Alex Sledding for the First Time

Being a sensory-sensitive child, Alex is often fearful and anxious of new experiences, which unfortunately prevents him from trying a lot of activities. So last Monday, when my friend invited us to go sledding, I left it to Alex to decide if he would like to give it a go as he never wanted to go sledding in the past. Imagine my surprise when he said yes. So off we went to the park and still, I wasn’t too sure that he would actually do it when we finally got there.

But the moment I parked, he got out, took his sled, told me, “I’m going to do it all by myself,” and started heading for the hills (I was actually kinda shocked at this point – a good shock but nonetheless, still a shock). And when we got to the top of the hill, he settled in his sled, and once again, told me he was going to do it all by himself. Now, you can’t even begin to imagine how ecstatic I was at this point but uh…no…he was not going to go down the hill (his very first time) all by himself. At this point, I volunteered my friend (LOL…what? I don’t know how to sled either) to go down with him once to show him the ropes. Both of them were agreeable to the arrangement (thanks so much, Amy). 😀 They had a great ride down but I wondered if Alex would decide that he didn’t really like sledding after all. Nope! He told me he loved it! Yay! He went down several more times, even had a couple of wipe-outs but he kept trudging up the hill to sled more. Until finally, he was too tired to climb the hill anymore. He saw another kid snowboarding that day and he told me, “Mommy, next time I’m going to snowboard.” Ahhh….we’ll think about that. 😀