Editor's Note: It's the Nipper family's fourth week of the Fit Families Challenge from Special Olympics Arkansas! The family of four -- Luke, Christy, Miles (3 years) and Molly (9 months) -- is participating in the six-week program designed for individuals with special needs and their families. The Fit Families Challenge encourages physical activity and healthy eating for the whole family. Read more about the free program here, and check out more posts about the Nipper family's journey here.

As a cross country coach, there is nothing that gets me more excited than seeing a runner’s hard work, dedication, and sacrifice suddenly pay off. Seeing someone finally achieve a goal after they have worked so hard is really special. This past week, I was fortunate to be a part of that as my teams prepared for and ran in the State Cross Country Championships. Even better—my family got to experience it with me.

In a whirlwind week full of preparations, excitement and celebrations, my teams took time to look back on how far we had come and to remember all the hard work that had brought us to this point. In a society that promotes instant gratification, I know the qualities my team displays are rare and I am SO thankful that Miles and Molly get to see these concepts lived out in front of him on a daily basis. Even if they do not understand it fully, I know these lessons are being ingrained and adopted into their own lifestyles because I see that too.

Learning new skills often requires more work and practice for Miles. During therapy sessions we are often breaking down developmental goals into individual components that we practice until he is ready to combine those skills and reach the developmental goal. When Miles was learning to walk up and down stairs we first had to strengthen quads by having him repeatedly stand up from a kneeling position. Starting with both knees on the ground, he would then place one foot on the ground, transfer his weight to that foot and push to stand. At the same time, we focused on balance and practiced standing on one foot at a time while holding onto the couch and then independently. After weeks of this we moved to the stairs where we practiced going up and down with two-handed assistance from an adult, then using the handrail and one hand of an adult, then just the handrail.

Miles is fully capable of achieving any milestone but it requires hard work, dedication, and sacrifice. It means that he has less free play and more structured “play” time (most days). It means he has to practice these skills daily. There have been many times when Miles does have free time to play that we walk in and find him practicing skills that we are targeting in therapy sessions, because he is determined and wants to be successful. And when we meet one of our developmental goals after working so hard, there is a lot of cheering, normally some dancing, and big smiles all around. Although Miles often has to work harder to meet some milestones, it makes the celebration so much sweeter!

Miles has become accustomed to being the one that works hard, achieves success and gets to celebrate. This season he got to experience that from the perspective of a coach. He watched our team work hard, stay determined, and make numerous sacrifices over the past 5 months…and on Saturday we all got to celebrate!