My DD has a friend in her level who has crazy parents (IMHO). The kids are L4, and her friend has been in it for 5 years (she's 7) she's repeating L4, because she had a pretty bad season last year. My DD is repeating too, but has made a lot of obvious progress, and barely missed being a L5 this year.
Anyway, my DH was talking to the father last year and her dad was saying how they push her to do gymnastics or else she would quit. DH told him that we don't push our DD, it's her decision, but if she wants to do it she has to be committed. The dad basically said that he makes her do it because she isn't capable of making those kind of decisions (Okay, whatever) So we let it go, and her dad stopped talking to us. The poor kid is in Gymnastics 12 hours a week regularly, and they are sending her to 3 private lessons on top of that. She's also in horse back riding and dance (I don't know how this kid has time for homework).
She also sleeps in her parent's bed...a little strange, I suppose. Her 2 YO brother has his own room and sleeps in his own bed. The mother is a nurse and works the night shift a lot. I still think it's strange, but I don't know exactly what's going on, and if I did I wouldn't have any evidence of it anyway.
On Sunday, we were at a meet, and he was bragging to another parent that if their daughter doesn't come in in the top three, she gets punished! They give her a backpack full of heavy books and make her do lunges around the house. The parent he was bragging to was sitting next to me, and thought he was kidding, but he said "no, she won't focus unless we force her to!" His wife was sitting right there, nodding her head.
Now at this point, I'm thinking "this is emotional abuse, plain and simple." I think there is more than that going on, because the daughter has some weird behaviors which I won't go into, but the long and short of it is that I am worried about this little girl. She's very underweight, she really doesn't like the sport. She gets the whole class in trouble because she just doesn't care about being there. I feel like I should tell the coach or someone, but I don't know who, and I don't want people to get all upset with me or my DD for opening my mouth.
Any advice?
snowbound
Anyway, my DH was talking to the father last year and her dad was saying how they push her to do gymnastics or else she would quit. DH told him that we don't push our DD, it's her decision, but if she wants to do it she has to be committed. The dad basically said that he makes her do it because she isn't capable of making those kind of decisions (Okay, whatever) So we let it go, and her dad stopped talking to us. The poor kid is in Gymnastics 12 hours a week regularly, and they are sending her to 3 private lessons on top of that. She's also in horse back riding and dance (I don't know how this kid has time for homework).
She also sleeps in her parent's bed...a little strange, I suppose. Her 2 YO brother has his own room and sleeps in his own bed. The mother is a nurse and works the night shift a lot. I still think it's strange, but I don't know exactly what's going on, and if I did I wouldn't have any evidence of it anyway.
On Sunday, we were at a meet, and he was bragging to another parent that if their daughter doesn't come in in the top three, she gets punished! They give her a backpack full of heavy books and make her do lunges around the house. The parent he was bragging to was sitting next to me, and thought he was kidding, but he said "no, she won't focus unless we force her to!" His wife was sitting right there, nodding her head.
Now at this point, I'm thinking "this is emotional abuse, plain and simple." I think there is more than that going on, because the daughter has some weird behaviors which I won't go into, but the long and short of it is that I am worried about this little girl. She's very underweight, she really doesn't like the sport. She gets the whole class in trouble because she just doesn't care about being there. I feel like I should tell the coach or someone, but I don't know who, and I don't want people to get all upset with me or my DD for opening my mouth.
Any advice?
snowbound