Why kids get better at things faster than we adults do.
Repetition doesn't bore them. It delights them.
The girls are in the backyard, learning how to skip. One end is tied to a tree and two ropes have been knotted together to give enough slack for both girls to jump in the middle.
When they started yesterday, it was beyond painful. Hardly a full rotation without the rope catching in one of those little legs. Their brains understanding the cadence but their bodies not able to respond to the rhythm. Slowly they could do it one at a time, from a standing start, the rope being rotated around the body.
Today they’ve become more ambitious. Today, they’re attempting entering the already swinging rope and then exiting. And it’s been messy. A hundred times or more.
But here’s the thing about kids that all of us forget: repetition is comforting for them, it’s exciting. It not the thing we adults bore of.
It’s why reading bedtime stories are so painful for us in ways that they’re not for kids. They rejoice in knowing what’s coming next. They find comfort in the known and the knowing.
Over and over again, they’ll stick to a thing. They’re not frustrated when the rope hits their shins. They squeal with delight. It’s just another chance to start again. To try it again.
I wish I remember what this felt like more. I wish I could tell myself to delight in the rote repetition. I’d be better at writing. I’d be better at sprint planning. I’d be better.
Because I wouldn’t be constantly turned off by the friction of defeat. I’d keep at it, not because discipline asks me to but delight pulls me too.
It’s been an hour. An hour of a rope, tied to a tree. But damned if they’re not both able to enter, simultaneously do 360s and then exit. My heart swells with simple pride.
And maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised or impressed. Because that’s what’d all get if we were more comfortable with the constant. The showing up and doing a thing until we do the thing.
We could all use some repetition in our lives.