Teaching a clingy preschooler to ski

[MinesAPintOfTea]

DS is 3, and quite good at balancing/moving around activities, so I think this season is the one where we try him on skis.

But he is very clingy at being left places, and I think he'd struggle with the ski garden I went in. What have other people done?

Just pottered in the village on skis? Stayed by the fence for the whole lesson?

Where we go they do lessons teaching parents and little kids together - teaching the parents how to teach their own children, or at least ski with them a bit. I think the adult needs to be intermediate standard.

I'm not sure staying and watching a lesson ever really works as the child will go to the parents if upset and in a group will cause problems for the instructor if one keeps heading to the fence.

My youngest started as an hour a day of 1-2-1 at 3 with the same instructor for 4 days. That worked well for him.

At that age, DS skied with us. We did get him a private lesson, but after about 20 minutes of wailing and refusal to move, the teacher admitted defeat!
So we took him out, and he was happy as larry on the blues holding onto our poles/between legs.

Ds is now 9.5 and can ski anything, offpiste and on, so it hasn't held him back!

Agree with Aftershock. I was introduced to a small company called Snowfocus through Mumsnet (look on the ski review section) and they do the teaching kids with the parents alongside/ taking part in the lesson. It works brilliantly!

Any option with more friends with kids of the same age? We dumped put ours in ESF last year at the same age, which felt pretty brutal, but there were three of them together so they actually coped fine.

My 3 year old had 3 2hour private lessons with her slightly older siblings. She went in for a half hour break in the middle. This gave her a feel for skiing, don't think she was particularly impressed, however her four and six year old siblings did.