L
lauramum
Hi! I'm new here. I've enjoyed reading many of your posts!
I need to sort some things out in my head, and I thought
typing it all up and posting it here might help with that. This post
is long-- sorry! I'm not offended if you just ignore it.
My 6 year old son is on his way to joining the boys team, and I can't
decide how I feel about it.
My daughter (now almost 12) was a competition gymnast at a junior
olympic training center near our home. When she was 10 (training 16-
18 hours) she began having a lot of knee pain. The head coach
checked her out, declared it Osgood Schlotter syndrome (spelling?),
and said it was fine to keep working out. The pain was pretty bad--
she's a tough kid and not known for whining in the gym, but the pain
really kept her from vaulting and tumbling successfully.
The coach looked at it again a few months later and said knee pain
was very typical for girls her age going through their pre-puberty
growth spurt, and he didn't see any cause for concern. The team
chiropractor (who comes to the gym to work on the teammembers) began
working on her-- first once a week and then twice a week when we
weren't seeing improvement. The pain grew worse and the chiropractor
told the coaches no more vaulting/tumbling. She scratched on those
events for the first couple of meets of the season.
My husband and I repeatedly tried to get her to quit the sport or
just take a year off or something but she would get hysterical and
cry that we might as well just ask her to stop breathing. So we let
her continue, but we were worried.
Then, one day last year she called me and calmly told me to come pick
her up because she'd broken her foot. I told her that if her foot
was really broken she'd be crying, but she insisted she felt the bone
break. She hadn't told the coaches because she was afraid they'd get
mad at her. Anyway, I picked her up, got her x-rayed, and sure
enought-- her ankle was broken. She never cried a bit.
We took her to a pediatric orthopedist. He confirmed the bone was
broken but said what really concerned him was not the broken ankle
but the state of her knees. He said she had the knees of an old lady-
- they were completely worn out, the cartilage was shredded and
ripped, and her bones were grinding together and being worn away at
the joints. He said she had no sign of Osgood Schlotter (the coach was wrong) and every time she felt pain while working out it was because she was ripping
cartilage. The damage is permanant and he said she had to quit
gymnastics immediately.
She was hysterical and begged us to get a second opinion. We took
her to a sports medicine orthopedist who sees a lot of gymnasts. He
told her that if she's passionate about gymnastics to bite the bullet, ignore the pain, and keep doing it. She'd just have to get knee replacement surgery
in a few years. Yeah, right! We vetoed his opinion and thus ended
my daughter's stint in gymnastics.
She took 6 months off to heal up and then tried recreational
gymnastics. But she found that she could no longer tolerate pain and
even an hour a week of gymnastics was too much pain. She moved to
diving (and found a lot of injured ex-gymnasts there) but the jumping
on the board was too much for her knee. She can't do anything (even
bicycling) with her damaged knee, so she no longer does any sports.
She was depressed for quite a while but has come to terms with it and
is happy with her life again.
MY daughter is the oldest of my 3 kids. Meanwhile... my middle son was also a competitive gymnast on the boys team. He was very strong
on his floor routine and loved watching the dance classes the girls
team took every week. Long story short, he became interested in
ballet and quit the boys team. He auditioned for a prestigious pre-
professional ballet school and was accepted. He wants to be a
professional ballet dancer someday, and they tell me he has a lot of
potential.
So, she he was accepted I was prepared for him to be training in
ballet 8-12 hours a week like he was with gymnastics. I was
surprised when they told me to bring him to just 3 one hour classes a
week (two technique classes and one boys class). When I asked them
why so few hours they looked at me like I was crazy and said there
was no need to wear out his body at such a young age-- they needed
him to be in top condition so that he could dance as an adult well
into his thirties. They don't start the long training hours until
adolescence when they've stopped growing.
That made complete sense and suddenly gymnastics seemed extremely
ridiculous to me. In gymnastics my daughter was completely wearing
out her young body for a sport that she can't even make a career out
of. There are no professional gymnasts! At my son's ballet school
they were guarding the well-being of his body and he's actually
training for a career!
So, I became anti-gymnastics and told everyone that would listen how
abusive the sport is and how ridiculous it is to spend so many hours
of childhood training for something that ruins your body and has no
future career (other than becoming a coach, I guess).
Back to the present...A few weeks ago my youngest son who is 6 began begging to go to gymnastics again (he had done preschool gymnastics while my other two were on team, but quit when his big brother and sister left the gym). I took him to the recreational gym and he tried a class, but he didn't
like it. He only wanted to go back to our old gym. So, I hestantly took him there and figured he'd be in the level 1 class because hadn't done any gymnastics since he was 4 and didn't remember how to do anything. So, he went to his class and afterwards the coach said he'd evaluated him and saw a lot of potential. He wants to work with him for a month to get his basic skills down and then put him on boys pre-team to get him ready to compete.
Here we go again!
I guess that shouldn't have surprised me. When he was 3 and 4 and in
the preschool class, the gym owner (and head boys coach) used to
point to him and say "I want that boy on my team in a couple of
years". My son is very excited to go to pre-team but I'm sure you
can see that I struggle with making the decision.
For one, I'm also not sure if I'm ready to go down that path of life again. Competition gymnastics, as I'm sure you know, is all-encompassing! Serving as an officer on the booster club, coordinating all the practices, driving to all the meets, spending all that $$$... it makes me exhausted just thinking about doing all that again!
Mostly, I don't want him to have the stress injuries that my daughter did. But, perhaps it's a whole different situation. For one thing, my daughter and older son have bodies like dancers, not like gymnasts. They are tall, thin, flexible, and very long-legged. Even when my daughter was working out many hours a week she never showed any muscle on her lean body and at meets people saw her floor routines and asked if she was also a ballet dancer. My younger son, however, has a different body. He is short, compact, and muscular. Even
though he hasn't done any sports since preschool when he goes without
a shirt you can see his little six pack abs and his arms are curvy with visible muscle definition.
My observations at the gym have been that it's the tall skinny kids that seemed to get injured and the short muscular kids that seemed to be most successful. So, perhaps his body will be able to take the abuses of gymnastics better. Also, the boys don't train as many hours as the girls at such a young age, so that might be better too.
Anyway, I just needed to write all this down to help me make a
decision whether to let my youngest son go down the competition road
or not. Thanks for letting me vent!
I look forward to getting to know all of you better!
I need to sort some things out in my head, and I thought
typing it all up and posting it here might help with that. This post
is long-- sorry! I'm not offended if you just ignore it.
My 6 year old son is on his way to joining the boys team, and I can't
decide how I feel about it.
My daughter (now almost 12) was a competition gymnast at a junior
olympic training center near our home. When she was 10 (training 16-
18 hours) she began having a lot of knee pain. The head coach
checked her out, declared it Osgood Schlotter syndrome (spelling?),
and said it was fine to keep working out. The pain was pretty bad--
she's a tough kid and not known for whining in the gym, but the pain
really kept her from vaulting and tumbling successfully.
The coach looked at it again a few months later and said knee pain
was very typical for girls her age going through their pre-puberty
growth spurt, and he didn't see any cause for concern. The team
chiropractor (who comes to the gym to work on the teammembers) began
working on her-- first once a week and then twice a week when we
weren't seeing improvement. The pain grew worse and the chiropractor
told the coaches no more vaulting/tumbling. She scratched on those
events for the first couple of meets of the season.
My husband and I repeatedly tried to get her to quit the sport or
just take a year off or something but she would get hysterical and
cry that we might as well just ask her to stop breathing. So we let
her continue, but we were worried.
Then, one day last year she called me and calmly told me to come pick
her up because she'd broken her foot. I told her that if her foot
was really broken she'd be crying, but she insisted she felt the bone
break. She hadn't told the coaches because she was afraid they'd get
mad at her. Anyway, I picked her up, got her x-rayed, and sure
enought-- her ankle was broken. She never cried a bit.
We took her to a pediatric orthopedist. He confirmed the bone was
broken but said what really concerned him was not the broken ankle
but the state of her knees. He said she had the knees of an old lady-
- they were completely worn out, the cartilage was shredded and
ripped, and her bones were grinding together and being worn away at
the joints. He said she had no sign of Osgood Schlotter (the coach was wrong) and every time she felt pain while working out it was because she was ripping
cartilage. The damage is permanant and he said she had to quit
gymnastics immediately.
She was hysterical and begged us to get a second opinion. We took
her to a sports medicine orthopedist who sees a lot of gymnasts. He
told her that if she's passionate about gymnastics to bite the bullet, ignore the pain, and keep doing it. She'd just have to get knee replacement surgery
in a few years. Yeah, right! We vetoed his opinion and thus ended
my daughter's stint in gymnastics.
She took 6 months off to heal up and then tried recreational
gymnastics. But she found that she could no longer tolerate pain and
even an hour a week of gymnastics was too much pain. She moved to
diving (and found a lot of injured ex-gymnasts there) but the jumping
on the board was too much for her knee. She can't do anything (even
bicycling) with her damaged knee, so she no longer does any sports.
She was depressed for quite a while but has come to terms with it and
is happy with her life again.
MY daughter is the oldest of my 3 kids. Meanwhile... my middle son was also a competitive gymnast on the boys team. He was very strong
on his floor routine and loved watching the dance classes the girls
team took every week. Long story short, he became interested in
ballet and quit the boys team. He auditioned for a prestigious pre-
professional ballet school and was accepted. He wants to be a
professional ballet dancer someday, and they tell me he has a lot of
potential.
So, she he was accepted I was prepared for him to be training in
ballet 8-12 hours a week like he was with gymnastics. I was
surprised when they told me to bring him to just 3 one hour classes a
week (two technique classes and one boys class). When I asked them
why so few hours they looked at me like I was crazy and said there
was no need to wear out his body at such a young age-- they needed
him to be in top condition so that he could dance as an adult well
into his thirties. They don't start the long training hours until
adolescence when they've stopped growing.
That made complete sense and suddenly gymnastics seemed extremely
ridiculous to me. In gymnastics my daughter was completely wearing
out her young body for a sport that she can't even make a career out
of. There are no professional gymnasts! At my son's ballet school
they were guarding the well-being of his body and he's actually
training for a career!
So, I became anti-gymnastics and told everyone that would listen how
abusive the sport is and how ridiculous it is to spend so many hours
of childhood training for something that ruins your body and has no
future career (other than becoming a coach, I guess).
Back to the present...A few weeks ago my youngest son who is 6 began begging to go to gymnastics again (he had done preschool gymnastics while my other two were on team, but quit when his big brother and sister left the gym). I took him to the recreational gym and he tried a class, but he didn't
like it. He only wanted to go back to our old gym. So, I hestantly took him there and figured he'd be in the level 1 class because hadn't done any gymnastics since he was 4 and didn't remember how to do anything. So, he went to his class and afterwards the coach said he'd evaluated him and saw a lot of potential. He wants to work with him for a month to get his basic skills down and then put him on boys pre-team to get him ready to compete.
Here we go again!
I guess that shouldn't have surprised me. When he was 3 and 4 and in
the preschool class, the gym owner (and head boys coach) used to
point to him and say "I want that boy on my team in a couple of
years". My son is very excited to go to pre-team but I'm sure you
can see that I struggle with making the decision.
For one, I'm also not sure if I'm ready to go down that path of life again. Competition gymnastics, as I'm sure you know, is all-encompassing! Serving as an officer on the booster club, coordinating all the practices, driving to all the meets, spending all that $$$... it makes me exhausted just thinking about doing all that again!
Mostly, I don't want him to have the stress injuries that my daughter did. But, perhaps it's a whole different situation. For one thing, my daughter and older son have bodies like dancers, not like gymnasts. They are tall, thin, flexible, and very long-legged. Even when my daughter was working out many hours a week she never showed any muscle on her lean body and at meets people saw her floor routines and asked if she was also a ballet dancer. My younger son, however, has a different body. He is short, compact, and muscular. Even
though he hasn't done any sports since preschool when he goes without
a shirt you can see his little six pack abs and his arms are curvy with visible muscle definition.
My observations at the gym have been that it's the tall skinny kids that seemed to get injured and the short muscular kids that seemed to be most successful. So, perhaps his body will be able to take the abuses of gymnastics better. Also, the boys don't train as many hours as the girls at such a young age, so that might be better too.
Anyway, I just needed to write all this down to help me make a
decision whether to let my youngest son go down the competition road
or not. Thanks for letting me vent!
I look forward to getting to know all of you better!
