My Impressive Cartwheel

My son came home from jump rope team practice last night a little bummed that he was one of the few that couldn't perform a cartwheel.  One of the tricks team members need to learn for double dutch is to cartwheel into the rope jumping area.  Of course, you need to be able to do cartwheel in the first place.  I didn't anticipate not being able to perform a cartwheel was going to hold back my son in any interests at this point, but here we are, needing to teach him to do a cartwheel at 12.

I asked him to try one out for me to see what was going wrong.  He was trying to bring his legs over at the same time, so I gave him some verbal tips on how to correct that.  He still couldn't figure out.  Since one of the best ways to teach someone is to show them, I said, "Here.  Watch," and performed a cartwheel for him to see.

Image: digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

After my performance, my son exclaimed, "WOW! I didn't know you could do a cartwheel!" Huh! Who knew that a cartwheel would impress my 12-year-old son?  I guess he thought his old mom didn't have any spunk left in her. If only I had known this sooner! I'm quickly running out of ways to impress him. 

I just hope he doesn't come home from practice next week saying he needs to learn how to do a back flip. I'm not entirely sure I can pull that one off anymore without some serious injury!