Parents Need the post-quit pep talk

[SWK6]

After doing gymnastics her whole life, DD quit this week. She is 8, and was a level 5 at a top gym. She loves gymnastics passionately, but after many circles around this for a while, just got tired of the time commitment and constant pressure every day in practice. While I know it will all work out in the end, it is hard to imagine not living this life style and feeling the highs of the sport -- both hers and mine. Any thoughts and perspective appreciated.

 

[duyetanh]

I understand when it is a huge part of everyone’s life, but you are an AMAZING parent to not keep pushing your child to go, and for accepting her decision. There are two girls at my dd’s gym who would dearly love to move on, but the parents refuse to let this sport go, so the poor girls come to gym and are miserable. My dd says it is so sad . She sounds like a very mature little girl and I am impressed. It is HUGE to retire from the sport now before puberty and potentially career ending injuries occur both due to puberty and higher skills. She has so much time on her hands to try other things and excel in them. Diving, pole vaulting, track, dance all come instantly to mind. You will have more family time, plan a wonderful vacay together, and talk about what her plans are....honestly the most important thing with all this is hat you get her into something else so she finds a new passion, it doesn’t even need to be sports. Art, drama, music....anything. But she will all of a sudden have tons of idle time otherwise and idle time has huge potential for, well let’s just say it has potential for stuff you don’t want as a parent and leave it at that. Don’t fill the void completely, but help her find and try other things. And good luck to all of you, and unless she ends up doing dance, be ever so glad you don’t have to do that hair anymore (it’s my private h.e.l.l.) and wait sometimes two weeks before comps to find out when you go!

 

[l.c.o]

My DD left the sport recently after 10 years. We fully supported her decision. She is so much lighter and happier already. As a mom, it’s great to see. Her body is healing and she feels better, and she’s excited to try new things.

The icing on the cake was the mother’s day card she made for me thanking me for supporting her decisions, and for always being the one to put in the work driving her to activities.

I had been worried she’d miss it or regret it, but so far she doesn’t. I think she was truly ready to be done. I’m so glad we didn’t push her to ‘try one more month’ or whatever.

 

[2gymkids]

We were there at the end of February. It was HARD- for her and me. And she hides her emotions so I wasn't even sure she had "thought through" the decision until she spent quite a while crying after her last meet. We moved last year and all of a sudden I realized most of the new friends *I* had made were other gym moms. She also loves her gym friends but it's really hard to maintain a friendship with kids who are at the gym that much when you aren't, so that was tough too. But, it was the right decision, 100%. People ask her if she misses it and she's honest- she says she misses her friends and working out but she doesn't miss the pressure and the time commitment. She's already exploring new things and she's so HAPPY doing things she never had time for before. It was SO hard for me those first few weeks- I felt at odds, like I had just been kicked out of a world I had come to love and away from friends, but now that we're 2 1/2 months out, I'm over it. We eat dinner together most nights, we have more money to do fun things and go on vacation, we can do things on Friday nights without worrying about Saturday morning practice....it's fine. I promise. It will take a few weeks but you'll get there.

The day after DD quit, she was rethinking it. She had been dead set against Xcel and all of a sudden was talking about trying it. I told her to give herself a month of no gym and we'd reassess. I watched her last week up on stage in a play for the first time (that she never would have been able to do with gymnastics), going to the cast party and ice cream afterwards, so happy and so stress free. Before the first performance, she said "I'm so excited, and nervous, but not like a gym meet. I'm not afraid of falling. This is going to be only fun." I saw her up there confident and happy and it became very clear- she's never going back. And that's ok.

Hang in there! It's a shock to the system with some very real emotions but you'll come through on the other side.

 

[Deleted member 18037]

Time, time and if I forgot to mention it time