It's competition time!

No. Not competition time for you. I don't have any prizes to give away.

It was competition time for the Wee One. One of the local climbing centres does a home ed climbing class a couple of times a week and the participants are invited to take part in the schools climbing competition. I didn't even mention it to her last year. And I don't know why I did this year...but she really wanted to do it.

It meant missing her regular Wednesday activity but she didn't mind. Which surprised me. Nor was she worried about it being too hard, or it being too busy, or too boring, or not winning, or her regular friends not taking part, or anything. She just wanted to do it. Now that I think about it, she had the perfect attitude. She actually said to me and her coach, "It doesn't matter if its hard. It's not the winning that's important, it's the taking part." 

Couldn't really argue with that, could I? 

So I agreed to sitting in the cold climbing centre for 5 hours or so while she did it. It was chaos. Luckily some of the mothers from the other home ed climbing class were there and knew how it all worked and what to expect and what to do. 

There were a lot of really hard climbs that required a couple of tries and a bit of problem solving and planning.

  This one was the first time she cleared a ledge and she was really proud of herself. :) She had already done it, but had to do it again to show me! 

Proud face!

Just for fun!

I think she got a lot out of it. She knows that hard things are often fun things too. She wasn't bothered about winning anything, but really got a sense of achievement from taking part. There were some  climbs that were really hard and there was no way she was going to be able to do them. Some of those she tried and some she didn't as you can see from the score card above. I think she has a sense of the progress she has already made and thinks that she may be able to do them in the future, just not yet.

I can't quite get over that. How cool to be a kid who wants to do things and doesn't  have to worry about it. That wasn't me when I was a kid so I can't quite understand it. But it was a good day. Tiring, but good. :)