Parents Finding the balance

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Katkiwi

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Hi all, so I’m finally delurking!

I have two daughters who are in competitive gym. My 8 year old has been training 11 hours and is about to move to 14 hours (we had been missing a session the rest of the squad were doing) and my 5 year old has just moved to 6 hours (3x 2 hour sessions). I know that the hours will only continue to increase from here, but I’m really struggling with knowing what the right thing to do is. Both girls love the sport, but in reality I know that this won’t be something they will likely do beyond their teenage years. It seems as if they will have to give up so much (other hobbies, social events) to train as they get older. We can just about still fit in dance and swimming at the moment. Plus of course I worry about them getting injured or having long term consequences of overuse etc. Separate to that we have had some negative comments from parents at school around our girls in a sport that has had such bad press (we are not based in USA, but the sport has had bad press here also) and the number of hours they train. Do any of you have any tips on how you deal with the conflict of wanting to support them in their love of the sport and to be as successful as they can be for as long as they want to pursue it, but to ensure they aren’t doing too much and on a path to burnout? Also I really hate feeling defensive when questioned about the sport, but I guess if I feel that way then perhaps I have nagging concerns that perhaps we aren’t doing the right thing?The mother guilt is real! I didn’t really know what we were getting into when we put our eldest into a preschool class as she had too much energy. Now I feel like she is so invested and loves it so much that we can’t step away, and if I’m honest I don’t really want that either, but I really want to try and get the balance right. Do you think 14 hours is too much at 8?
 
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My 8 year old does 15 hours. We are trying to keep up her interactions with ppl in other areas than gymnastics so it doesn't get too heavy. She still does rec swimming once a week. She goes to a mainstream school and has a social life other than gymnastics. I think 14 hours is a lot for an 8 year old though. It takes a lot of dedication, time planning and commitment for my daughter to juggle her gym, homework, social life, and family commitments - though that is something useful to learn.
May be worth looking into other options though, I don't know if you have an equivalent to the Xcel program, which is less time investment.
 
Not doing the sport beyond the teenage years, does not mean that it wont have lifelong value.

Speaking to many exgymnasts as adults, they often feel that their gymnastics training what the one thing that has given them the most success in life.

Gymnastics requires effort, commitment, patience, hard work, diligence, the ability to breakdown fear and doubt. When they finish gym they may never do another giant or vault in their life. But the skills they learn in the gym, they will use for a lifetime.

Gymnastics does not need to lead to long term injuries or body damage. Quite the opposite in fact. If it is taught correctly it will help them develop strong, healthy bodies with good posture.

In every case I have ever seen of a long term injury in gymnastics. (By that I mean one that causes issues for years, like chronic back pain etc). The story has always been the same. The gymnasts starts to experience pain and ignores it, they don’t want to stop training or it’s a hassle to deal with. So they leave it way too long. If pain for more than a few days occur, see a physio and they will usually be able to balance out any issues. Just don’t leave it.

You do often hear of gymnasts “giving up normal childhood activities“ etc for gymnastics. But the same could be said of anything. There are so many things to experience in life, we can’t experience them all so we make choices. As adults we choose if we will have a family or not, work long hours or less hours, travel or not, play sports or not. If we make one choice over another, it’s not considered that we are giving up our rites of passage to adulthood. Because no one expects that each of our adulthoods will look the same.

Its strange that childhood and the teen years are considered different. Like society expects that children and teenagers will have these identical experiences. Some patents choose to home school, they may be considered to be giving up normal childhood school experiences, but they don’t see it that way, they see it as gaining a better education, more time in their lives etc. As long as children are happy, learning, developing, having wonderful social experiences etc. There are many ways and means to do this.

These days there seems to be such a push to put children into so many activities. Kids are in swimming, piano, dance, netball, athletics, gymnastics, tennis, etc etc etc. Parents feel pressure to give them as many experiences as possible.

But just Like social experiences in everything we choose we give up something else. In the choice to put kids into several different activities, the thing they often give up is the gift of really focusing their energy and time into the pursuit of excellence in any given area. They get a little bit good at a lot of things, but there is also so much value in getting really good at one thing.

Gymnastics is the basis for all sports anyway, so those who have studied it tend to be able to walk into almost any sport later on and excel. In many sports programs you have kids who have done that sports since they were really little, then often in comes a gymnast, at a much later age and their gymnastics training allows them to quickly surpass the ability of those who have been doing it for years.

But most of important at all, it doesn’t matter what others think or whether or not they like your sporting decisions. You and your family need to choose what you think is right for you!
 
Being aware of the potential issues is half the battle just let your daughters lead in this. You will be able to tell if it is getting to stressful for them or if they are wanting to drop a sport/activity. The hours you mention are well withing the norm for typical gyms. In terms of injuries, the most serious ones in general occur at the higher levels so I would not worry about that unless they look like they are going into upper optionals.as for other parents, ignore them. There are negative aspects to all sports. Many parents don't realize this because their kids remain in the rec portion of sports but when you are talented enough to do year round competitive teams, you see it all. My kids were in gym, swim, golf, baseball, and hockey and we saw similar problems within each.
 
I’ll just address the part of your question about feeling put on the defensive. My child has many classmates who spend even more time doing baseball (practices, games, private batting cage lessons) or year-round travel soccer. Yours probably does, too. However, I realized early on that the perception of families at my daughter’s school was that it was only considered crazy to invest that amount of time in gymnastics or dance. I don’t know if it has to do with the reputation of the sports, a bias in my area against non-ball sports, sexism or something else entirely. Anyway, only a few of my friends know how much time my daughter spends at the gym and none of her friends really know because she has a normal social life and does other activities. It wasn’t intentional when she was a baby but now this is how I parent in general, not just with extracurriculars: I don’t broadcast any decisions that my husband and I are confident with because inevitably someone will have something negative to say and I’m aware that I’m not good at deflecting that stuff.
 
Thanks all for your comments. Agree re not broadcasting our decisions- we just need to get better at deflecting when we are asked directly I guess. I also agree that the particular parent who just kept pushing about this when we were trying to avoid the discussion wouldn’t have had the same concerns if it was rugby, football, hockey or cricket- so perhaps the point re sexism is valid.
The country we are in has had a big push in the last couple of years around kids sport in general and lots of publicity about not specialising early on etc, even many of the other gyms have cut hours for the younger kids in the last 6months- so I think that played into my worries a little.
Our eldest is the youngest in her squad but on reflection loves gym and is so happy to go to training and given they let her do reduced hours for half of the year I know the coaches also have her interests at heart. I guess with competition about to start it just changes the dynamics a little! There isn’t really an excel equivalent, there is a level down where you only compete regionally and do fewer hours- but the difference in skill levels is huge. From what I can see it maxes out about level 4/5 equivalent so not really an option for us now.

Also thanks Aussie coach for reiterating the long term benefits even if they don’t do gym when older. You’re right of course, separate to the physical benefits the girls are learning resilience, responsibility, time management skills and to persevere and I’m sure will be hugely helpful life skills.

Whilst we can’t watch, covid is making things a little disrupted, she is always buzzing to tell me how her session was in the car on the way home. We have a little ritual where she will tell me what she is proudest of and what was the most fun.

I guess it’s time to just sit back and try and enjoy the ride, stop caring what other people think as long as it works for our family and our girls are safe and happy and wanting to be there.
 
Finding balance is one of the biggest things at their age since there is a huge commitment to training vs rec fun. When my daughter was that age we, as parents, spoke to the gym management and coaches about the allocation of hours to ensure there was enough time for school during the week and we shifted some of the hours on Fridays and Saturday practices to make it easier. Some gyms are flexible while others may not - it depends.

Until recently my daughter did ice skating (freestyle) and soccer which also took a bit of time each week but we had to trim out things which did not work out for the schedule. We did discuss the time allocation with her so she understood the reasons for the change and had a two-way dialog so she understood her thoughts were factored into these decisions.
 
All 3 of my daughters are gymnasts and my middle DD is 9 years old and does 24 hours, as a level 7, training 8. I can't imagine her loving anything as much as gym. Her best friends are at gym, as are her sisters, and she really loves it. She is the type that has a lot of energy and needs to channel it somehow, and gymnastics provides this outlet for her. So I really think it just works for some kids, and the hours can be a non-issue for those.
 
Your post made me de-lurk :) From your name and some of the things you mention I am guessing we are in the same country. I think the hours depend on what level your girls are doing. I would say 6 hours for pre-comp is excessive, but not enough for step 3. I don't have much experience, my little miss got invited to one club where pre-comp did 3.5 hours (in two sessions) which I found a bit much for my then 5 year old plus one of the sessions was on Saturday and I refuse to drive 110 km into town and back on my free day. In the end we chose something closer by that does 2 hours for pre-comp, 2x2 hours for step 1, 2x3 hours for step 2 and maybe 3x3 hours for step 3 (no idea I haven't looked that far ahead). The club suits us, the times work out well and most importantly my daughter is enjoying it a lot. If it was up to her she would sleep in the gym, but this amount of hours give her plenty opportunity to still do other stuff, leaves the weekend for friends, family, climbing and ice skating.

As for the negative image of gymnastics, yes there is definitely some of that, although people seem to be more concerned with the number of hours and the detrimental effects on little miss' body. I think a lot of people still have the old "winning at all costs" attitude in their mind that they have seen portrayed on tv/youtube. I think there probably are still teams out there that are still quite a bit old-fashioned in that way, you should be able to figure out which ones those are fairly easily and avoid them. In the end the only thing that matters is that your children are happy and you are satisfied they are in the right place, everything else is a bonus
 
Your post made me de-lurk

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Thanks for your perspective, the youngest was going to compete step 1 this year but given the change in rules she is too young to compete now. Not sure what the plan is for her for the next year or so, guess will just have to wait and see. I actually think not competing for a year or two and working on skills and strength wouldn’t be a bad thing.
Glad to hear you have got the balance right for your daughter. You’re right, as long as they are happy and in a safe environment then I should probably try and relax and enjoy the ride. I’m not good at relaxing!
 
I am intentional about finding balance. My daughter practices 19 hours a week but I often force her to miss a day to rest. We vacation often, ski as a family during the competition season, and make sure our other kids get as much time/attention on their sports. So far, it's been working.
 
Not doing the sport beyond the teenage years, does not mean that it wont have lifelong value.

Speaking to many exgymnasts as adults, they often feel that their gymnastics training what the one thing that has given them the most success

Gymnastics requires effort, commitment, patience, hard work, diligence, the ability to breakdown fear and doubt. When they finish gym they may never do another giant or vault in their life. But the skills they learn in the gym, they will use for a lifetime.

Gymnastics does not need to lead to long term injuries or body damage. Quite the opposite in fact. If it is taught correctly it will help them develop strong, healthy bodies with good posture.

In every case I have ever seen of a long term injury in gymnastics. (By that I mean one that causes issues for years, like chronic back pain etc). The story has always been the same. The gymnasts starts to experience pain and ignores it, they don’t want to stop training or it’s a hassle to deal with. So they leave it way too long. If pain for more than a few days occur, see a physio and they will usually be able to balance out any issues. Just don’t leave it.

You do often hear of gymnasts “giving up normal childhood activities“ etc for gymnastics. But the same could be said of anything. There are so many things to experience in life, we can’t experience them all so we make choices. As adults we choose if we will have a family or not, work long hours or less hours, travel or not, play sports or not. If we make one choice over another, it’s not considered that we are giving up our rites of passage to adulthood. Because no one expects that each of our adulthoods will look the same.

Its strange that childhood and the teen years are considered different. Like society expects that children and teenagers will have these identical experiences. Some patents choose to home school, they may be considered to be giving up normal childhood school experiences, but they don’t see it that way, they see it as gaining a better education, more time in their lives etc. As long as children are happy, learning, developing, having wonderful social experiences etc. There are many ways and means to do this.

These days there seems to be such a push to put children into so many activities. Kids are in swimming, piano, dance, netball, athletics, gymnastics, tennis, etc etc etc. Parents feel pressure to give them as many experiences as possible.

But just Like social experiences in everything we choose we give up something else. In the choice to put kids into several different activities, the thing they often give up is the gift of really focusing their energy and time into the pursuit of excellence in any given area. They get a little bit good at a lot of things, but there is also so much value in getting really good at one thing.

Gymnastics is the basis for all sports anyway, so those who have studied it tend to be able to walk into almost any sport later on and excel. In many sports programs you have kids who have done that sports since they were really little, then often in comes a gymnast, at a much later age and their gymnastics training allows them to quickly surpass the ability of those who have been doing it for years.

But most of important at all, it doesn’t matter what others think or whether or not they like your sporting decisions. You and your family need to choose what you think is right for you!
I love this post from Aussie_coach. Apologies I’m just getting to grips with the site and didn’t mean to copy the entire thing but now can’t remove it

I have nothing helpful to add to what others are saying as I share your worries- my dd is 6.5 and training 12hrs with the potential to increase in the Spring. To me this seems a lot but also from the research I have done not unusual for the level they are wanting her to work towards. I’m trying to keep an open dialogue with the coaches without sounding too neurotic or being too questioning- I do trust their decisions however I’ve often had thoughts of “what is it all for really” alongside concerns about the long term effects. On the other hand I see how much she loves it and I know if she wasn’t in the gym she would be bouncing around the house and garden so needs to channel her energy somewhere!
 

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