asking kids to leave your gym

[nevertooold]

You will never regret getting rid of the true crazies, you cannot "fix" them, and you will not miss them or their $$, you WILL miss the normals ones that they crazies drive away over the years.

 

[gymjoy]

Oh good gravy - they are nuts. For the safety and well-being of the child you have to talk to these parents.

 

[Shelovesthebars]

Hank123-Have you sat down with the parents and talked to them about your policies on coaching and training at home? If you have and they refuse to listen, cut your losses. If you haven't, maybe they are not aware they have crossed the line. The parents will either listen or not. One of the dads got reprimanded right in the middle of practice in front of the whole gym. Trust me, he was way out of line sooo many times. His daughter's coach pulled out the parent handbook and confronted him with it. He does keep his mouth shut now and is thoroughly embarrassed but he wants his child at the gym so he is reforming. Try to be calm if you talk to them and let them know what the gym policies are and that they will be enforced.

 

[10.0]

I am sure you must have talked to them. If not do so, if you have do it again and this time tell them they are not allowed to watch or coach her while she is in your gym open or class. Also tell them she is no longer allowed to work skills at home, she may use a bar for pullup's and leg lifts to get stronger or a home beam for toe rises, basically all she is allowed to do is conditioning at home and if anything of this nonsence continues for the safety and well being of your daughter you will be asked to leave.

It will do one of 2 things, either it will be a reality check and they may be angry at you but will listen to stay or they will move on and you can feel good about having done the right thing for the daughter. Also make sure the daughter knows it is not her fault.

 

[gymdog]

basically the issues are...them both coaching her while she is training, them coaching her at open gym, building home equipment which she has been injured on and now has three major fear issues...

I would reiterate your team policies to all parents (re-write or clarify in team handbook) if you think that might be relevant.

Then I'd have a separate meeting with these people and outline the circumstances under which one can be a member of your team. Tell them the concerns and give a provisional period for improvement. No coaching during practices, no coaching during open gym, etc. After the warning if problems continue then I'd look at more serious action. But I think it would probably be worth it for the kid to give them one shot to get their act together first.

 

[CoachGoofy]

I am also curious if anyone has ever asked a child to leave because of something the parent did? I know there are some crazy parents out there and if I owned a gym I would not want some of them around.

I worked at a gym where a parent got in the face of/yelled at/swore at/nearly hit a coach who was enforcing the posted rules about warm up & punctuality (the policy was if your child misses warmup, they may not participate in class unless you have made prior arrangements with the coach).

One more act of crazy & they'd have been out, & the team program wanted nothing to do with that family at that point.

 

[hank123]

umm parents have been in for three meetings and no big changes have happened. open gym is happening not under our gym's supervision as they bring the girl to another local gym for open gym because our gym stopped offering it about two months ago due to too many parents turning crazy.
the head coach thinks the parnts can be "fixed" and don't need to be asked to leave... but i think it's cause the daughter is a good gymnast she doesn't want to let her go to another club

 

[gymdog]

umm parents have been in for three meetings and no big changes have happened. open gym is happening not under our gym's supervision as they bring the girl to another local gym for open gym because our gym stopped offering it about two months ago due to too many parents turning crazy.
the head coach thinks the parnts can be "fixed" and don't need to be asked to leave... but i think it's cause the daughter is a good gymnast she doesn't want to let her go to another club

At that point I could see being way less amenable, specifically given that it's another gym some of the problems are occurring. But I guess if whoever is in charge is hesistant to make the move, you're kind of stuck...

 

[bookworm]

At that point I could see being way less amenable, specifically given that it's another gym some of the problems are occurring. But I guess if whoever is in charge is hesistant to make the move, you're kind of stuck...

Like I said in a prior post, money talks...if they've been spoken to about specific issues that continue without consequence then they know that they can get away with it, and are going to continue because now they feel empowered to do so.

We have a parent like that at our gym and she is positively evil...has been spoken to multiple times with no real change in behavior and remains at the gym...which because of her has little to no parent involvement from the upper levels because they are so sick of her crazy behavior and want nothing to do with it. The owners want crazy lady's money (which includes her monthly tuition of 500+ in addition to twice a week (unnecessary) privates to the tune of 75 bucks each (150 a week) so it adds up to > 1000 a month...

 

[emorymom]

I can't see any gym keeping a girl on team for money. You don't make money off team kids. You make money off rec kids. At least around here.

But one option might be to start fining the offending parents if talk alone fails.

 

[hank123]

i really do not think head coach would even keep her for money, why does head coach care how much money we make really? head coach is not the gym owner, if it were one in the same person, then its different i guess...

gymdog is right, i am kinda stuck. besides coaching the girl as best i can...i cannot ask her to leave the gym. the kid is awesome, which makes it worse..good worker, good gymnast, but really not so awesome parents... who think she's the next olympian...and push her too hard

 

[bookworm]

i really do not think head coach would even keep her for money, why does head coach care how much money we make really? head coach is not the gym owner, if it were one in the same person, then its different i guess...

gymdog is right, i am kinda stuck. besides coaching the girl as best i can...i cannot ask her to leave the gym. the kid is awesome, which makes it worse..good worker, good gymnast, but really not so awesome parents... who think she's the next olympian...and push her too hard

Don't kid yourself about the money issue...the HC does care because he should care that his gym makes enough money to stay afloat...if there is not enough of a draw to support the gym, then you are all out of a job.

In our gym , the HC IS the owner so he definitely cares about the money. Even big gyms with Olympians get into financial trouble ..think Bieger International and GAGE that are the most recent that have either closed or had huge $$ issues...so they have to care about retaining their clientele and drawing in more to survive.

 

[hank123]

bookworm never even thought of it that way but u are right, thanks..

 

[Beekeeper]

Witnessed Gyms claiming they asked someone to leave when ,actually the family was unhappy and left on their own accord. Why lie about such trivial things. Never understand this type of behavior.

 

[dancengym]

I can't see any gym keeping a girl on team for money. You don't make money off team kids. You make money off rec kids. At least around here.

But one option might be to start fining the offending parents if talk alone fails.

I think our gun makes mony off the team just as much the rec kids. Our l6 and up practices 3 hours a day, 5 days a week. Of the 3 hours, our team is alone conditioning themselves for around 2 hours. On the last hour, there is no more than 2 coaches training our team of 40. Mind you, our L4 practices 2 days a week and our L5 3 days. And we all pay $360 except for L10 and/or elite. They pay around $850/month.

In response to Hank123 last post about the parents their kid is an Olympian, I think every gym should have an educational meeting with new parents. I'll-informed parents and people for that matter have no clue what being part of the Olympic team or even going elite entails. It use to always irk me when a relative, friend or an acquaintance sees gymnastics pictures of my dd. If they are impressed, they will almost always say "I can see her in the olympics.". And I usually remark, "oh, I don't know, that is real tough.". All of a sudden their admiration diminishes and dismiss my dd as not good at all. I use to try to explain the complexities and implausiblilty of making the olympics. Now I let them think what they want. There roughly 90,000 gymnast registered with USA Gymnastics. Of the 90,000 only 6 ( I think) make it to the olympic team, every four years. Parents usually have big dreams for their children. But a little dose of reality must be present.

 

[bookworm]

I think our gun makes mony off the team just as much the rec kids. Our l6 and up practices 3 hours a day, 5 days a week. Of the 3 hours, our team is alone conditioning themselves for around 2 hours. On the last hour, there is no more than 2 coaches training our team of 40. Mind you, our L4 practices 2 days a week and our L5 3 days. And we all pay $360 except for L10 and/or elite. They pay around $850/month.

Gyms make their money on rec kids as most rec kids go 1-2 hours a week (or 8-10 hours a month) and pay roughly 10 bucks an hour to do so (it's all in their "monthly or semester" rate) whereas the team kids, even on the modest end, go 20 hours a week (or 80 hours a month) and even if their tuition is 360 a month, that's only $4.50 an hour...

And dancengym, are you sure that the 10s pay 850 a month? That seems outrageously high..

 

[Deleted member D3987]

some gyms are actually that much. ^^^

 

[bookworm]

I guess I meant the 10s at her gym because she says that haven't done all that well...I couldn't imagine paying 850 a month for that..

 

[Deleted member D3987]

gotcha on that.

 

[dancengym]

I think our gun makes mony off the team just as much the rec kids. Our l6 and up practices 3 hours a day, 5 days a week. Of the 3 hours, our team is alone conditioning themselves for around 2 hours. On the last hour, there is no more than 2 coaches training our team of 40. Mind you, our L4 practices 2 days a week and our L5 3 days. And we all pay $360 except for L10 and/or elite. They pay around $850/month.

Gyms make their money on rec kids as most rec kids go 1-2 hours a week (or 8-10 hours a month) and pay roughly 10 bucks an hour to do so (it's all in their "monthly or semester" rate) whereas the team kids, even on the modest end, go 20 hours a week (or 80 hours a month) and even if their tuition is 360 a month, that's only $4.50 an hour...

And dancengym, are you sure that the 10s pay 850 a month? That seems outrageously high..

Bookworm, agreed that gyms make more money out of their rec program than their team, but a $360/month tuition times 40 athletes equals about $14,400 a month, times 12 months is around $172,800 a year. By the way, the tuition goes higher with each level. The $360.00 is for L4 to L7. I believe L8 and L9 may be $400. In addition, we only have 2 or MAYBE 3 coaches for the team. So, coach overhead could be lower for the team, or at a minimum not significantly more than rec coaches. We have more coaches for the rec kids because the rec kids need more hand holding. The team coaches yell from the other side of the gym to direct team members to do certain drills. Rec coaches have to actually be with the rec kids. I've seen two coaches in a class of 5 at our rec classes. When we lost half our team over the last two years, the gym lost at least $172,000 income. Since most of them were our higher level gymnast, I am certain it is significantly more. Our gym would have been making over $400,000 a year on the team. I consider that pretty significant. And as far as our L10 (we do not have any anymore), a parent of a former L10 told me this is how much she paid. She did say however, that her daughter was also training to go elite. A whole other issue, since this L10 was not scoring more than 34.00 at her L10 meets. So, I should probably not say that our L10 was paying $850. But I am certain it is more than our other team members. I am not disagreeing with you bookworm, just saying that our gym does make money off the team and it is not insignificant.