Ski skool is best
Alistair Scott's winter warning: never teach your children to ski ne of the biggest flashpoints in parent-offspring relationships comes when the child reaches 17 and the provisional driving licence arrives. Some parents think that they can teach their children to drive and the results are generally disastrous for both parties. Tuition is best left to professionals.
For skiing families, a similar flashpoint occurs much earlier, around the ages of four or five, when parents, especially those who consider themselves good skiers, think it will be fun and mutually rewarding to teach their children how to ski. Again, disaster is virtually guaranteed, with the parents' holiday being wrecked and the added risk of the child being put off skiing for life. Here, too, there is no substitute for a professional teacher.
While it is important for children to start learning before they develop a real sense of fear, there is no point in putting them on skis much before five years of age. However, it is a good idea to get them used to the idea that snow is fun. To this end ski kindergartens, which take kids from the age of three and organise games in the snow and generally encourage sliding around in the white stuff, are a very good idea. Such places typically have adjacent indoor nurseries as refuges for when the going gets too cold. Specialist tour operators can arrange access to resort kindergartens.
Once the children are ready to snap on their skis, it is vital that they continue to have fun. Although British operators do not run their own ski schools, several have close relationships with local schools which arrange English-speaking classes specifically for their clients. Frequently, these tend to be younger, independent ski schools aiming themselves at the British market, rather than long-established 'official' ski schools. Examples include Snowfun in Val d'Isere, which runs its popular Teddy Bear Club, as well as New Generation, Oxygene and Magic in Motion which operate in other key French resorts.
One huge advantage of travelling with childfriendly operators, such as Mark Warner and Esprit, is that their staff will take the children to ski school in the morning and pick them up again at the end of the afternoon, thus leaving parents to enjoy a complete day on the slopes. (Very young siblings can be left safely in the operators' creches for the day.) If you are constrained by having to take your ski break during school holiday periods, do be aware that demand exceeds supply for all these services and it is never too early to book.
For those who want the very best and can afford it, the upmarket operator Powder Byrne provides exceptional, virtually tailormade childcare for infants from six months upwards in Swiss resorts such as Flims, Grindelwald and Zermatt.
Once all your children have reached a competent standard of skiing, then hiring a private instructor for the family can be fun and enhance the unique parent-child bonding experience of a ski holiday. The best recommendations for such instructors tend to come from friends, who will guard the best instructors' names and contact details jealously. So don't plan to holiday the same week as your friends.
All too soon, however, the huge amount of money that you have invested in your children's ski holidays and instruction will show its rewards. As they grow into teenagers, adults will almost inevitably experience that proud but humiliating moment when you realise that your kids can ski better and faster than you can.
This is the time to give in gracefully and find new challenges for them. Fortunately, there are plenty of exciting options for thrusting, ambitious teenage skiers. Probably the best of these is the Top Ski Juniors programme in Val d'Isere, which teaches teenagers not just advanced technique, but also introduces them to the delights of off-piste skiing in all conditions and gives lessons in mountaincraft, imbuing them with a real respect for the mountains and the dangers that lie within them. If your child is an aspiring ski racer, then Powder Byrne's ski camp with ex-British champion Martin Bell might be an option. Alternatively, he/she could train with a British racing club such as the Kandahar (in Miin-en) or the DHO (in Wengen), both of which also do courses for much younger skiers.
In Zermatt, the British-run Summit Ski School runs 'New Schoolers', which promises to teach tricks in terrain parks and half-pipes in addition to letting you ski every red and black run in the resort within a week.
By now the kids are adults, you've done your bit, and it's time for them to enjoy a gap-year ski season, ideally supporting themselves financially. But beware those who want you to shell out for the fashionable Canadian Ski the Gap instructor programme — it doesn't come cheap.
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