Skipping, Cartwheels and Perseverance

Milestones!

It's the 20th of May and today our son turns 4.5 and our daughter tomorrow will be 6.  In their minds at least the day they actually cross over from 5.5 to 6 and just 4 to 4.5 is very important. Along with the chronological changes there's been some major advances in the Mottl household of late.

Life changing, confidence building skills have been practiced (and practiced and practised), to a large extent mastered and there is no turning back- Yes, Lilly is into her fourth week at 'Big School' and seems to be loving it. She's learning a huge new range of skills from drawing techniques, writing and reading and how bricks are made, (fascinating stuff when the process is regurgitated from the back seat of the car).  Sebastian is very keen to run into school on his own- 'without you mum, I'm fine" and is getting used to not having his big sister around at school or in the afternoons- Lilly's school day is now 9-5 and Seb finishes at 1pm.

All these changes are amazing but I must confess my initial reference to life changing, confidence building skills is a bit more basic than that.

Lilly has learnt to cartwheel, and jump rope and Sebastian has learnt to skip. Two feet off the ground simultaneously- hippety- hoppety all around the place. It's a joy to watch, and I can't pretend I'm not proud of them, but there's more to it than that.  It's bought to light the idea of perseverance and what it can achieve, that along with the joy each of them have experienced by achieving these physical feats. It's all happening so fast, a few weeks ago I discovered Seb could skip and the very next day they'd both come home doing handstands against the wall. Goodness knows what tomorrow will bring.

Well tomorrow came and went and Seb is now cartwheeling. My fascination is in the process and perseverance both children displayed in their commitment to learn these skills. Lilly's been chartwheeling for ages, but they were a bit sideways and not really a cartwheel, more of a cart-roll.

One day, I noticed they'd strung up a line between two trees in our back garden. They then proceeded to jump over the rope, then cartwheel over it and viola, all of a sudden her cartwheels were amazing. Seb was learning from scratch so it took a little longer, but as of today they are looking pretty good.

Persistence- you can't get past it. You spend so much time trying to educate and steer your kids in a certain direction. So often it seems they are the teachers, they give the lessons, they hold up the mirror!  

I had a discussion in the car the other day with Lilly about this very thing. The idea of not giving up, the idea of not listening to people if they tell you something isn't any good, the idea of persisting and continuing to try. It resonated quite strongly with me at the time as if I had a little being on my shoulder whispering- "these sentiments are for you too you know"

The other intriguing idea that struck me while reflecting on all of this is that somewhere along the way we stop, or we forget how to be excited about the little things- I guess cartwheels and skipping to a child are HUGE things to achieve and it's nice to view this and put it all into perspective. I know I'm guilty so often of concentrating on the things I haven't done rather than the things I have.  Just another reminder to stop, smell the roses and watch the cartwheels ( and goodness knows maybe even do a few! )