WAG Bad Mom

[eucoach]

A possible explanation for this behavior:
Maybe she is afraid to fail and starts self-sabotaging for lack of other options.
Maybe she's worried about the upcoming meet. And is subconsciously trying to do badly at practice so that however she'll do at her meet will be a success compared to what she is doing in practice.

IMO at that age children become much more aware of how they measure up against their peers. Some are always worried about getting humiliated in front of other kids. They cannot see the bigger picture no matter how often you tell them. They only see the present and feel that they will always be worse than "all" the other kids. Or that if they have a bad result once, they will always be remembered for that failure.

I coach a gymnast (also 10 years old) who is very talented and hard-working. During the weeks leading up to meet season, she forgets how to do skills she's been able to do for months or years and loses form on absolutely everything. Scary crashes become frequent - sometimes it looks as if she wants to get injured. It's been like that for the past 2 seasons. Before that she only competed at some "fun" meets.

I hope it will go away as she gets older and gets more competition experience....until then it's "tough love". No way I'll not let her compete. I take out skills she could get injured on and "threaten" (explain nicely) that she will have to take out even simple skills if she does not perform them with good form and technique (f. ex. switch leaps which usually are textbook perfect and suddenly barely go to 145° with messy form). She also suffers from "amnesia" like your daughter. She can't seem to remember that she was able to do certain skills well before.

My recommendation: Talk to her coach and ask him what he thinks. Tell him what you think and then decide on a course of action. Try to subtly teach her about the value of competition even when winning is not possible. Praise her if she puts in a lot of effort for something.

 

[aerials]

Great advice above. A couple things though - is your dd growing? A growth spurt will cause loss of skills. Also I agree with eucoach above, my dd too will act goofy if she thinks she is failing or going to fail.

 

[AWOL]

This is the same thing that happened to our daughter last year and it carried over to this year. She is 12 and doing her second year of Level 9 because of this thing going on.
She is a people pleaser and a perfectionist and she would rather look like she could not do the move rather than looking bad doing it. What made it bad was that she is a very good gymnast
The closer it got to competition season, the more she could not do. We would ask her it she would like to quit gym and big tears would come saying there was no way she wanted to stop doing gym.
Took her to a sport psychiatrist for the last month and yesterday the gym had their test to see if they were ready to compete this season and she got a 36.6 AA and came home wanting to add a additional meet to her

 

[my4buffaloes]

We are having the same battle with my dd. Just playing around in practice and not working hard. It is so frustrating!

 

[BPD304]

I did end up talking to my ODD's HC for her level. She said she had noticed somethings this week with behavior but it would be hit or miss. She did say practice would either be great ( good focus and hitting skills) or was a train wreck and that tends to be normal for 9-10 yr olds. When they get scared, worried or frustrated they seem to play and be silly.

She sat down and chatted with her 1-1 at break and told her she was not focused on her score or placement only that she was getting her skills, improving and doing her best. She reminded her gym was fun and if DD felt stuck or frustrated she needed to back away from that skill and try something else.

I did set up a private with HC for Sunday so they could review what skills DD feels less confident on and she can have a positive week before her first meet.


Thanks again for all the feedback! It was nice to know maybe I didn't go full CGM!