Allyson Felix on the Last Teachable Moment with Daughter, 4: 'She Thought She Was Going to Get It'
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"Patience is always a lesson that is reoccurring," the Olympian tells PEOPLE of teaching her little girl
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Allyson Felix has a lot of teachable moments with her daughter Camryn.
In an interview with PEOPLE, the 11x Olympic gold medal-winning runner recalled the latest lesson her 4-year-old had to learn at the digital community launch of her shoe brand Saysh on Monday.
While Felix admitted that “there's a lot of” teachable moments with her little one, she remembered that Camryn “recently just had her first little dance recital," for which Felix had to teach her patience.
“They sent home the choreography for us to work with her. She's 4 and so it was quite a bit, and I think she thought she was going to get it right away,” Felix, 37, said at the event, which was held at the Petit Ermitage in West Hollywood, Calif.
“And so, [it was about] just teaching her, ‘We got to break things down. We have a big ambitious goal, but we have to make it in little bite-sized pieces,’ ” she explained. “So we worked on it a little bit every single day. And then just seeing her, the light going off and her getting it was really fun. So patience is always a lesson that is reoccurring.”
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Now that Camryn’s dance recital is behind them, Felix — who retired as the most decorated sprinter in U.S. history — is looking forward to taking her daughter on more hikes this summer.
“We've done a few, and she's kind of given out at a certain point and wanted to be carried,” the athlete said with a laugh. “I think that there's a lot of things, trips we want to take… We can go to the beach, we can do all these amazing things. So hikes and just appreciating our own backyard is something I want to do.”
Describing herself as a “very regimented structured person” who likes “things to flow,” Felix revealed that for her, the hardest part about being a parent is “you have to break that down and just be open to a little bit of chaos and a little bit of just going with the flow.”
“I think that's been really challenging just to reshape the way that I work,” she added. “And the most amazing [part] is just watching her grow. It's just seeing her personality and seeing her joy has just been just absolutely amazing.”
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SAYSH
As for how she hopes the launch of Saysh’s digital community will inspire her daughter, Felix told PEOPLE, “I think about just the world that I want my daughter to grow up in, and I feel like I'm better when I can pour into myself, and I think other women are as well. And so I think that's really what motivates me to do this work as well.”
“Obviously, we're a company that sells shoes for women, but we just feel like we're so much more than that,” she continued. “It’s such a deeper level of what our shoes signify and what we can hopefully help and do for women as well.”
“I hope it really teaches her that she doesn't have to have limits,” Felix said of her company’s impact on her daughter. “I think sometimes this world puts a lot of limitations on us, and whether it's because she's a girl or a girl of color, whatever these things are, I hope that none of those things get in her way. And I think that's what we're trying to do here.”
She added, “I hope that the work that we're doing here just helps her in the life that she's going to have and her generation is going to have later on.”
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