My daughter has been competing in gymnastics for the last three seasons and she is 10. At the end of last season we moved to a different gym. Her prior gym only trained the daughter of one of the other coaches and gave no feedback or training to the rest of the girls. They would talk while the girls practiced. Also the old gym had the girls compete level 3 when none of them were properly trained or ready and most of the girls did terrible. They had the team repeat Level 3 the following year. They said it wasn't uncommon for girls to repeat a level. I didn't think much of it. I wish I realized after Level 2 that the coaching at the old gym wasn't great. Actually there have been several girls from her old gym move to her new gym. At the new gym, they take the opposite approach and will only let them compete the next level if they have all the skills down so they will score well. So instead of putting them in a level they will not do well at they have them repeat a level they will do well at. Right after state my daughter broke her finger at gymnastics so that delayed her from stating at the new gym. Her coach looked at it and told her to get back to class. She tried to do gymnastics for another 1.5 hours with a broken finger. The coach never told me she was hurt. We actually ended up transferring two weeks later to the new gym because my daughter was so frustrated with the old gym. About 1.5 months after she started her new gym the cast came off and she had to get back up to speed since she lost some muscle tone in her wrist. It took her a little while but she did get her skills back, and learned her new LV 4 vault and was doing even better than at her old gym. She loved the new girls on the team. She loved the feedback from the coaching, and they helped her correct some minor form issues that her old gym never told her because the coaching would chit chat so much. She still needed to work on two other skills in order to be ready to compete at her new level. Well she started the summer training and on Mondays they had 1 hour dance and 3 hours of gymnastics, 2 hours of strength and conditioning on Tuesday and 3 hours of gymnastics on Wed and Thurs. At her old gym, classes were still held at night so she could enjoy her summer. At her new gym they are held late morning and early afternoon so she really couldn't do much Monday to Thursday. One week after the summer schedule started, my daughter was fooling around at home and broke her big toe. So now she would be out again and wouldn't be able to focus on her two skills that she didn't learn yet since she was injured earlier in the year.
Well my daughter refused to go to class because she can only work out about 1 hour and can not do much. She later decided that she was done with gymnastics. She says that she is bored with gymnastics, it is too huge of a time commitment
and she has a small fear of injuries. I was surprised because this was her passion and even when I wanted to have her try other sports she refused. I am trying to figure out why in the last two months she has been thinking about quitting. I understand that gymnastics training can be extremely repetitive and you slowly add new skills. She is about to start middle school next year at 5th grade in our district. I think she was tried of giving up so much other stuff. She sees her friends with more free time. She couldn't do sleepovers on Friday nights because during the year she had practice till 9. She was thinking about ski club but I said you probably won't be able to or you would have to skip gymnastics practice. She said she was wondering how she would get her homework done and do practice. I told her that her brother takes his sweet time so if she is focused, it wouldn't take her as long. She now admits that she wasn't putting her full effort in unless the coaching were watching.
I am disappointed that we spent time and money for her to do something that was her passion but now she wants nothing to do with it. I did tell her that after her foot heals, if she changes her mind, she could go back. I don't want her to have regrets but I do know if she lost her passion, then she is likely done.
Anybody else experience their daughters going from loving it to hating it? I wonder if I should have made her think about it more before she quit. She said she has been thinking of it for several months. Another parent at the gym said, at least she is letting you know now since there have been other girls who compete much longer and are not happy before they quit with many more years and money spent.
My only concern is that she finds something else to do. She is an extremely high energy kid and I would hate for her to sit around without much to do.
We told the gym that she is done so as of right now she has officially quit.
