At what age should you take your children skiing?

Having watched multicoloured snakes of tiny children on the ski slopes, many parents are desperate to take their own offspring skiing. They have this idea of what fun it would be to glide elegantly en famille down the blue runs, their grateful children glowing with health and grinning from ear to ear...

It can happen like that, and when it does there's nothing better, but there's a lot of work along the way before you arrive at that stage.

Children can start to ski a little at two, if they are confident, co-ordinated and relatively fearless. Little boys seem to take to it earlier than girls, perhaps because they don't have the intelligence to imagine how much careering into a tree could sting! But you need good weather, good snow, a very gentle nursery slope and lots of time and patience, one to one. They can manage about an hour per day, probably at lunchtime, when the weather is warmer and the slopes at their emptiest.

Possibly the best preparation for skiing is tobogganing. The combination of speed, terror and lack of control is good practice. Beware, however: sledges are faster and more dangerous than skis. You need to pick your slope very carefully!

When your child is ready to start skiing, don't be fobbed off with plastic imitations of skis: he should have proper little skis and rear-entry boots. He does not need poles, however. He must have sunglasses or goggles. He probably won't be skiing fast enough to crash hard himself, but could always be fallen on by a twenty-stone beginner, or hit by a drag lift, so a helmet is essential

Two-year olds will probably start by being pulled along the flat, holding the end of one of your poles. After half an hour or so they'll be ready to be carried or dragged a few yards up a gentle slope, and allowed to slide back into the arms of Mummy, or someone else in whom they have total confidence (probably not Daddy!).

From as young as their third birthday, children can learn to go up the drag lift and ski back down in gorgeous little parallel turns, though still only for about an hour per day. A parent can help with the initial stages, such as getting used to the drag lift. You put one of your skis between the child's, put the drag between your own legs, and push the child along with your leg. But most parents are survival skiers, getting down the piste in spite of their technique, not because of it. Children learn largely through imitation, and they need someone technically perfect to copy. If you can get an instructor from your own country, it makes life a lot easier. Children find even practically bilingual foreigners very confusing!

The easiest way for them to learn is with a private instructor per child. This is very expensive. You can halve the price by sharing the lesson between two children, but with two tiny beginners an instructor spends most of his time rushing between them, preventing wipe-outs and tantrums. It costs half as much, and each child learns a quarter as much and enjoys it a tenth as much! Ski holidays are expensive, but if you want your children to learn to ski and be happy there is no alternative to spending a bit more.

Once your child can get on and off lifts alone, you can start thinking about shared lessons or even ski school, so long as classes are small and lessons relatively short. But don't rush them. Skiing is only meant to be a bit of fun. If they are as happy tobogganing or building a snowman, let them.

A three- or four-year old with, say, twenty hours' experience on the nursery slopes can probably manage to ski a green run with his or her parents. And that will be the proudest moment of your life! And if they don't get there until they're six or eight, who cares? As one Brit living in a ski resort was recently heard to say, 'My lad skied red runs at three, blacks at four, bumps and slalom at five, and got his adult Giant Slalom badge at six. But he still can't write his own name!