How do you deal with a kid who insists upon destroying herself from the inside? Tinker Bell got off to a great start in L4. She came home from practice happy every day, was making great progress in terms of skills and form, and had a nice solid performance at the in-house meet. Then two things happened: 1) She was disappointed with her scores from the in-house meet, even though they were perfectly fine (near the median on everything but vault, on a very strong L4 team) and her coach was pleased; and 2) they started uptraining L5/L6 skills and she is not picking up the tumbling as fast as the other girls (not a surprise). Suddenly her beam cartwheel and vault are "gone" and her ROBHSBHS is a disaster. Her much-improved presentation and form on floor and beam are MIA. She isn't even happy on bars, her strongest and best-loved event. I am having flashbacks to her first L3 season, when her sudden realization that she was (at that point) a below-average gymnast caused her to implode, resulting in nine months of skill regression and absolute misery.
Tink's first real meet is this weekend. She is talking about asking to scratch beam, and I'm starting to wonder whether it's a good idea to let her compete at all. I'm afraid that if she goes out there with her current level of self-confidence, her performance will fall far short of her capabilities and her confidence will take even more of a beating, setting her up for a terrible season. On the other hand, I don't know whether asking her to sit out this meet and wait another few weeks to compete will do any good or even do more harm. I am on the road this week and won't be able to meet with the coach to discuss it. I know it's Tinker Bell's sport and she should be in charge, but I also know what can happen when we let her compete mentally unprepared.
Tink's first real meet is this weekend. She is talking about asking to scratch beam, and I'm starting to wonder whether it's a good idea to let her compete at all. I'm afraid that if she goes out there with her current level of self-confidence, her performance will fall far short of her capabilities and her confidence will take even more of a beating, setting her up for a terrible season. On the other hand, I don't know whether asking her to sit out this meet and wait another few weeks to compete will do any good or even do more harm. I am on the road this week and won't be able to meet with the coach to discuss it. I know it's Tinker Bell's sport and she should be in charge, but I also know what can happen when we let her compete mentally unprepared.