Shopping With Kids: Make It Fun!

Very often when at the grocery store, I have noticed that moms (its usually moms doing the shopping with the kids) seem to be in a state of mild agitation. This is especially true when they are toting more than one kid around in their giant car shaped cart.  They  just want to get done. The kids are anxious, and bored, and just want to get done.  

I don’t think I’ve ever, or very often, had this feeling while shopping with my kids.  It is something we all enjoy, and look forward to.

The great thing about children is that they have the
most fun when they are learning...

While I am new to meditation and to making a practice of mindfulness, I think that I have always been aware of the concept of mindfulness and have attempted to make it part of my every-day life.  

My time with my boys is precious, even if I am with them all day, nearly every day. I want to enjoy it as much as possible while it lasts. I also want my boys to enjoy their time with me, and with each other as much as possible.  

Yes, I have my two year old and my four year old do my
shopping for me

The great thing about children is that they have the most fun when they are learning, and when they are doing so by being involved in and engaged in the activity that is taking place. Of course I understand that the strolling pace at which I shop with my kids is a luxury of time that I am gifted with, but I have found that it doesn’t take that much longer to let my kids do the shopping for me.

Yes, I have my two year old and my four year old shop for me. Or with me. Or I simply narrate what it is that I am doing at any given moment in the store, and I have done this since they were old enough to sit up in the cart on their own. I noticed very quickly with Caveboy, who talked very late due to a speech delay, that he could identify different products we were looking for when he was well under a year old. That doesn’t make him a prodigy of any kind. That is simply what kids are made to do at that time: learn what things are called and try to identify them: over, and over, and over again.  

Before my boys were big enough to be trusted to walk around the store themselves, or even before they could walk, we would look for different landmarks in the store; not just food, but also the store decorations.  Sprouts has pictures of old trucks and tractors above the vegetable section which are fun to try to spot from different parts of the store.

King Soopers has really assisted us by putting tiny

shopping carts in the store

At around two and a half years old, Caveboy got kicked out of the cart as Cavebaby got old enough to sit up in the cart himself.  Since then he has directly assisted in the shopping by identifying the various products. Once he was old enough to read numbers, I’ve asked him to help identify the best deals.  Of course this takes practice: he could read numbers sometime at around three, and now that he’s four and a half he is finally starting to be able to look at the various choices and consider which might be the best.  It isn’t about him getting it right, because of course he hasn’t had the ability.  It’s about being engaged in the process. It’s about doing what Dad is doing, with Dad.  However, as his ability grows, so too does his engagement in the process.

At two and a half Cavebaby is now mostly out of the cart as well, depending on the store.  He is old enough to help find what we are looking for in the store, and even push his own cart. Our local Kroger Market (King Soopers in Colorado) has really assisted us by putting tiny shopping carts in the store for just this purpose.  

Shopping with Cavebaby

When there aren't kid-sized carts I try to find different tasks for them to do, whether it is finding the next item, pushing the big cart, or just remembering that they will get a treat if they keep their hands off the shelves.

Sure it makes shopping trips last longer, but not by as much as 10 minutes. I'll trade fun for time any day!

The Scarcity Trap, Bandwidth, and My ADD

Oh yeah, writing! I forgot all about it this week.  I need to get back to it for sure.  I have several possible blog posts circulating in my head, and I need to rewrite my speech and practice it. I think that speech, about climbing the Needle with my dad, will be a fun post to write as well.  It has been a fairly busy week so far with Susan having to do homework every night, and with me starting on the R class.  I still have a bit of cleaning to do in our house as well, and I don’t have mom’s house rented yet.  I don’t understand why so many people are dragging their feet.   

It's been too nice outside to sit in and write.  It was T-shirt weather at 13,000 feet at Arapaho Basin for skiing on Saturday.  

What have I been thinking about? I suppose the concept of “bandwidth” and how we distribute it was bouncing around in my head yesterday.  I listened to a “Hidden Brain” podcast about the concept of The Scarcity Trap.  Of course if the scarce resource is food we would obviously focus our bandwidth on trying to find more of it. This eventually led me to consider how the concept of bandwidth can help me understand, or at least describe, myself.   

It is interesting that we will do this no matter what the scarce resource is. Money is one that people have always known about, but the reaction to being poor has long been misunderstood.  It, of course, makes a lot of sense when you think of the reaction to being poor as the exact same psychological response as the response to being hungry: one will focus their available bandwidth on obtaining the scarce resource.  Right now Susan’s scarce resource is time.  

It has long been noted that poor people tend to focus on short term economic goals such as putting food on the table today. They do seem to be better at coming up with short term necessities than people who are not under the same temporal pressures.  This has always come at the cost of long term financial planning.  The traditional response of philanthropists has been to attempt to educate the poor on long term financial planning, often with very little results.  

The problem is not that poor people who are under immediate financial stress necessarily don’t understand the value of long term planning. The problem is that all their bandwidth is taken up to focus on the more immediate issue, and therefore are physically, or psychologically, unable to consider the long term.

I was considering the concept of bandwidth while meditating yesterday. I am currently doing the focus lessons on Headspace, and one of the exercises is to move the mind’s attention incrementally across different parts of the body. Two interesting things occur as one does this. The first is that there seems to be an additional sensation to whatever you might be feeling.  I can only characterize it as sometimes tingling, sometimes heat, sometimes flushness, and sometimes totally nondescript.  The second is more obvious, but perhaps more enlightening as well.  In focusing on the various parts of the body you become aware of the various sensations that are present in those parts of the body.  You become aware of tensions, or pressures, or itches, or pain, or simply the contact of your skin with the fabric of the clothes you are wearing.  

All these sensations are always there, but you are never aware of them unless you are actively focusing on them, or when they are so annoying that they demand your attention.  This is because we don’t have the conscious bandwidth to process all that is going on at once.  While our brains as whole entities can be thought of as super computers more powerful than anything created artificially by humans, the portion concerned with consciousness has a RAM and processor speed that is stuck in the 1970s.  This computer analogy can get a bit messy as computers and the brain do not function in the same manner, but there are some useful similarities.  

Pretending that consciousness functions similarly to a computer, it has been posited that we can process 16 bits of information at a time.  I suppose that actually brings us up to the late 1980s.  If we also assume that everyone has about the same processing power, what differentiates us cognitively is how we are able to apply that focus to the underlying processes, which appear to be of unlimited calculational capacity.  

16 Bits!

This piqued my curiosity because of the unique functionality of my own brain, and the similar peculiarities of others with classic ADD. This can be parsed out by examining the standard diagnostics for ADD derived from IQ and GAI (General Ability Index) tests.

You might have heard that ADD will cause a 15 point drop (a whole standard deviation) in the score on an IQ test.  In a lot of literature online the author will presume that IQ scores for ADD people are necessarily lower than those of their peers. This is not in fact true. People with ADD often score higher than average on IQ tests, on often score very high.  The 15 point drop comes from inattention in one very important part of the composite score: working memory. However this deficit can often be more than made up for in other areas of the composite score.

What does this have to do with bandwidth? Remember that we only have a limited amount of bandwidth, but there is a way to simulate augmenting it: rapid task switching.  This is not the same thing as multi-tasking, which fundamentally doesn’t exist anyway and is also achieved by task switching.  The ADD brain will focus less on a particular task or part of a task and rapidly switch between related tasks that are being processed in the background. In this way total bandwidth is augmented, which is one reason why many ADD people seem to find creativity to be easier. If there were a computer analog to this, perhaps it would be processor speed. There is not more memory available, but there is the ability to process multiple parts of the same task at once.   

This can negatively affect working memory as there is a temporal component to working memory.  To temporarily store objects in the memory, one needs to focus on them and keep them forward for some seconds. This task can prove impossible to achieve when the brain is constantly switching tasks.

Some people believe that the General Ability Index is a better composite than IQ as it weights working memory to a much lesser degree than does IQ.  I tend to disagree with this notion as I personally value working memory very highly as a measure of cognitive ability.  Perhaps this exposes my bias in that as I have the working memory of a goldfish, my scores from my last psych evaluation in both IQ and GAI appear to me to be much higher than I have ever been able to represent in any real world application.  

Shifting back to meditation and the focus exercise, I am now wondering if I can train myself to chose how I am utilizing my bandwidth through mindfulness and meditation exercises.  Is it possible for me to narrow my focus so that I can increase my working memory? Can I then still keep the ability to augment my bandwidth through higher frequency processing if I so choose?

A Meditation on Cognitive Dissonance

I haven't posted in awhile, but I am working on improving my writing by making sure to sit down and write something every day whether it is post worthy, or not. These have been mostly stream of consciousness meditations simply to get some thoughts out and to explore future topics of writing. I try to give a speech every two weeks at my Toastmasters club, and that has definitely taken time away from writing for this blog, and I am trying to do some research for a book or paper I want to write about the evolutionary significance of cognitive dissonance.

Today's meditation seemed to come out as a ready-made blog post, so here it is.

I was going to start out today’s writing by asking “what is it about people that they can’t consider alternate explanations when the evidence is overwhelming.” Of course I know the answer: cognitive dissonance. Again I engaged in discussion on a controversial topic on a friend’s Facebook page. The topic: flu shots.  

He assumed that it was stupid that a doctor had said: “Despite getting the flu shot, my family still got the flu. This only reminds me why I get the vaccine. Because the flu stinks." I left a rather long comment describing why this actually demonstrates how the vaccine works over the population.  

My friend has his beliefs, and while there may be some cognitive dissonance involved in the persistence of these beliefs, education is really the issue here: he doesn’t know how vaccines work, and it is a difficult and complicated thing to understand.  

What isn’t hard to understand is that correlation does not infer causation.  You will often hear people tell you that they know someone who got the flu directly from the flu shot.  I can understand why you might think this: a virus is a very simple organism, made up of RNA, and maybe it can mutate so that it will become virulent.  However the virus in the shot is not only inert, it is not even complete.  

I’m sure that it could be possible for this section of RNA to attach to something else and begin to replicate itself, but the likelihood that this resultant organism would also become a flu virus is on the order of zero.  

I bring this up because one person on my friend’s thread said exactly that: “I know several people who have gotten the flu from the flu shot.” Ok. How do you know that they got the flu from the shot? Instead of answering that question she stated that she finds it “exhaustingly repetitive that people with no direct knowledge of a specific situation tell you you don't know what you are talking about when you do have direct knowledge of a specific situation”.

I am sorry about that.  However I don’t see how I need to know the situation to call into question how one can be certain of their conclusion.  If you know, and accept, the the virus is inert; if you know, and accept, that it would take an astronomically unlikely event to change this fact; and you also believe that this has happened more than once… to people that you know, you should be able to come to the conclusion that, perhaps, they just got the flu.  The only thing that would keep one from making the deduction that they, in fact, just got the flu is a little irritation in your anterior cingulate cortex which initiates a fight-or-flight response.  This allows you to effectively battle the new belief, and make decisions based on your original belief.  

There are at least two evolutionary advantages to this response. One is that you won’t waste time and energy worrying about decisions that don’t matter: for the overwhelming majority of decisions made throughout our evolutionary history our original belief was at least good enough to get us through. Any difference in quality between two possible choices were overshadowed by the value of just making a decision and moving on.

The second has to do with the value of winning, or at least not losing, an argument.  For most of our evolutionary history we have not dealt at all with objective facts simply because we did not have the precision to measure them, and so they were not useful.  What is useful, in a tribal-social environment, is the maintenance of status.  You don’t maintain status by easily giving into another’s point of view, even if it may be slightly better worded or reasoned.  You maintain status by winning, and your body keeps you from losing by reacting to the possibility of losing in the same way it reacts to a real and mortal threat. Of course the cost of losing status could very well be death when resources are slim. We aren’t made to be totally cooperative creatures.  We are not built for objective reasoning.  The fact that we are even capable of it on any level is what is strange.  Perhaps it is a byproduct of our necessary capacities for logic, which we have needed to become good hunters and gatherers, and tool makers.

Cognitive dissonance only seems like an impedance in our postmodern society where we trade more in ideas and knowledge than we do in real social status.  And, based on our recent experiences in our political system, it has become a very large impedance indeed.

Who's your favorite?

We never want to pick favorites among our children, but it can be hard sometimes. Even if you don't show preferential treatment, their behaviors can definitely endear one to you over the other.  This is especially true when you have to boys and one is four years old and one is two.

My wife is really struggling with this right now as Caveboy (4) is very sweet and helpful much of the time. Of course he has his tantrums from time to time, but Cavebaby (2) is a challenge on a whole different level.  We didn't really believe the terrible twos were a real thing when Caveboy was two.  Maybe this was because our attention we focused on keeping the new baby alive, but I think that he may have been less of a challenge.

He was definitely a more polite nurser.  Also my wife was working less, and not in graduate school at the time.  Now when she sees Cavebaby its at night, when he won't sleep, or when he is battling for control of the other nipple so that he can twiddle it like he's spinning a dreidel.

For the most part I have been more immune to these issues as it isn't my nipples getting ripped off, nor am I the one trying to squeeze in some studying after bedtime.  Also I may be more predisposed to enjoy how "spirited" he is.  I put that in quotes because Cavemom might describe him as "a little shit" once in awhile.

Of course we love our Cavebaby and we both do thoroughly enjoy what a unique soul he is turning out to be, but even I am not entirely immune to having a favorite momentarily.


It can be difficult, however, when one child is writing on the couch with marker...

The work of Cavebaby

...and the other is doing the dishes. 

Cavemom's favorite* (For now)

Also if you need to clean marker off your faux suede couch, isopropyl alcohol works great.  Don't use the soap that comes with the couch first.  That will just leave weird stains on the couch.  

Busy Spring

I haven't posted in a couple of months.  I guess I haven't made this blog a priority.  As you parents know, the little ones can take up a lot of time, and of course there is getting the garden going.  I have again tackled some big, time consuming projects in the yard.  I always think that all I will have to do this next year is maintain my infrastructure, but then I think of something new to do.

Every weekend up through the last in April we ski at Arapaho Basin, where I teach.  I have yet to post about our experience with teaching our 3 year old to ski, and my thoughts on that.  The post is mostly written.  I will try to get it out soon.

Caveboy did get in several days of skiing at Arapaho Basin, and even a couple of day at Taos, New Mexico.

In the lift-line with Momma

I have posted a few pictures on the Facebook page, but I haven't yet written about this year's silly time-consuming project: fixing and expanding the hoop house.  The plastic ripped over the winter and I took this opportunity to expand.  I was lucky enough to trade for 30 feet of new plastic, but at 28 feet long I would need to make a wall on either end.  I saw something about building with wattle and daub, and cob earlier this year and decided it would be fun to build an earthen wall on the shady side of the structure.

I had no idea how much work it was to do this.  I don't know how many hours I spend mixing clay/dirt and straw, and piling it up. Part of the reason for doing it was that it would be cheaper than plywood, but the cheapest straw bales I could find were $8.50, and I needed two.  So right there I saved exactly no money.  But we all built some character.... and a little under half a wall.  It turns out that some light does enter from that side and I wanted to take advantage of that.  

The start of the wattle

Caveboy doesn't actually like touching mud. Is he really my boy?

Bam Bam likes the mud, until he realizes its all over his hands.  

The new look

The wall as I called it done.  It will be nice to have the fan for the heat of the summer. 

At three and a half, Caveboy is becoming a good help in the yard.  He can actually move a bit of dirt with his shovel and wheelbarrow, and cleared all these sticks for the wattle on the wall.

Turning the soil in the beds with his own shovel

Cleaning sticks for the wattle of the wattle and daub wall

Raising wild boys comes with its share of dangers, bangs and crashes.  Caveboy had his first couple of Urgent Care visits and his first stitches.  Funnily enough these came from wrestling with the baby and climbing out of the pool, and not from jumping sofa gaps or crashing his bike.  

Lets work on that pool exit

Bam Bam requires constant vigilance

This crash was no problem.  

Good times!

Bam Bam wants to ride

That's my quick update. I'll try to get more out soon.

-Skiing with a 3 year old
-Garden updates
-Thanksgiving trip
-Wild Boys

Mexican Trip

I haven't written as much about being a parent as I probably advertised during my initial post, or my philosophies therein.  Here's a little story about our winter trip to the Riviera Maya to visit my parents.

One thing I really appreciate about my parents is that they have always encouraged me to be learning about the world around me, and to appreciate new things.  They are continuing to help me do this, and they are helping me to share this with my children.

When my Dad retired in 2007 my parents bought a small weekender trailer to travel for two years.  After four years in that little thing, they bought the big rig, and haven't looked back.  Almost every year since 2008 they have driven their rig to Mexico to spend the winter on the beach.  Three of those years they have flown the family in for a week to share in the fun.

The second rig, which now lies in Mexican scrap yards.  

This  year Caveboy is three and a half years old, and therefore becoming aware of his world.  He's technically been to Quintana Roo all three times we have been down, but once was as a raspberry-sized cluster of cells, and the second time as a 7 month old baby.  On this trip he got to grow so much, and experience in the real world, things that had only been imaginary to him before.

Caveboy two years ago.

Some highlights for Caveboy:

• Dolphins, seals and the Sea Cow
• Crabs
• Breadnut Trees
• Tower
• Boat Ride
• Floating
• Waves
• Daddy Dolphin
• Grandpa's Orange Juice

Dolphins
Before the trip we talked about dolphins a little, not because we knew we would get to see any, but because he has a dolphin (and a crab) bath toy.  We had even started to talk about the differences between mammals and non-mammals.  He remembered that dolphins "have milk", but that fish don't have milk.

It is a totally different experience getting to see an animal in the flesh, especially when one hasn't seen Flipper.  Last year when Caveboy was two we took him to a local petting zoo where he got to see sheep for the first time.  He'd had toys of sheep, but most likely believed that sheep were only an inch and a half tall.  Boy was he excited to see how big and fluffy they actually were.

If you haven't taken your kids to the farm/petting zoo, I suggest you make a point of an outing  That day a first grade class was on their way in when a parent-chaperon asked one of the kids what his favorite farm animal was.  He answered "chickens, because they make milk"...

Dolphin at Puerta Aventuras

I had never seen dolphins in the flesh before either, but seeing them in captivity at Puerta Aventuras was a bit of a zoo experience.  The sea cow is a very interesting creature, and there were several people paying to feed them some romaine lettuce.

Sea Cow at Puerta Aventuras

Crabs were another animal that we got to see plenty of.  Hermit crabs hang round the trailers where my parents park.  They are the beaches little composters, eating the scraps accidentally, or intentionally by the locals.  Caveyboy never got quite brave enough to touch one, but he let us know each time he saw one.

The Breadnut Tree
One difficulty with traveling with small children is in how to plan activities that are fun for the whole family.  How can a hike through jungle, and a visit to the Mayan ruins at Muyil be fun for a three year old? Making an adventure out of it helps.

Babies dig culture too.

We took a guided tour with Miguel from Kan Tours, who has been a friend to my parents since their first trip to the Yucatan.  Miguel is an intense and knowledgeable naturalist and environmentalist.  He very skillfully weaves together the cultural and natural aspects of the surroundings. He knows most of the birds in the area by their call, can talk at length about the history and usage of the local flora, and knows a lot about the archaeology and history of the Mayan people.

This can be a lot for a three year old to take in, but there is always something for everyone.  One tree in particular allowed Caveboy to participate in the adventure.  The Breadnut Tree, a very common ficus-looking tree, seemed to be uniformly scattered around the jungle.  After Miguel explained all the uses to us, I was able to engage Caveboy in finding as many Breadnuts as he could.  This kept him quite happy for most of the hiking portion of trip that day.  Of course we also looked for animal sign! He was able to recognize the same scat we see up in Colorado: fox.

Caveboy with his collection of Breadnuts.

  If you ever want to scare the heck out of yourself, help a three year old climb to the top of a rickety wooden tower, and back down.

At least he isn't worried.

Safely Down

Boat Ride
Caveboy has been on a boat, in Mexico, before....


...I doubt he remembers it.

We haven't done the best job of introducing the boys to water, so the boat trip into Sian Ka'an was a new adventure.  I thought we went pretty fast across the waves of the lagoon, but, Caveboy thought it was too slow.  Dad must be old.

Miguel is an awesome guide.  

It's great having Auntie E around to hold babies

Floating
As mentioned above, the boys aren't swimmers yet, so the float trip was a little bit of a concern for Caveboy.  He had to wear his PFD properly, which is uncomfortable for floating.  The rest of us sat on them like diapers.  Luckily Cavebaby fell asleep in his Auntie's arms, and slept in the boat with Grandpa while the rest of us floated into the Sian Ka'an biosphere.

The whole trip was a great introduction to water play, and this was another, fun aspect of it.  In addition to floating, we could see fish in the crystal clear water, and many types of birds.

Floating in the canal.

Fish no have milk 

Finding Fish on the walk back to the boats

Do you remember the first time you got beat down by the ocean? I suppose I don't, though I'm sure the waves on Daejeon beach in South Korea must have sucked me under more than once when I was five years old.  Caveboy might not remember his first altercation with the rumbling sea, but I won't forget it.

Getting Bold (Grandpa just off camera)

The surf was too rough for snorkeling, and not quite big enough for surfing,but it was perfect for a three-year-old to learn to respect the sea.  He started out respectably timid, running away from the diminishing foam that spreads itself thin up the crushed coral sand.  During the first day he spent a fair amount of time being held by Auntie E out in the rolling waves.  I could tell he was nervous, but he was enjoying himself as well.

During the first afternoon he began to venture just to where the breakers would make balance a little hard, and then turn back.  By that third morning he got a little too bold.  Parents, grandparents, and Auntie E were ever present, so we felt comfortable letting the sea earn his respect.

Big Wave!

He walked out with Grandpa at his side, and Mommy lurking secretly up the beach from him.  Both cautiously and confidently he strode into the water.  One wave knocked him back a bit, but he kept his composure and sallied on.  Finally when he was just over waist deep in the surf the big one came and swept him back, and dunked him before leaving him sitting in the calm of the apex.  He looked surprised, but not (too) scared.  He now knew that there were limits.  

Whoosh!

Daddy Dolphin

Part of learning about water is to first observe how other people behave in the water.  He got to see us snorkel, and swim around in the sea and cenotes.  He even got to see Uncle Kid and I do some cliff diving.  Every time I surfaced from a dive he said something about "Daddy Dolphin".  

Clapping for Uncle Kid's first jump into Cristalino Cenote. 

Daddy Dolphin Waiting to attack (Photo: Grandma)

Grandpa's Orange Juice

One of the greatest things about the tropics is how much fresh fruit is available. Most kids can probably guess that orange juice comes from oranges, even if they think that milk comes from chickens, but its another thing to actually make your own orange juice.  The first time I had fresh squeezed orange juice I was 15, and I remember being really surprised at how much better it tastes than juice from the store.  Caveboy now knows about real orange juice.  Of course he believes that it is made exclusively by Grandpa.  

Grandpa at his orange juice station.

Trips like this are filled with days that are at once lazy and relaxing, and packed with adventure and learning for young and old alike. In addition to all the new experiences Caveboy had, Bam Bam (formerly known as Cave Baby) had his first ocean experience, I learned how to free dive to 12 meters, and Uncle Kid learned that mammals move their flippers up and down, and that fish flip from side to side.  

I love watching this guy grow.

A boy and his beach

Is My Child Ready To Ski?

"I got Timmy on skis at 18 months." "Maddie was skiing blues at 2." If you are a skier, you have probably heard some parents "proudly sharing" the age at which they first got their children on skis. And if you are a parent, or aspiring parent, who skis you have probably wondered what is the right approach to introducing your own children to the slopes.


How old should my child be? How will I know when she is ready to ski?

Is Caveboy (3.5 years, 2.5 year when I started this post!) ready to ski? Maybe.

To start out with you should probably try to ignore or try to filter through what other parents tell you about how early their children started skiing.  Focus on your own child's wants, motivations, and abilities. It can be easy to get excited to introduce your children to something that you enjoy so much, but try to remember that this will be their adventure, not yours.  I have been teaching children to ski since 2005, and even with the experience to know what it really takes to get a kid skiing and loving it, I still find myself wanting to get Caveboy out there right now.

I started this post at the end of the 2015 ski season, and I think it's about time I finished it.  Caveboy has been on the snow a couple of times now, and I will try to keep you up on how that is going as I give my opinions on how and when to start skiing.

For most children and circumstances the absolute earliest I would start your child skiing is kindergarten.

I'll start with the optimal, but keep reading past this before making the decision to wait.  Your families circumstances (access to skiing, etc.) in addition to you ability to afford lessons and your child's individual aptitudes are all part of the consideration. I will talk about the best ways to help your pre-school age children learn to ski in a later post.

For most children and circumstances the absolute earliest I would start your child skiing is kindergarten (between 5 and 6 years old). If you have a child of this age I am sure you have seen their global capabilities explode since starting kindergarten or first grade.  They are becoming very aware of their surroundings, their use and understanding of language has become on par with some adults you know, and physically they have become quite strong and agile.  For some people who don't play sports later, this may be the most fit they will ever be.

Sure there is something to be retained from skiing at four, or even three, but I have often seen that a five year old can catch up to kids who have been introduced to skiing at three or four years old in only a couple of weekends.  This is mostly due to the fact that the four year old likely only skied on the hill a couple of times, and of course they were not as strong and coordinated as they are now.  They didn't really learn that much.

The other reason that the five-year-old newbie catches up quickly is that 99% of the time the younger skier was over terrained and has developed bad, defensive skiing habits, that are very hard to break.  Conversely the five-year-old newbie, who is stronger, more patient, and better at learning physically and cognitively, and is more attuned affectively, is able to learn and perform proper fundamentals on their first day of the season.

...you have now put yourself in the same space as that Dad who hauls their kid to the top of the bunny hill and yells "Pizza Pizza Pizza!!!" at their back as they torpedo through my class and out into the parking lot.

If you get your three year old stuck in that power wedge their first season, it may take years to break them out of it.  Sure it's fun to brag that they got down that really steep green (Sundance at the Basin) stuck in the power wedge, but now you can probably be assured that your child will still be skiing like that at seven.  Even if you were smart enough to put your child in lessons, or introduce them slowly, you have now put yourself in the same space as that Dad who hauls their kid to the top of the bunny hill and yells "Pizza Pizza Pizza!!!" at their back as they torpedo through my class and out into the parking lot.  After all, that's how you learned to ski, and it totally worked.

If you don't ski every weekend it is probably best to wait until your children are at least five years old and in kindergarten or first grade to introduce them to skiing.  It will be more fun because they will learn faster, and they will be more in charge of their own adventure.

....now if you live near enough to you ski area, and will be up nearly every weekend, and have the time/money/patience, you can totally get your pre-school age kids skiing.  More on that next week.

I will also write a bit on how to prepare your kids for learning to ski, and a bit on how to teach them yourself (not recommended, but you'll still do it).