First Strides

A year ago we took our then 4 year old daughter to a Try Hockey For Free event. She was already sort of skating and we knew she would love it. She did, and so did her brother. Problem was, he was only 2 years old, too young for the event. He cried and cried because he so badly wanted to go on the ice. Finally he calmed down but it was all I could do to keep on the sidelines watching.

A year has gone by. He’s got his first set of skates and at 3 years old is too young for most programs. I would never in a million years enroll him in anything except... the kid is wild for hockey, for sports in general. When he watches sports live or on tv, he plays by himself, and is part of the play in his own way. He sees his sister go off to organized sports and it is agonizing for him. He wants to play, wants to be like her.

And so, he is now enrolled in tot hockey at our local rink. The programming is incredible, how patient they are with the various sets of circumstances each new hockey player has. Here he is on his first day of tot hockey, from this weekend:

That’s him getting help with his mitts. He was quite stationary during the lesson, despite the encouragement from his coach and the fact that I’ve seen him push one of those things around before.

 I’ve seen so many kids learn to skate with those but my kids just hung on them like a crutch. My daughter eventually got the basics of balance and motion figured out on roller skates, then it transferred easily to ice.  

My son, I took him back today and we practiced marching on skates around the ice, holding his hand as we went. I taught him to bend his knees and put his hands out like wings of airplane if he thought he was going to fall. Of course he did fall, so I taught him to kneel on one knee, put hands on his knee and push up to standing. Sometimes I skated backwards and held both his hands while he skated forwards. Eventually I put a gap between us, outstretched my arms and encouraged him to skate. He eventually took his first strides, unassisted. I really loved that moment. It’s his fifth time on the ice. No more walker. Just stomp stomp glide a few feet at a time and soon, all over the ice.