the skate counter had a hard time having enough available.  I instituted a rule - as long as your skates fit, you skate.  I always warn her when it's new skate time - she can choose to skate or anything else.  So far she has kept with skating. 

For dd the difference in skating and gym was the coaches.  The gym coaches (top gym in our state) were very aggressive and pushed really hard.  They yelled a lot of the time and got upset with the kids.  With skating she has had really nice coaches who push but not by yelling but simply by coaching.  Dd is the kind of kid who gets on the ice ready to work - work is fun for her.  If they say do a double axel, she might be surprised as she hasn't even started working on it, but she will go for it with 100 percent effort.  She will fall and fail, but she isn't afraid to fall or fail. Her motto is "When I stop falling, I stop learning."

Will she skate forever?  I don't know - she has done dance for 3 years and isn't passionate about it, she did soccer for several years and only quit once skating took up her weekends (I gave her the option of less skating in soccer season, but she didn't want that).  She also loves music and golf.  I figure if she leaves skating, she can always do golf in high school and college.  I think at her age, she should always be trying new sports and hobbies, I want her to define herself by who she is, not what she does.

[davincisop]

My parents would take me skating every year when we'd visit family in Chicago and they'd always watch the skating specials on tv and take me to ice shows like Disney on Ice. When I was 10 I heard that my friends were starting lessons at a new rink in town, so I asked my mom if I could start lessons. I started when I was 11 and have been hooked since. Unfortunately when I was 11-12-13 I didn't understand why the basic skills were so important, I just wanted to jump and spin, so I ended up stopping in high school because I just didn't have the time and when I got into college wanted to start up again. I picked it back up two years ago in my junior year and started taking lessons again a year ago in my final college semester. 

[Schmeck]

Living in New England, most everyone I knew growing up skated - ponds, MDC rinks, etc.  Husband's family is a big hockey family, all boys, they all skate and play hockey.  It was natural to sign our two girls up fro learn to skate lessons, and I wanted to take them too, so it was all 3 of us on the ice. 

At that time, oldest daughter was 7, competing in gymnastics, and the skating was just so she could stand up and move out on a pond without killing herself.  Younger daughter was 4, had some issues with a birth defect, and we used skating as therapy.

A few years later, older daughter is not interested in gymnastics anymore.  (Bad fall off the beam doing some backhandspring tumbling pass, freaked me out too, and she lost her nerve, made it easy to stop.)
We had one whole month without a big sports bill, and she tried out and made the local youth intro synchro team.  Both girls were still taking LTS lessons, completely for recreation.  No glimmer of competition, testing, private lessons...

Youth intro, then on to intermediate - wait you need to test moves for that, private lesson time, then a year later she heard about a junior team about an hour away.  Multiple private lessons, moves and ice dance testing, practices on school nights that didn't get us home until midnight.

Two trips to Synchro Nationals, a gold medal in moves, some great friends from 3 different states, and a unique-looking college application later, she's hung up her skates and playing rugby at MIT... 

[Sk8tmum]

Older kids went to LTS because learning how to skate is a basic "skill" in life.  Kids enjoyed it and wanted to keep going.  Definitely not my choice for them - I would have preferred many other sports and encouraged them to try a range before they 'settled in' to one sport in early teens.  We started them later than some - around 6 or 7 - because they were just having fun playing around the neighbourhood, and we were just looking at learning to skate, not being figure skaters Both are severely Type-A overachievers so the whole badge/test/goal/jump/spin thing fed into their need to be challenged, and the speed and risk of injury feeds into my one kid's adrenalin needs.

They still do other sports casually for life balance and to feed the "team" aspect that skating doesn't have.

Youngest skates because "why not?" she's there anyways and the coaches are around; but, not her "first focus" as it's secondary to her other interests, and that's the way it is for her.

[SynchKat]

I started because when I was 5 my friend across the street was starting lessons so I HAD to have skating lessons too.  Unfortunately she lasted about a year and I have been going now for 33 years (eek).

I put my son on bob skates at 1.5 and this past winter he got his first pair of hockey skates.  He's getting introduced to skating because it's been a huge part of his mom's life. 

[Sierra]

When I started homeschooling, at 12, my mother was looking for some sort of activity for me to do. She found homeschool lessons at our rink, which are done in the morning and are exclusively for homeschool kids. She also put me into a county-run gymnastics/dance program.

I drifted out of the dance after awhile. I liked it, but mom didn't like having to go to it because it was at 6 or 7pm ish. I wasn't completely into skating at first- in fact my first lesson went something like "Why the heck did I agree to this"- but I was desperate just to get out of the house, so I kept skating. I didn't really start begging to skate more until about a year or so in. My mom finally agreed to let me public-skate after group, but only because she skated, too. She didn't want to sit for another two hours while I skated. So for a while she skated in public once a week with just me teaching her, and recently she began doing group lessons as well.

I never watched skating on TV and thought "Oh I wanna do that," in fact skating seemed like the last thing I'd ever want to do or be good at- when I was younger I was more into muddy outside activities like running and swimming and riding. And now skating is my life.

[Clarice]

My daughter also started at age 5.  She saw Kristi Yamaguchi skating on TV, and decided she wanted to learn.  I caught the bug watching her, and we both ended up taking lessons.  For her, the temperature thing turned out to be a blessing as well - she overheats very easily, so sports like soccer or softball would have been out of the question for her.  On hot days at school, she always got killer headaches if they had to run around very much.

Daughter is now finishing up college, has passed all her USFS Moves in the Field and Free Skate tests, and now coaches and works on dance tests.

[jjane45]

The first skating program I remember seeing on TV was Lu Chen's at 1996 Worlds. Pretty sure I liked skating already back then or even earlier. If I had access to ice rinks, I would have begged for lessons.

[SkateDad]

Great stories everyone, thanks for the input. 

[dak_rbb]

When my dd was four we watched the 2006 Olympics together and she decided figure skating looked like fun.  I signed us both up for skating school (finally something I could do WITH her instead of just watching!) and we were hooked.  Dd began private lessons (though only 15 min/week for a year or so) later that year along with the group lessons.  I’ve just continued to do adult group lessons.  (Privates would be nice, but I just can’t quite bring myself to spend the money on a lesson for me rather than dd.)  Anyway, five years later, she’s working on her double Axel and I’m working on my waltz jump (yes, progressing very slowly, but that's okay with me ) and we’re still having a great time.

[skatingmum2]

My daughter begged to skate from the age of 5. I considered it a highly dangerous thing to do and refused for 2 1/2 years. Finally one summer holiday our Polish au pair took her skating (just before her 8th birthday) and she loved it and pestered us to take her. LTS started when she was 8 after I nearly had a heart attack watching her throw herself into the middle of the rink at high speed , trying to copy other kids jumps but having no clue how to STOP! I never dreamt almost 5 years later we'd be going to an ice rink 6 days a week. My younger son started because big sis does it - she's still annoyed that I waited so long to take her.

Oh - rather funny - the first time she went I dressed her in about 10 layers of clothing, scarf, hat, 2 pairs of gloves. It felt protective. A passing coach (her later became her ice-dance coach) stopped her and told her she was doing beautifully but could she ask her mother to put less clothes on her next time.

I'm very ambivalent about skating - there is a very horrid child who constantly spreads nasty rumours about my daughter and at times I hate that nastiness (small minority - but - geez) that seems to go with the territory! Sometimes the place feels like a school playground. My daughter is good at many other sports and keeps getting invited to things but - the only thing she really wants to do is ice-skate - which is why we're at the rink!

[isakswings]

My daughter's friend got her interested in skating. I used to skate with my friends when I was in college... I loved it and until my daughter's friend suggested it, it never crossed my mind to have my daughter try skating. My daughter loved it and so we continued skating...

[AgnesNitt]

Great stories everyone, thanks for the input. 

You know, there's adult learn to skate classes. Why not take one? Many rinks have them set up so parent and child can be on the ice at the same time (in different classes).

[Laneybug7]

For me, I've always been fascinated with figure skating, but I didn't know lessons or skating clubs existed in my town when I was younger.  I did dance for eight years..I wasn't very good due to having closed hips, but I mean it was fun. I wasn't much of a 'sporty' type of girl and drifted more towards the theatre/performing arts crowd.  I didn't 'start' skating until my first year in college(yea late bloomer..so what) and at first only because I had two hour breaks and nothing better to do.  Little did I know that one experience would adapt into making friends with a junior level skater who then introduced me to the club, then I got a coach and then somehow that evolved into competiting and now...I'm hooked. My goal is to be 'that girl' who despite starting late or having closed hips managed to shut them all down and find my success with skating.  By success I do not mean Olympics or silly unrealistic things, but maybe passing all my tests or doing well at ANs or getting a gold a National Showcase or ALL THREE!     That one decision changed the course of my entire life and I found something that I could be good at and that one thing that no one else in my family can do. 

[JHarer]

I skated as a kid because thats what all the girls in my family do, my aunt is a former Ice Capades skater turned coach. I had a bad accident when I was 11 and swore I'd never skate again. Last year I took my goddaughter to the rink and she loved it, so I signed her up for lesson. But then her parents moved 100+ miles away from the rink and since the rink has a no refund policy on classes, I ended up taking lessons. I've been back on the ice for a year and I love it!

[blue111moon]

I skated as a kid on the swamp behind my house in skates that my dad bought at an auctions (20 pairs of various sizes for $5!).  My cousin took lessons in the city and I remember going to see one of the shows she was in but the rink was too far away for my parents to get me to regularly.  Besides, I had the swamp, didn't I?  Who needed a run-down dark old rink anyway? 

A couple decades later, a co-worker and I were looking for an exercise class that we could take after work through the city-run (i.e. "cheap") adult ed program.  What with other commitments the only two classes we could both make were yoga and ice skating.  When we applied, the yoga class was full, so we took ice skating.  She quit after the 8 week session ended.  I've now been skating for - gulp! - 30 years.

My main goals back then were learn how to stop and how to "go around corners" - that would be crossovers.  I did that.  I keep skating because it's exercise, there's always something new to learn (right now it's dance but I've done figures and freestyle, and even in my skinny days a tiny bit of pair skating and some synchro), and I've been at it so long, I've made so many friends around the world that stopping would mean not seeing them, which is out of the question.

[skatingmum2]

I love these posts. Had asked my daughter quite recently about why she still wanted to skate. She said she couldn't imagine her life without skating and felt on the ice was the only place where she feels totally free and where she feels she can be herself.