I agree with the previous responses to your message. Since the type of injury you described in your brief post seems likely to have resulted from repetitive microtrauma due to hyperextension rather than from some unusual accident, and because overuse injuries of the spine are difficult to overcome and frequently recur, you might want to thoroughly discuss with your child's doctors if returning to her previous training pattern (and thus to repeated and frequent exposure to the stresses that contributed to her injury) is likely to hurt her again. Perhaps you've already had that conversation; if so, did the orthopedist know enough about gymnastics to offer some specific advise as to how your daughter could modify her training to avoid reinjury?
It may be that simple changes such as reducing her training hours or avoiding the sort of hyperextensions that likely contributed to her injury could help her to continue to enjoy gymnastics while minimizing the chance that back problems will plague her in adult life. That's worth considering for a kid who has already sustained a back injury, since anecdotal and scientific evidence suggest that gymnastics can be harmful to the spine. (See, for example, the notorious "Gymnasts In Pain" article from the Orange County Register--many of the former high-level competitors reported long-term back pain--and a report of MRI studies of elite gymnasts published last year in Skeletal Radiology, which showed that 13 of 19 of the 12 to 20 year-old gymnasts invited to a national training camp had radiographic evidence of spinal injury such as spondylolysis, spondylolisthesis, degenerative disk disease, or herniation; that was in good agreement with a similar study in which 2/3 of the Olympic-level gymnasts surveyed had abnormal MRI results.) Of course that most certainly doesn't mean that gymnastics has doomed your injured child (or even an elite gymnast with MRI evidence of spinal injury) to a life of pain, but it does raise the question of where hurrying back to competition following bracing for pars interarticularis fractures should be on the priority list for a beginning gymnast.
To respond directly to your question, "Am I over-reacting?" Ahh, well, perhaps.... After all, she's a kid in a kid's sport. For all I know your 11 year-old Level 5 may be on the fast track to glory, but I suspect that most children of her age and her level will leave the sport within a few seasons. She'll need her back for the rest of her life. I hope that she recovers quickly.
