Parents Reforming CGM and bored kid

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LTmom

Proud Parent
Hi, I’m LT’s mom and I’m a reforming CGM. The credit is due to CB. I found this site a week ago and have read systematically from the oldest posts and working my way through the years. I’ve read about 1000 of the 7000 or so topics in the parent forum.

LT is 6 on the developmental team. She was passed over on the preteam, when 75% of the preteam was moved up. During the 8 months she was left behind, she worked hard and I CGMed her at home. It made such a huge difference in the gym. Her coaches told me she was making huge strides in her skills. In January she moved up to the devo class and within that class they divide into groups. She was placed in the most advanced group, and is outdoing the kids who have been in that class for 9-13 months. One of the coaches told me she is impressed that LT moved directly into that group. Despite all of that, all your CB posts about CGM convinced me that I’m psycho and need to calm the f- down. I’ve stopped working with LT at home *unless she asks*. I don’t talk about gym unless she brings it up.

Now for the problem. LT has been complaining that she doesn’t like beam. It took a little bit of unraveling, but I figured out what her problem is. While I was CGMing her to death at home (30 mins/day on the beam, every day), she perfected the devo skills on the beam. The rest of the kids in her group are struggling with form, falling, balance, arms, etc. LT is nailing all of it. HC has no comments for her other than “good.” No corrections. LT told me she is sick of doing the same old boring things over and over.

I fully understand this is my fault. I’ve stopped beam work with her. What do I do about the boredom? Her coaches in the preteam noticed she was far ahead of the class so they had her do extra stuff on the beam. That hasn’t happened yet, maybe because she’s only been on devo for 1 month. Should I just stfu and learn my lesson about CGMing?
 
Good for you for realizing your mistakes...not everyone is so self-aware and able to stop. As far as boredom, team gymnastics, especially in the devo/lower levels, is BORING! It’s mostly conditioning and shapes, and very few skills. I would just stress to her that the basics are very important and they will help her later. Then, I would let it go. If she wants to do competitive gymnastics for years, she will learn to deal with the boredom/repetition.
 
She is gonna do those things foreeeeeever. Even though DD has learned new tricks, her beam warm up now is STILL the things she was doing in pre team. :cool:
 
She is gonna do those things foreeeeeever. Even though DD has learned new tricks, her beam warm up now is STILL the things she was doing in pre team. :cool:
The way you put that cracked me up.
Thank you for your replies. Unanimity is helpful to me so I don’t relapse.
 
I’m glad you have come to realize that coaching at home and pushing get us not good, you saw short term results but there are long term consequrnces. Great job on making a change in yourself. Don’t beat yourself up s put what you did, you want what to best for your kid s d thought you are helping her. Now when she brings up being bored, it us a chance to talk about how gymnastics does require repetition and at times there will be things that are easier for her while other things that are harder. Beam will get challenging again.
 
If she really wants to go all the way with her gymnastics she needs to learn to love the basics! There is a lot of real eating and repeating stuff that she has already learned in gymnastics.

There are always ways to make the basics better, no matter how good you get. Doing basics is a great time to work on perfection, which will help all the future skills she learns.

Problem is she is only 6 and wouldn’t know how to self correct yet. Why not get her to,listen to the corrections the coach is making to others and work on those. She might be making some of the same mistakes, but in such a small way, it is barely noticeable.

It is a great skill to learn to listen and absorb all feedback that is going on.
 
She is gonna do those things foreeeeeever. Even though DD has learned new tricks, her beam warm up now is STILL the things she was doing in pre team. :cool:
Heck, YG (Xcel Platinum / L6ish) still does some of the same things she did in her "baby" gym beam practice ... she just does them BETTER. The entire optional team (ages 11 - 16) still does "ice cream scoops" on beam ... and on occasion, they declare what flavor they are scooping off the side of the beam. They just kick higher and straighter out of the "scoop" than was done in baby, preschool, and rec classes. The little kids get a kick out of seeing "the big girls" doing the same things they do.
 
Yes, stfu and sit back and enjoy the ride. All this boring stuff will pay off in the end, and they definitely have to learn to work on details and hang with the not so exciting parts if they want to stay in gymnastics long term.
Glad you have reformed...it can be super easy to CGM your kid right out of gym.
 
7 days of no beam practice for her. And what happens today? Fall after fall after fall. I mean it was so painful to watch I had to look away.

I get what you’re all telling me. If she doesn’t want it enough, I can’t make her want it.

But here’s what I’m having trouble understanding: if your kid is in soccer or baseball or tennis, would you apply the same hands off philosophy? Pay, drive, and let your kid not practice? Why or why not?
 
If she wants to practice with you at home I say let her! I think it’s nice for you to share something and bond over it. It won’t be long before your opinion isn’t wanted - ha! My daughter and I had some nice times when she was younger but now she’s over her Mommy telling her what to do! You’re right, my husband kicks the ball around with my son and no one thinks badly of that. As long as you are not overly critical or judging.
 
7 days of no beam practice for her. And what happens today? Fall after fall after fall. I mean it was so painful to watch I had to look away.

I get what you’re all telling me. If she doesn’t want it enough, I can’t make her want it.

But here’s what I’m having trouble understanding: if your kid is in soccer or baseball or tennis, would you apply the same hands off philosophy? Pay, drive, and let your kid not practice? Why or why not?
I think there are a few reasons why with gym many people on here advise keeping gym at gym one is that if your dd is on a competitive track the hours really ramp up very quickly and many of us who have been around the sport a while have seen kids who have left the sport because it all came too much with gym at home and at gym, another is technique I know my dd coaches much prefer teaching a child a new skill and find it much quicker than correcting bad habits.
With regards to having a bad day on beam that will happen from time to time, my dd is normally fairly strong on beam but I’ve seen days where my dd just falls off time and time again on the simplest moves and it’s horrible to watch but she’s learning important lessons to pick herself up and carry on and if she’s ever disheartened I remind her every gymnast falls on beam even Simone Biles.
Going back to practicing at home I don’t ban gym at home but she does know what skills the coaches wouldn’t want her doing and we don’t have any gym equipment , so she does cartwheels, handstand holds, press handstands, splits etc but the key thing I think is I never encourage or tell her to practice at home and the more hours she does at the gym the less she wants to do at home.
 
But here’s what I’m having trouble understanding: if your kid is in soccer or baseball or tennis, would you apply the same hands off philosophy? Pay, drive, and let your kid not practice? Why or why not?
In gymnastics, there are progressions... and coaches may have a certain way of teaching a skill AND the hours are CRAZY compared to soccer, baseball, and tennis.

There is nothing wrong with kicking a soccer ball around ... kids kick balls all the time. We used to test kicking ability in preschoolers as it is a motor development skill. There is a LOT in gymnastics that some people will NEVER be able to do.

In baseball, there is catching, throwing, fielding, and hitting. They do these skills in gym class in elementary school (some schools do wiffle ball, etc but the skills are taught to everyone.

Tennis... can be done just for fun OR seriously. My tennis coach had no problem with us hitting the ball around with parents... but again, not many different things to learn (adjusting the angle of the racket depending on the type of hitting) but once you have learned all of the basics, the rest is just nuance.
In each of these sports, most practices are 1-2 hours ... in our area, soccer and ball for kids practice 1-2 times a week.

As you can tell, gymnastics is DIFFERENT. If you learn one of the basics incorrectly, you may have to go back and relearn and correct muscle memory before you can progress to higher level skills.
 
7 days of no beam practice for her. And what happens today? Fall after fall after fall. I mean it was so painful to watch I had to look away.

I get what you’re all telling me. If she doesn’t want it enough, I can’t make her want it.

But here’s what I’m having trouble understanding: if your kid is in soccer or baseball or tennis, would you apply the same hands off philosophy? Pay, drive, and let your kid not practice? Why or why not?

If my kid played soccer, I'd let them kick a ball around in the backyard. If they played basketball, they could shoot hoops. My gymnast? She's allowed to stretch, she used to do some conditioning of her own accord, and if I could find a way to stop making her do handstands in my kitchen, I'd implement it. At parks and playgrounds there are endless bar skills for fun and she does the dance parts of floor and beam across the house constantly. She does her own gymnastics all the time. We do have a low beam and a mat that we've had for years, and it's really only used to make up routines with her sister to show off, particularly on snowy days. Those are the "fun" versions of gymnastics allowed in our house and I have nothing do to with them. They've very basic and they'd only done of her own accord, and don't get into developing skills wrong. I can't tell you how many kids from her old team I saw try to work on stuff at home and have it backfire because they had to unlearn it in the gym. Her current gym has specific things they're "allowed" to work on at home (I think it's press handstands and stretching) but other than that they are under a pretty strict "no real gymnastics at home" rule.

She's 6. Of course she's going to fall off the beam. Let her work it out with her coaches. :) There is NO hurry at ALL.
 
Hang in there! Stay strong! If you haven’t already read this on here, let me be the first to say...it’s a marathon, not a sprint!
 
LT is nailing all of it. HC has no comments for her other than “good.” No corrections. LT told me she is sick of doing the same old boring things over and over.?

Let me add my 2 cents. It sounds like she wants more or better feedback on beam. It's ok for her to ask for that feedback from her coach "How can I do better? " Or "Can you please give me more specific feedback?"
If she is complaining about beam, it's also ok for you to ask her what she can do better. For example, jumps can always be higher.

You can also role play with her how to talk to her coach about this. If he says her half turn is perfect, she could ask if she could try a full turn on the floor beam. Learning how to talk to her coach is a valuable skill that will serve her well.
 
You can also role play with her how to talk to her coach about this. If he says her half turn is perfect, she could ask if she could try a full turn on the floor beam. Learning how to talk to her coach is a valuable skill that will serve her well.

This is true. DD has a coach who is reluctant to uptrain even when it's warranted, and we've talked about this a lot. What you ask and how and when you ask it, and (most importantly) how you accept whatever answer they give (with a cheerful attitude). The other good side effect is that if they say no, it usually comes with a correction. No, you need to be doing XYZ first.
 

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