I coach an 8 year old gymnast whose mother did gymnastics in the past. Her mum is my assistant coach and has been over a year. She is a wonderful assistant for me and she's really good with the kids. She's a warm and steady person but demanding coach and does great job. The problem is her daughter. She has started to fool around at practices, has fake injuries and pains sometimes, complains a lot, doesn't seem to focus and sometimes cheats on conditioning.
She HAS some real natural talent and last year she was always the first one to get new skills and the one I picked to demonstrate skills and drills etc. She was also the first one to compete. At the beginning of this fall season we regrouped kids and placed 7 new kids into this group. So we had 5 old gymnasts and 7 new, all turning 8 in 2013. The new kids were good and had more strength and more skills because they had been practicing longer hours than our old group in 2012-2013. I think it was quite hard for her to adjust to longer training sessions and hard work needed to success and get new skills. And the hardest part for her must have been to realize she's not the "best" in the group anymore.
Now she's driving her mum nuts at every practice. Her mum is very strict with the rules and work ethic and makes kids work hard and doesn't allow any fooling around or cheating. But when it comes to her daughter... She doesn't like her daughter's behavior and sometimes she yells at her, sometimes she tries to ignore, sometimes she comes to me and asks me to discipline her daughter. Nothing seems to work really.
Her mother has told me daughter sometimes refuses to go to practice etc. Her mother has to take her to the gym anyway because she's committed to the group and can't leave the kid home alone. I don't want this kid to quit because I think she LIKES the sport but just wants to resist against her mum. I could imagine every kid in the group could behave like this if their parent was coaching them.
If the kid quit her mother would quit also and that's not what I want either! She's a great coach and it would be hard to find a new assistant.
My mum was my coach when I was a kid and I can tell I wasn't really an angel at her practices and I back talked A LOT. But when someone else coached me I didn't say a half word against the coach.
What would you do in this situation?
She HAS some real natural talent and last year she was always the first one to get new skills and the one I picked to demonstrate skills and drills etc. She was also the first one to compete. At the beginning of this fall season we regrouped kids and placed 7 new kids into this group. So we had 5 old gymnasts and 7 new, all turning 8 in 2013. The new kids were good and had more strength and more skills because they had been practicing longer hours than our old group in 2012-2013. I think it was quite hard for her to adjust to longer training sessions and hard work needed to success and get new skills. And the hardest part for her must have been to realize she's not the "best" in the group anymore.
Now she's driving her mum nuts at every practice. Her mum is very strict with the rules and work ethic and makes kids work hard and doesn't allow any fooling around or cheating. But when it comes to her daughter... She doesn't like her daughter's behavior and sometimes she yells at her, sometimes she tries to ignore, sometimes she comes to me and asks me to discipline her daughter. Nothing seems to work really.
Her mother has told me daughter sometimes refuses to go to practice etc. Her mother has to take her to the gym anyway because she's committed to the group and can't leave the kid home alone. I don't want this kid to quit because I think she LIKES the sport but just wants to resist against her mum. I could imagine every kid in the group could behave like this if their parent was coaching them.
If the kid quit her mother would quit also and that's not what I want either! She's a great coach and it would be hard to find a new assistant.
My mum was my coach when I was a kid and I can tell I wasn't really an angel at her practices and I back talked A LOT. But when someone else coached me I didn't say a half word against the coach.
What would you do in this situation?