{"id":546,"date":"2008-12-31T14:11:53","date_gmt":"2008-12-31T14:11:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/2008\/12\/31\/air-five\/"},"modified":"2008-12-31T14:11:53","modified_gmt":"2008-12-31T14:11:53","slug":"air-five","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/2008\/12\/31\/air-five\/","title":{"rendered":"Air Five"},"content":{"rendered":"

I mentioned \u201cAir Fives\u201d in today\u2019s tale, and then realized that most people probably don\u2019t know what an Air Five is\u2026<\/p>\n

I created \u201cAir Five\u201d as a way of giving the kids high fives from far away.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how to do it:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Face your\u00a0partner (child, parent, friend, or whatever. I\u2019m going to call him\/her your partner).<\/li>\n
  2. Hold up your right hand with just the index finger extended upward and shout \u201cone\u201d.<\/li>\n
  3. At this point, your partner holds his or her right hand up, mirroring you.<\/li>\n
  4. Put a second finger up and shout \u201ctwo\u201d.\u00a0Your partner should be doing the same.<\/li>\n
  5. Next put a third finger up and shout \u201cthree\u201d. At this point, you and your partner should be in sync, putting the third finger up simultaneously.<\/li>\n
  6. Insted of going to \u201cfour,\u201d extend all five fingers and pretend you\u2019re high-fiving your partner.<\/li>\n
  7. Because you\u2019re in sync, your partner will do the same.<\/li>\n
  8. Shout \u201cpop\u201d and stop your hand right at the point when your hands would meet.<\/li>\n
  9. If it works right, your partner will shout it at exactly the same time you do, and both your hands will stop at the same time.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    This sounds complicated, but it\u2019s not. The first time I did it, I shouted \u201cAir Five\u201d and just pretended to give a high five. My oldest gave me one back. I added the counting because it was frustrating to not be in sync. I didn\u2019t explain the counting to him, I just did it a few times and he caught on. As long as you keep your counting rhythmic, it\u2019ll work.<\/p>\n

    After both you and your partner understand what\u2019s going on, you can dump the shouted counting. Just hold one finger up, and he\/she will do the same.<\/p>\n

    What\u2019s the point of an Air Five? Well, try it. It\u2019s amazing how much it feels like a high five, and it makes a great connection with your partner across a soccer field, or through a car\u00a0window, or even when your little one is standing up on stage at a Christmas Concert.<\/p>\n

    If you do it during a Christmas concert, though, try to resist shouting \u201cpop!\u201d<\/p>\n

    Especially if your wife is the one in charge of putting on said Christmas concert.<\/p>\n

    Trust me on that one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Interested in making long distance connections with your kids? Check this out!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[117],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-general"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-8O","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}