Just let him skate for the fun of skating 🙄 This is some helicopter parenting my kids gonna be the next Olympic athlete nonsense that goes against the ethos of skateboarding.
He’s six! He shouldn’t have fucking goals. His only goal should be FUN. Don’t live your life vicariously through him.
Source: I started skating in the 90s at like 7 years old. I still skate nearly 30 years later because it wasn’t treated like a fucking career by my parents.
Hey, I appreciate the sentiment but I think you're reading to much into my words.
This is like the opposite of helicopter parenting. I'm literally trying to set up my son to have fun when he doesn't want me around. I'm not interested in him skateboarding for anything other than fun (well it's also a good way to talk about evaluating risk and making smart decisions).
He has something inside of him that drives him in a way I don't understand. I'm not sure it's healthy to be honest.
A few months ago he had a goal of riding his skateboard off a small ledge (maybe twice the height of a curb). He practiced riding off a sidewalk onto the grass for what felt like 2 hours (the ledge was at a skatepark not near home). He wanted me to film it so that he could figure out what he needed to do, and to show mom.
It's great that you still skate, I'm actually thinking about learning so that I have something to do at all the skateparks I'm getting dragged to. At one skatepark we met a guy that was in his 60s that learned in his 50s so that was a bit inspirational.
Have him watch a lot of skate videos! Start from the beginning of its history in the 70s, and watch surfing as well. I loved watching dogtown and z boys when I was younger both the documentary and the dramatic version although the dramatic version might be too adult themed for him you might want to watch it first because I can’t remember what goes on but there might be sex drugs rock and roll stuff. Also the old Powell peralta videos and then into the 90s and the beginning of street skating. A lot of it (all?) is on YouTube. I really loved the old blind videos and girls yeah right. And the (relatively) newer stuff from supreme. One of my fav clips of all time is tyshawn jumping the 145th subway station in Harlem - I used to live there that was my station so to see it was wild.
He will learn so much just by watching the pros. I never got good at skateboarding I had too many traumatic falls too young that instilled too much fear in me (not to mention being a queer girl in the 90s the neighborhood bullies were bad to me for it - skateboarding is the opposite of that today thank god) but instead it got channeled into snowboarding and I did the same thing growing up watching all the vids. It teaches you something, form, style, the history of tricks. Music taste!
As for you - pad up! All the pads! Start at the bottom of a larger halfpipe and learn to pump it up and down back and forth and then learn to kick turn backside and frontside and eventually how to drop in and rock to fakie. On street learn how to Ollie, how to drop off small curbs, how to stop sliding the wheels. It’s so fun!
Sorry for my attitude. I live in a wealthy tourist area where parents pay $100k a year to private mountain schools because their kid is gonna be the next Olympic athlete…. A lot of the kids seem like it’s work rather than a passion.
It's all good.
I like the idea of watching classic videos maybe it will showcase more accessible techniques.
We have watched a few rodney mullen videos, but we weren't really watching for techniques.
I'm personally just interested in getting steady enough to pump the ramps and cruise around
Rodney mullen is sick but he’s like from another planet or something!
Pumping transition starting from the bottom will get your balance figured out in no time :)
I'm glad I didn't have cameras around for all the times I skated in "no skateboarding" zones and had to run from RACs. Back then we didn't have skate parks and stuff like they do these days. Back then skating was practically illegal.
Same. It was barely tolerated. I was never asked to leave anywhere (I was never that good, my talent went to snowboarding instead) but it was frowned upon.