Parents Frustrations

[cogymmom2dd]

Last gymnastics season, my DD2, age 8 was belittled by her gymnast ‘friends’ at school for not being a ‘real gymnast’ because she was XCEL Silver (our gym doesn’t have a L2-5 team, so not an option for her)- to the point where her teachers noticed and contacted me and the school counselor about it. I am not sure if the not a real gymnast seed was planted in their ears by their parents or their coaches. We ultimately just told her not to discuss gymnastics at school even if they are. ‘Friends’ were L2-4 at another local gym that didn’t have an XCEL program and tries to advertise themselves as an ‘elite’ gym.
One of her friends has a pool and invited everyone over for an end of summer party last week. I was in the middle of a conversation with one of the moms discussing my DD’s practice schedule. Others chimed in about their DD’s competing XCEL this year. Come to find out, their gym decided to add the XCEL program this year and cut their JO team sizes in half. They had to try out and they treated the JO team as the ‘A’ team and the XCEL team as ‘B’ team. 5 out of 7 of them were placed on XCEL Silver after doing L2 and 3 last year. 1 moved up to L4 and 1 is repeating a season of L4. My DD will be doing Gold this year. I’m so frustrated that my DD went through all of that drama last year and now this happens. I sure hope this levels the playing field for her and keeps the drama away when gymnastics season rolls around (if we have one). The silver lining in it all is that at least she won’t have to compete against her friends since she has progressed to Gold.

 

[MuggleMom]

Good life lesson for her to focus on her own efforts and not give time to the drama because in gymnastics things tend to level out...girls get "ahead" or "behind" but most of what I have seen is they all end up in the same general place...or they decide the sport isnt for them. All you can control is what kind of person you want to be which is way more important than what level gymnast you want to be.

 

[cogymmom2dd]

Good life lesson for her to focus on her own efforts and not give time to the drama because in gymnastics things tend to level out...girls get "ahead" or "behind" but most of what I have seen is they all end up in the same general place...or they decide the sport isnt for them. All you can control is what kind of person you want to be which is way more important than what level gymnast you want to be.

Absolutely agree. We had to constantly reiterate this to her and tell her to just walk away if they start drama.
Luckily, she has many close friends on her team that she considers her real friends, the only thing is that may of them do not live near us, they drive from a neighboring county so figuring out the logistics of being able to hang out outside of practice can be tricky, especially when some are in school 5 days a week, some are 100% virtual and some are hybrid schooling.
I will have to say that the hiatus from gymnastics and school that COVID caused did simmer down the drama with her school friends. We are now back to hybrid schooling and instead of 8 girls together every day, there’s only 3 in her rotation and none of her close friends in her actual classroom, which I’m hoping will also help out. We are only on week 1 of school so tome will tell.