Chapter 6: After the Fall: Learning Resilience in Alpine Downhill Skiing

This chapter takes the concept of resilience onto the slopes of the Austrian Alps. Children learning how to ski face (sportive) adversity. Falling is not only important for the learning process on skis, it accompanies us through our whole life. The longitudinal project accompanied a family where the parents teach their children how to ski. Videos on the slope were taken over the course of four years with the help of action cameras. In this chapter, scenes of the children falling and the parents’ reaction to these incidents were analyzed under the focus of building resilience in everyday life and scaffolding as a learning theory. The relationship between resilience and scaffolding is discussed. In challenging situations, children naturally look for guidance from their parents. Non-dramatization and the controlled release into autonomy seem to be key aspects in building and strengthening resilience on the slope.