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Smile :)
-My husband and I are about to finalize the adoption process for my younger sister who just turned 14. She’s lived with us since December and the situation is more complicated than I probably can or should explain on a message board. I will say that we both love her dearly and do want to be there for her. I know it isn’t going to happen over night but I do think eventually we can really be the family she needs.
-She’s done gymnastics since it was the trendy thing when she was three and every little kid in the neighborhood did it. Although I didn’t realize this originally it was probably the one constant thing in her anything but stable life. She’s had reasonable success---she did elite testing last summer and competed in a few meets with variable success. I think by then life was starting to get in the way of gymnastics.
-Nothing about her coming to live with us was planned so there wasn’t any consideration to how gymnastics fit into the equation of that. Honestly it didn’t even register on my radar so living with us meant anything gymnastics ended and because she didn’t complain (probably more because she doesn’t complain than because it didn’t matter---my error I see that now) we really didn’t realize what we were taking away.
-To further complicate things she was incredibly sick at the beginning of the winter and even ended up hospitalized with pneumonia so she probably did need at least something of a physical break even if we had been a little more insightful.
-The Jr. High/High School here has a gymnastics team that is in season February-May. We were a little leery with her doing that because of everything else but compromised and she competed as a floor exercise specialist and did very well. For other reasons the season was a mixed experience. From what I understand her skills are significantly beyond what is the norm at the high school level, and this was received in various ways, some not so positive. She did make some friends though which is a start and which led us into her joining the same gym (which is really the only gym in town or within a two hours drive I have looked a little) they all train at year round.
-She really is happy to be back into gymnastics but now that some of that novelty has worn off she wants to continue to move forward and progress. The gym she is currently at has trained girls up to level 10 and has a bunch of alumni competing at the collegiate level now but they really aren’t (and in fairness don’t claim to be) an elite gym. This is probably a bit below where she was before she lived with us but I think it’s really the only option she has. They train 20-25 hours a week during the school year and do doubles in the summer. I’ve been told that this isn’t really enough. I guess I wonder if we are shortchanging her dreams and perhaps I should worry about safety issues if these coaches have less experience. .
-I do not want her to board and train somewhere else. I’m not sure I would ever want that but given everything that has happened in the past few years that is not even a consideration. I realize that moving is an option and perhaps it really is although my husband’s career complicates that a little.
-I probably will never really be able to be a good “gymnastics momâ€. I was always the one sitting there at her meets just praying she didn’t fall or something. Who cared about pointed toes or straight lines? Well not me I guess. My husband is probably more aligned with the “Little Girls in Pretty Boxes†Camp (he had to read the book for a course actually) so he has some real reservations about all of this in that context.
Any thoughts or advice….