teaching your own children to ride

that's what i have found so far but as she has her own pony i need to do it part of the time as i can not afford a instructor every time she rides lol
 
Dont do it!!!! It will challenge your sanity.................

Sorry dont know how old your daughter is but my children rode from 4 to adulthood, so been through the whole range of emotions, what a rollercoaster, LOL! Loved every minute.

When it all became too much for me & my children, ie. too many rows were occuring - they had lessons, went to a lot of PC rallies and shared some lessons and schooling lessons (over XC courses etc) with friends, this was plenty.

If they are in the pony club and go to the rallies and camp they are probably getting a fair amount of instruction anyway, you would only need to top up occasionally. It is supposed to be fun at their age.
 
thanks

they are 7 & 4, the 7 year old has been riding in walk on the lr since she could hold her head up lol but has not had any lessons yet due to lack of school.
 
It depends on the child. Obviously they want to ride more often than you will want to pay for an instructor, so I do end up supervising but try (not always successfully, note sore tongue
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) to limit my frightfully helpful comments unless anything is unsafe or really undesirable. If we are hacking I try hard to say nothing about the riding and just enjoy the event.

Sometimes she asks for help and that's fine, but I have to tread carefully! It can be good to say ''Let's ask your teacher about that next time,'' if things get sticky. Depends what mood we are in!

I agree that Pony Club is the place to go - excellent value for money - and the instructors have a kudos which I don't have. Why does she believe it when they say it, but not when I do? But teaching them solo with no instructor. No thanks!
 
I do and we have no problems except sometimes she says that something i might say doesnt sink in but if her instructor says it she does it??!!

Im lucky as my daughter actually wants me to help her and she does benefit i suppose as i havea fab instructor so i pass it all on to her

depend on the people i think
 
I'm actually too scared of mine falling off and hurting themselves (ages 4 and 1), my mother in law waould kill me! She blames the horses for everything from my messy car to my lack of ironing and would love a good excuse to really get stuck in lol.
Maybe if I had the right pony (current one is only 3) then I'd feel a bit better about it, though I suspect it would escalate very quickly into rows and that's the last thing I want. I really want it to be fun for them and stubborn little thing that my daughter is I think she's refuse to ride on principle if I showed that I cared enough to argue with her about it!!
 
I've have taught my daughter since she was 4 and at that age didn't have any problems, but now at 9yrs she does have a bit more attitude when I tell her what to do, especially as she is already jumping bigger than I can.
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She did start having some lessons this year as her pony isn't the easiest and I ended up shouting at her, when really it was the pony. I think an instructor once a month or so helps them gain confidence also try joining a pony club , my daughter loves it
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I had been out of horses for 25 years when we were asked if we would look after a little showjumping mare known locally as "the hooligan" who had damaged a tendon. As she got better I was to give her led walking exercise. My daughter wanted to ride so I got her a hat and bunged her on top - no stirrups. These are a couple of pictures of the first day she rode. Clickable links




I have to say the pony was brilliant. She was so good for my little girl and yet a couple of weeks later when she was fully sound and was going out on proper loan I saw her have a couple of experienced adults off just because she could! Whizzy? oh yes - but when my daughter was riding her she was quiet as anything - even when we did some tiny cross poles.

Once C was confident and could sit reasonably and hold the reins properly I sent her to a riding school - we were going to have too many arguments.
 
Have done a mixture of me teaching her and lessons with an instructor. When she was really young it worked well with me teaching, but then I reached a point where it was easier to hand it over to someone else. Now she is 11 we seemed to have reached a point where she is happy to listen to mum again, although she still has an instructor as well.

I find the best approach now is to just sit and watch and wait for her to ask for advice, rather than volunteering it. She is quite self-critical anyway and is well aware of what needs to be improved.
 
thanks everyone.

thinking if i sort of help her in between lessons that might be ok, as well as getting someone else on the yard who has the same ideas as me to give her some help.
 
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