By Corran Addison
Sometimes you spend an hour getting dressed and ready to paddle, and all the kid wants to do is throw rocks into the river. Well, guess what? Today’s game is to throw rocks into the river dressed like kayakers.
Corran Addison is a regular contributor to the Paddler magazine and owns Soul Waterman
The making of your little pro paddler
That headline is what you call click bait. The reality is that, if you think you’re taking your toddler out into class 3 white water in a solo kayak so the two of you can rage side by side, you need to step back and reevaluate the meaning of life (cue Monty Python music).
Alone. Divorced.
Now, I’ll give it to you, this is the ultimate goal, is it not? To be able to go out, parent and child, sharing the sport that you dearly love. It’s a dream, and if you play your cards just right, it may actually happen. But you have to do this the right way: the smart way. And that means… baby steps!
If you read my ‘Good Dad, Bon Mom’ article in the Paddler (August, 2017) about getting your kid out onto the water, then some of this may seem repetitive. However, bear with me, as I am taking this to the next level.
I introduced my son, Kailix, to whitewater before his second birthday. He’d sit in the cockpit with me and we paddled everything from class 1 to 3. At this age, everything is just a riot of giggles and fun, and he had little concept of consequence, nor fear. That kicked in when he turned about three, which is about the same time that he had the muscle control to begin paddling his own kayak in flat water and tiny rapids.
I shaped him a boat
I started him off on a SOT, but I quickly changed tack. One, the splashing of water on him, even warm water mid summer, spooked him. Secondly, because I was taking him onto tiny little rivers with so little water that I could run around the riverbed chasing him, as soon as the SOT would touch a rock he’d go sliding off. A friend had a small plastic kids whitewater kayak and we tried that, but it was too wide and too edgy for Kailix, so I shaped him a sit inside boat of his own (that later evolved into the Mini Me). I added a flip up skeg to help him paddle straight, and by the time he was just three and a half, he was paddling class 1+ in his solo kayak. Sounds easy, right?
It’s not. Behind the scenes, there is a lot of parenting going on. Sometimes you spend an hour getting dressed and ready to paddle, and all the kid wants to do is throw rocks into the river. Well, guess what? Today’s game is to throw rocks into the river dressed like kayakers.
We also spend a lot of time playing in the water. Other than the super bony creeks where I was literally bounding about leaping from rock to rock chasing him, we would swim down any rapid he was going to run before running it. Numerous times. And if there is a rock in that little swim, I’d yank him up onto me right as we passed over it, and take the hit like a man! I have the scars and bruises to show for it.
swimming
Spending hours and hours playing in the water (always with a life jacket and helmet) has made Kailix feel very safe and comfortable in that environment. We’ve probably clocked twice the hours swimming in rivers than paddling them. However, that means that when the day came that he finally did flip over, other than a brief fright, he was not put off by the experience.
Combined with the river swimming, has been time spent in our spa: with and without his kayak. I have him diving underwater with the jets blasting, looking for trinkets at the bottom. This teaches him to hold his breath, and the constant racket and swirling water of the jets becomes normal. We make a game out of how many he can find at once and how long he can stay under.
We put his kayak in the spa, and he sits in it and flips himself over; at first holding my hand and I’d pull him out before he was even upside down, and over time letting him do it entirely by himself; when he was ready.
And it’s all about when they are ready. You push too hard, and it can backfire on you. Be patient, and remember to always keep it a game. Kailix does not love kayaking. He loves doing things with Daddy. Daddy loves kayaking, so Kailix wants to go because I love it.
Last winter, at his fourth birthday, we were visiting my father in South Africa and were paddling every day. I left for a week to do an expedition and the next day my wife asked Kailix if he wanted to go paddle. His answer was priceless, “No mommy, daddy has gone. We can so something fun now!” You know that hurt when Christine told me the story on my return, but it’s an important lesson.
A year later and he’s starting to ask to go. In the winter driving past the river he asked several times when it would be warm enough to go kayaking (proud dada moment). We did our first tandem river run in the Terrible Two since his fifth birthday, on class 3 river in spring flood, and he was giggling and screaming, “I’m excited about this one” as we’d come over the lip and he’d see the rapid below.
I’m a true believer that hand in hand with teaching him all things paddling, that it’s equally important to have him doing other ‘scary’ sports. You want to develop that natural physical ability of having control of your body and a natural mental decision-making state that sports as a whole develop. Risk assessment, judgment, failure, success, fear and elation.
The more those become ‘normal’ so the better paddler he’s likely to be. I put Kailix on motorcycles, bicycles and snowboards, but this is because these are sports I do. You’ll have your own pet sports outside of kayaking that you love.
‘speed is your friend’
After three years of paddling his own kayak, and four years of kayaking total in his short five years of life, I have yet to give him a kayaking lesson. He doesn’t know about upstream or downstream. He figured out how to make turning strokes and paddling strokes on his own long before he had the mental understanding to absorb and process this as taught instruction. He has no concept of edging. In fact the only lessons I’ve taught him are ‘speed is your friend’ (applies equally to motorbikes, snowboards, bicycles and everything else he does), and always aim straight for the top of the biggest waves.
I have him teaching his friends. It empowers him, and confirms that he knows how to do this; after all, to teach it first you must know how yourself. So he drags the kayaks to the water for his friends the way I do for him when we paddle together. He tells them how to get in, where to put their feet and knees, how to hold the paddle and then goes out with them and basically shows off. If it’s a girl…even better. But it works.
We have a little ‘sports’ calendar that has all the sports on it that he’s likely to do that month. Each time he does one he puts a sticker on it. There are no prizes, or rewards. It’s just part of the game. It’s pride for him to get home and add a sticker to that activity, and then as the month ends, look back and see how many times he did which sports.
I also show him that I can fail. When he crashes on his snowboard, if I get a sense it shook him up, I’ll make a spectacular crash in front of him. The one time he swam out of his kayak, just before his fourth birthday, running a one-metre high waterfall of all things, he got a little shaken up. So I went up, ran the same drop, and in dramatic fashion capsized in an explosion of boat and paddle. Just like daddy, he jumped into the water to come save me, his own fear from moments ago forgotten. While he didn’t run that drop again, he did go straight back up and run one about half as big several times over.
He got back on the horse. Because even daddy fell in so it must be OK.
very kid is different, and every parent is different. These are the lessons I’ve learned and what works for my son, and you can take away things from this. But you will undoubtedly have your own challenges and little tricks to overcome them.
My only steadfast piece of advice is to always keep it fun, and always, always, choose caution over excitement. You’re the adult. Your kid might want to try something you think is a bad idea. It’s better to have them mad at you for not letting them try, than be scared away because they got spooked trying something you could have prevented.
And remember, your days are numbered. It’s just a matter of time before one day your kid says, “Just follow me. You’ll be fine!” I’ve found it a useful tool to video them, and then show them the video. They see they’re being successful and that they’re having fun. Edit out any scared face moments – they don’t need reminding of that part.
