The Olympics are inspiring this generation

The official slogan for the 2012 Olympics is “inspire a generation”, and that definitely seems to be happening in our family. We’ve relaxed all our usual television watching rules for this fortnight, and are allowing the television to be both tuned to “live” TV, and left on in the background during the day. Those are usually both not allowed within our house, but an Olympic games in our country is probably only going to happen once in our lifetimes, and I’d love the kids to remember it. I’m probably pushing my luck with the geekson in that regard, but I hope it might make an impression on the geekdaughter…

The kids have enjoyed my slightly more relaxed attitude to television over the last few days, especially as I’ve allowed them to eat as many meals as possible off their laps rather than at the table. As the photo above shows, the Olympics are definitely holding their attention. I haven’t yet shown them the full opening ceremony, but we did watch the highlights video via the BBC News website, and the geekdaughter was particularly taken by the lighting of the Olympic flame – I think this all had extra meaning for her as we had been to see the Olympic torch when it passed through locally.

We were particularly keen to ensure the geekdaughter got the chance to see some Olympic swimming, as she has been so enjoying her swimming classes recently and goes to great lengths to tell anyone and everyone how good she is! I wanted to show her some really good swimmers, and she has loved watching them. She’s already told me that she wants to swim butterfly at her next swimming lesson, and we’ve had a lovely time comparing the way she swims now to freestyle (there are some similarities!). We’ve also watched some of the three-day eventing and the gymnastics together, and I’m really looking forward to the start of the athletics so she can see that too.

Last Saturday the geekdaughter decided she wanted to be a hairdresser when she grows up. We took the geekson to get his hair cut, and whilst we waited she watched one of the other hairdressers in the salon curling a lady’s hair. She thought this looked like fun, and I think that’s where her ambition came from. However I can tell the impact the Olympics has had on her by the way she said to me today:

Mummy, I don’t want to be a hairdresser any more. I want to be one of those (pointing at the television showing the Olympics)

She started off wanting to be a swimmer, but now she also wants to be a horse rider and a gymnast. And I’m sure as she sees more sports she will want to try them all! She’s also told me she’s going to carry the Olympic torch one day too. As someone who never got on well with sports as a kid I am absolutely delighted to see her so enthused about the whole thing.

I am really enjoying sharing this amazing event with my kids, and I really hope it inspires both of them to at least try sports. Thank you for that, London 2012.

Tagged as: 2012, children, generation, inspire, London, olympics, young