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 Ben is worn out taking care of Nicholas.
I read an anecdote which talked about the Olympian Jim Thorpe taking part in a study where he followed a toddler around and did everything the toddler did (crawling, running, climbing). Apparently this super fit man collapsed after an hour while the toddler just kept chugging away. I always remember this story whenever my kids' energy levels seem freakishly endless in supply.
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Low, Medium, High and Very High
By Rina on October 23th, 2009
It's taken me a while to understand that people are born with different energy levels (low, medium, high and very high) and it's not a question of one being better than the other but of how that energy is used in your life, and that among couples, and especially when you have kids, there can be compatibility issues. If you have a family where both parents are low energy, very sort of laid back and content with quiet activities, yet they have a child who is high energy and requires a lot of acitvities to keep him from being bored, the parents might mistakenly think their child is unnaturally hyper. Yet the same child in a family with parents who have the same energy levels to take him skiing, biking, hiking, play hockey with him on the driveway or soccer in the park, would not be considered hyper at all, just active. On the other hand, very high energy parents with a low energy child might be frustrated because they want to do all kinds of physical activities and be on the go and if the child is more of a couch potato then again there is an incompatibility issue.
I think that when parents understand this, all of a sudden you can then channel those energies so that everyone in the family is happy. Low energy parents would realize that their daughter who wants to always be on the go is not actually hyper, she just needs a proper outlet. It doesn't mean the parents have to run around with her but they could sign her up in activities that allow her to burn up all that energy and their involvement just means watching her. If high energy parents want to make sure their low energy son is active and not just watching TV, they can involve him in going for hikes but keep in mind he may need to stop a lot and examine the trees instead of running boisterously up the mountain, and that that's okay too.
In a family of six, we've all got different energy levels from low to high and it is quite a challenge sometimes to make sure everyone is active and happy. Fortunately Daniel and I are both medium energy people who can comfortably turn it up to high or down to low when the occasion calls for it. I know some people who are not just high but very high energy; they literally cannot sit still and they have a hard time around their lower energy friends, and vice versa.
Mia, our youngest, is definitely high energy but since I realize this I just let her run run run around the park or garden to her heart's content without worrying that she needs to be on Ritalin. One day she was doing the monkey bars and I decided to count the number of times she went back and forth on them before she stopped. This included running around the jungle gym and climbing up the steps to get to the monkey bars. She did them 44 times non-stop and the only reason she did stop was by then we had to go home! She will never say no to a walk and will skip and run the entire time. In the pool she loves to see how far she can swim till she's panting and tired out. Around some really laid back people she might appear to be hyper but she can also sit quietly and draw or read after all her physical energies have been spent. She told me once that she loves to run so she can feel her heart beating afterwards.
By contrast, Nicholas at the same age would sit around a lot and observe things and when we signed him up for soccer he would stop running because he told me his heart was beating too fast! I don't think I ever saw him break out into a sweat, and to get him to bike further than 2 km we had to promise him some ice cream. He wondered out loud what the point was to toss a ball around, and in the winter instead of playing hockey on our backyard skating rink, he would leisurely skate and then sit on a chair afterwards. Now I must admit I can be pretty impatient with that sort of thing but luckily Daniel was perseverant in getting Nicholas to do these activities with us. He would take him skiing on bunny hills by bribing him with poutine and a hot chocolate, he would take him biking to get a slush. He'd make him rake leaves and mow the lawn. So I would say Nicholas used to be low energy but now he isn't and here's what I think happened. He started piano lessons at age 11 and just took to music instantly. He started playing guitar and then drums and he was truly motivated, paying for his instruments with his own allowance and birthday money. He would spend hours playing and be all hot and sweaty and tired after, and I think for the first time he felt the rewards of physical exertion. For a recital he had to play "Moonlight Sonata" and he literally practiced that piece 200 times, sometimes as much as 15x in a row, and not even notice it had gotten dark outside and he had to turn on the lights. He plays Led Zeppelin and Van Halen on the guitar and Rush on the drums and will practice for hours. After that, he was more energized to do other stuff. Today he is sixteen and while he still loves to just sit around and listen to music, he also skis, bikes long distances, is a lifeguard at the community pool and enjoys running and working out at the gym. What a relief! I sometimes had scary visions of him sitting around in his pajamas all day, to be honest. Thank God for music. |
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