Fred Mawer (blue jacket) took his family on their first ski outing, onto the slopes of La Rosire in France Photo: FRED MAWER

The French resort of La Rosire, where the family spent their first ski trip Photo: FRED MAWER

Esprit offers children-only lessons Photo: FRED MAWER

A family all learning to ski from scratch at the same time is, it would seem, something of a rarity. For the week over Christmas in the French resort of La Rosière, the family skiing specialist Esprit Ski had just two families out of its 185 guests embarking on this challenge. One of those was the Mawers. The others clearly knew better.

Though my partner Emily and I had left it foolishly late to take up skiing – we are both in our mid-forties – our boys Arthur and Edward are seven and five and at just the right age to start, we had been told. We had been directed towards La Rosière, a snow-sure, small-scale French resort, with nursery slopes right by the chalets it uses and wide, gentle pistes up the mountain for when (or if) we improved.

It all looked so inviting on arrival, but Emily and I were decidedly apprehensive and anxious about how everything was going to pan out. We just couldn't believe that within a matter of days we would all be whizzing down the slopes on skis like everyone else in sight.

Our first concern was that young children invariably learn to ski separately from adults. We were worried about whether the boys were going to enjoy their lesson, or whether they would be warm enough. We even debated postponing our initial lesson until the second day so we could keep an eye on them.

Second, we all had to be breakfasted and kitted up in all the unfamiliar gear – not least the ski boots, equipment designed to make life hell for the uninitiated – by 8.30am each day, ready for our lessons. Early mornings did not feel like a holiday. In fact, back home, getting out the door and off to school has seemed a doddle ever since.

As it turned out, both Arthur and Edward enjoyed their lessons right from the off. The boys' feedback, and the brief, written reports we received from Esprit at the end of each day, suggested they were progressing well, initially in the snow garden behind our chalet, then doing snowploughs and turns down the nursery slope, and getting to grips with its drag lift.

Meanwhile, Emily and I were ignominiously tumbling over on the same beginners' slopes and falling off the same drag lift. But by and large we were getting on fine, too, not least because we were in a small group with just one other couple, and Alain, our instructor, was good at subtly pushing us to do runs that were always slightly beyond our comfort zone. On our fifth and last lesson, we even managed to navigate the long, main blue run from well up the mountain back down to the resort, in poor visibility and horizontal sleet to boot (the main gripe skiers have about La Rosière is that it can often be windy).

The other big change in the latter half of the week was that we could start skiing with the boys in the afternoons. Initially, we did this on the nursery slopes. We were amazed at their prowess. The boys were far more naturally balanced, and fearless, than their parents (admittedly, that's not saying much) and it was hard to keep up with them: they preferred to bomb down the slopes in a direct line than bother with any of that turning nonsense.

On our last day, we decided, after much agonising, to take the boys up the mountain proper. Esprit offers a "family guiding" service, expressly for parents who do not yet feel confident about taking children out on their own. But we wanted that real family ski-bonding experience. So we had declined. Big mistake.

The plan was to do a benign green run through the forest that Emily and I had tackled a dozen times over the previous days. Although the boys hadn't been off the nursery slopes, their instructor told us they were up to it.

But our downfall turned out to be the long drag lift. Two thirds of the way up, Arthur fell off – the button-shaped seat came out from under his bottom. Emily dived off to help. By the time I came past, I heard her shout out "I've hurt my leg", but with Edward still being pulled up the slope on the lift in front of me, I couldn't stop.

Higher up, Edward fell off the lift too, so I had to hurl myself off. Luckily, we were near the top and were able to get across on to the green run, which we skied without any problems.

Back down at the bottom, I waited anxiously for the rest of my family, not knowing what to do. I had no mobile reception and suddenly felt completely powerless.

It seemed an age before Arthur appeared, escorted by friends from our chalet down a blue run – and as you might imagine, rather chuffed with himself. But where was Emily? She arrived a few minutes later, rather less elegantly – on a blood wagon. My heart sank.

Thankfully, it turned out that she had done nothing more serious than to pull a muscle in her thigh as she clambered through deep snow to reach Arthur. Only her pride had suffered any real damage, and she was able to hobble off with us to a café to recount the tale over a recuperative chocolat chaud.

None the less, the whole incident did crystallise the particular difficulty a family faces starting out skiing together – something akin to the blind leading the blind. But we have definitely got the skiing bug.

That all four of us were able to descend blue and green runs by the end of the week was enormously satisfying; it certainly wasn't something we had envisaged six days earlier, when we had resorted to buying toboggans in case the skiing did not work out.

It is demanding for a whole family to learn to ski simultaneously, but given the stresses involved in a first trip, plus the financial investment – think kit and lessons – it would be a waste to go just once.

Next time, we will be able to ski much more en famille – and, who knows, perhaps we will all manage to get down the mountain together, and in one piece.

Lessons learnt by a family of beginners

• Opt for a package holiday. You need as much help as possible. You want reps on hand to answer daft questions, to help sort out the logistics, to take children to their lessons and to lay on childcare while you are practising.

• When getting your ski boots in the rental shop, make sure they fit properly. As a beginner, it's hard to know how they should feel. We had to take Emily's and Arthur's boots back – which was a real pain.

• Small class sizes, both for adults and children, seem to be vital for swift progress – more one-to-one attention, more practice, less standing around getting cold. For children aged five to nine, Esprit guarantees a maximum class size of eight: given how quickly our boys advanced, that number seems fine.

• Evolution 2 offers sessions of three group lessons as standard to adult beginners. We found that wasn't enough to get us confident: on a week's holiday, sign up for five days.

• Don't overspend on lift passes. You may not progress from the nursery slopes as beginners and therefore won't need any passes until several days into your holiday, or, in the case of young children, until the end of the week.

• Everyone warned us that the combination of high altitude, dry air and plentiful exercise means it's easy to get dehydrated. But it's hard to monitor your children's fluid intake when they are in other people's care – Arthur got badly dehydrated one day.

Family skiing basics

A week's half board in a chalet in La Rosière this season with Esprit Ski (01252 618300, www.espritski.com) costs from £609 per adult, including flights and transfers; free child places are still available some weeks. Esprit's Sprite beginners' classes, for children aged between five and nine, cost an extra £179 for five mornings, and its Snow Club, which covers six supervised lunches, and afternoons of fun and games for the children, £189. Local charges for ski and boot hire are about £69 for adult beginners, £32-£42 for young children. Three mornings of group adult beginner ski lessons with Evolution 2 (www.evolution2.com) cost £78 per person; additional private lessons cost £78 per couple.