More Exposure = More Skills
Updated: Apr 30, 2020
This week my daughter walked out of her second day of Kindergarten with a huge smile on her face and shoes that were untied :) When I asked why her shoes weren't tied she said, "I asked the teacher to help me but she didn't have time to get around to me." (God bless Kindergarten teachers!) So, we decided together that we would work on shoe tying in the upcoming weekend.
I had some doubts on whether she would be able to grasp the concept but I didn't worry too much about it because 1. We had some velcro shoes as back-up, 2. I'm pretty killer at double knotting shoes so I figured I could fix the problem myself if it came down to it.
As most weekends go in our family, life was busy, and we didn't get to spend much time on the whole shoe-tying lessons. We had a few short lessons whenever we put on our shoes (which happened to be fairly often!) but that was pretty much the extent of it.
To our surprise, come Sunday afternoon, we saw Maddy sitting in the grass working on something and we asked what she was doing. "Just tying my shoes," she said.
What? Really?
Yep. Turns out the little exposure we had given her and her desire to be able to tie them at school was enough for her to focus, practice, and learn on her own.
I'd be lying if I didn't say we weren't stinkin' proud but really what this reinforces is a valuable lesson that we often try to teach throughout our programs, more exposure = more skills.
Throughout our Thrive Kids programs we are working to help expose children to a variety of skills so they are able to build a wide foundation of both physical and mental skills as they grow. When children have a wide base of skills, they are better able to take on the new challenges or obstacles that may come in their way because 1. They have already seen this type of challenge and know how to accomplish it, or 2. They aren't afraid to try new things and know that if they put in the work they can accomplish whatever they want.
At Thrive Kids we work diligently to help kids see their true strength and recognize that a new skill or challenge or something they cannot do is not a reason to run away. But instead, a reason to dig deep, make a plan, and overcome the task. We know the more we can teach kids to challenge themselves in a safe space (at Thrive, at home, etc) then the more confident they will be to reach high and never doubt their abilities.
Tying shoes, flipping tires, and doing handstands might not seem like a big deal from an outside perspective but we know these exposures can cause lasting rewards for our kids and we are here to guide our kids to succeed in ALL they do. One shoe-tying adventure at a time!