Why You Should Teach Your Kid to Skateboard

September 16, 2011, By Jason Avant 1 comment

Jason Avant

clackCLACKclackCLACKclackCLACK.

The thing makes a sound like nothing else—heads turn (tourists, likely) at "what is that?" speed. It makes a sound like a bunch of other things—a horse, a train, an assembly line. Contradictory, yes. So are ominous clouds piling up over the ocean, the threat of rain in sunny Southern California. So is wearing shorts and a t-shirt in the middle of winter. So is the sight of a 42-year-old father of two carving turns on a skateboard, flowing down a sidewalk on a Saturday morning.

I hadn't done this in a while. Didn't even have the right shoes for it. A few weeks ago I'd tossed my old paint-spattered leather skateboard shoes—think of them as a cross between low-top basketball shoes and cross-trainers, with a large flat sole, that width vital to keep you stable on a moving board. The fashionable slip-on Converse All-Stars hurt. My arches felt like they were going to collapse, leaving me with flippers instead of feet. My right calf was tight. Apparently there are calf muscles that only come into play when the leg pushes a skateboard. The weird pains of age.

I rolled past a cop sitting on his motorcycle, radar gun at the ready. Was this legal? I didn't see any NO SKATEBOARDING ALLOWED signs. Mirrored sunglasses tracked me. I didn't get pulled over. Perhaps Skateboarding Is Not A Crime after all.

That was a rare occurrence—skateboarding by myself, that is. We made the decision when Lucas was four that he was going to learn how to skateboard, and that as soon as he was old enough we were going to get him enrolled in skateboard classes at our local Y. (This is California, where YMCA’s teach skateboarding; in fact, our Y has a massive skatepark that was host to an X Games competition a few years back, thanks in no small part to support from locals Shawn White and Tony Hawk.)

We got the kid a “toy” board—festooned with Disney characters, the trucks and wheels designed to roll just enough to make it interesting, not dangerous—along with a set of pads and a helmet. At four, he wasn’t interested in doing much more than sitting down on it and scooting around the driveway. Then he hit five. Old enough to start lessons at the Y, and savvy enough to know that the board we got him at Target wasn’t something he’d want (or be able) to take into a quarterpipe. As it happened, my wife’s dad took him to a popular skate shop in LA, and he was outfitted in the latest protective gear, the proud owner of a custom-built board that would serve him well as he learned the art and science of the kickturn, the Ollie and the grind.