Women Sick kid/fear

[Lynn]

My DD isn't feeling the greatest today. Very stuffy and tired. Here's the thing...if I keep her home from practice she will "pay" for it tomorrow and in the future. She is afraid to miss practice because they aren't real keen on that. You should be there no matter what. But if I send her feeling this way, I'm throwing her to the sharks. Putting her out there to hurt herself and who knows what else. She has no fever.

So I'm not sure which end of the sword I should go with. I do understand ( and so does she) how important it is to be at all practices) but the end result when you miss can lead to a gymnast not moving up and the way they get treated. Left out left behind kind of thing.

Looking for some parent advice and coach perspective. Thanks.

 

[Faith]

I usually compromised- took her to training if she wanted to go, but had a word with a coach before I sent her in. Explained she was ill, and I could either take her home to recover for the following session, or she could be on reduced work outs (only stretching, limited conditioning and no new skills- I trusted DD to say if she didn't feel up to something) until she felt better.

Another one was to mention vomiting or diarrhoea, and they'd refuse to let her in the gym in case everyone else caught it . Most places have a 24/48 hour exclusion policy for GI bugs...

 

[Flossyduck]

Well I don't know what age or level your dd is but, whilst I understand the pressure to be there, if she's not well at worst she's more likely to hurt herself and at best is very unlikely to benefit much from the session.

My dd rarely misses, but that is because she is genuinely rarely ill. So when she is I don't feel guilty at all about telling them she's ill.

If she is normally reliable and doesn't skip training for any old reason then you should be fine. No-one should want a sick girl in their gym surely?

 

[feather79]

My daughter had a headache and a stomachache and just wasn't herself. I let her stay home. She never misses. I looked at it like this: she wasn't going to do herself or anyone else any favors by going.

 

[luvmygymdtr]

I would never knowingly send my child to the gym sick, or even unusually tired-mostly for her safety; I also find it very inconsiderate when parents do allow their sick kids to attend. When it's time for your child to move up I would certainly hope the coaches had something better to concern themselves with other than "she's a great gymnast with all her skills but she missed practice on 03/27th".

 

[raenndrops]

Our coaches like parents to observe the "too sick for school = too sick for gym" rule. Just call or text that she won't be there. If it is spring break and the child is sick, then think of it as a school day - would you have sent her? If not, then she shouldn't be at the gym.
My OG missed school today, so she didn't go to gym either. She REALLY wanted to be at the gym (they are uptraining AND her friends that competed part of the season for the HS team are back in practice, so she has more ppl to hang out with that can CHALLENGE her with new skills

She will be better next week and back in the gym then!

 

[MaryA]

Apparently about 1/3 of the team was out sick today. Maybe if a few parents of sick kiddos had kept them home, the bug wouldn't have infected so many. If she's sick, keep her home. Not good for her OR for her teammates if she goes.

On the plus side, my DD said she had an awesome practice today with her group being so much smaller than usual...

 

[LIGYMMOM]

Dd stayed home from practice. She rarely misses, but today she came home and looked at me with those eyes that said "I just need a break today". So she stayed home, and she wasn't even the least bit sick.

 

[iwannacoach]

Your role as a paent is to raise a healthy kid for the coaches to coach. Their role as coaches is to coach to the best of their abilities.

Over the long haul, and as long as you're not talking about a minor case of sniffles, kids who stay home when ill are going to do better than the kids that walk in sick and have a bad day.

Tell your dd to work hard every day she's in the gym, and if the coaches can't respect her efforts, find another coach that does.

 

[Deleted member D3987]

My DD isn't feeling the greatest today. Very stuffy and tired. Here's the thing...if I keep her home from practice she will "pay" for it tomorrow and in the future. She is afraid to miss practice because they aren't real keen on that. You should be there no matter what. But if I send her feeling this way, I'm throwing her to the sharks. Putting her out there to hurt herself and who knows what else. She has no fever.

So I'm not sure which end of the sword I should go with. I do understand ( and so does she) how important it is to be at all practices) but the end result when you miss can lead to a gymnast not moving up and the way they get treated. Left out left behind kind of thing.

Looking for some parent advice and coach perspective. Thanks.

if she's sick, she's sick. ask "them" what they do when the kids get mono.

 

[raenndrops]

mono = no fun. MY little sister had it in 2nd grade... most miserable month of her life... luckily it fell during a time when there were a couple days off of school and a really bad snow season (she only missed 9 days of school while being stuck in bed for 28 days)... Please keep sick children home (and sick coaches). Our HC missed on Tuesday because she was sick. Came back today, much better... but may have been the one to get OG sick when she was in on Monday - not sure

 

[Lynn]

Thank you all for your advice. After reading my original post, I should have added that her symptoms were asthma related and not a common cold. My fingers got ahead of my thoughts. My dd is a very reliable gymnast. Typically only misses practice for school related functions or when she's hit with a migraine. The whole missing practice holds them back from moving up thing is something the gym owners started not long ago. As a motivational tool to kids who want to move up and sadly, they followed thru with a few girls last summer. Stinks! DD coaches I don't believe are fans of this but I think they just do what the boss says.

A little background to her fear...2 summers ago she developed swimmers ear and while doing handstand holds had severe pain. She was given drops to deal with this but it was very uncomfortable and her balance was thrown off. We decided to pull her from practice that week until it felt better. In the meantime, she also developed a rash that resembled chickenpox. Under the advice of her ped, we kept her away from the gym until the test results came back. Which was a couple days. So all in all with her ear and her rash she missed about 5 days of practice. I thought I did the right thing keeping her home and not exposing her to other kids until we knew for sure.

DD returns to practice and her former coach makes negative comments about how little she would be at practice during the whole month of July. 1 week for team vacation 1week for team camp ( which they don't consider showing up for practice). 1 week for annual family vacation and the illness. Made my daughter feel horrible about it. To the point of not even wanting to take our annual family vacation last summer. But thankfully her current coaches wouldn't say those nasty things to her even if they felt that way.

She did end up going to practice and did only what she felt up to doing. Her coach said she had a great practice! In one comment, someone mentioned letting the coaches know before practice, sounds good in theory but they "hide" until the girls have started warm ups and since parents are asked to not stay once practice has started, typically nobody is around when they head into the gym. Email is the only communication you have with them ( used to be able to text but thanks to a select few who didn't respect the coaches time we are forbidden from doing that).

Thanks again!