Anon Tell me your crazy gym parent behaviors

[JBS]

Crazy Gym Parent Behavior (Anonymous Version)​

Tell us what you've done or seen!

 

[Anonymous (25d6)]

Just for fun, what crazy gym parent behavior have you seen this season. I have several but will just share just one. I had a parent say my child didn’t deserve the score she got on an event. It was a high score but his daughter had a score higher than my child. My child is his child’s competition at every meet.

 

[Anonymous (4266)]

My child got a weirdly low score (the coach actually did an inquiry with the judges after and later total me she didn’t understand the judge’s reasoning- coach has been in compulsories for 20 years) and a parent on our team loudly went around and said the score and she couldn’t believe anyone could get a score like that. In the next rotation her child got an even lower score with good reason, so it was a rare case of immediate justice.

Parent stayed at the gym for the entire practice. Not to do work and not to socialize, but literally videoing 4.5 hours of practice 4x/week. Then they must edit all night because they immediately post anything vaguely good to Instagram the next morning.

Parent tells everyone in person and on social media that their child is training level X. This was during the actual season and not uptraining season or summer. Their child is in the same workout group of children training level x-1. No one has said anything to her because it’s so desperate and weird to not just say their actual level.

 

[Anonymous (4266)]

Not parents but grandparents- I was sitting next to my child’s teammates’ grandparents at a meet. They knew who my child was and we have been introduced. When their daughter was up right after mine, they started saying things like “beat her, beat her!” And doing the math out loud for the score their granddaughter needed to get a higher AA score than mine. Then they loudly cheered when the routine was done saying “yes, [granddaughter] beat [my daughter] by .05! She beat [my daughter]!”.

Our team is very supportive of all of our girls so it was abnormal and unpleasant.

I got up and moved away to other seats.

 

[Anonymous (fb5d)]

A dad told his daughter that he would give her $100 for ANY score of at least 9.0.
Her ALL AROUND score was well over 9.0, so he had to pay up.

A mom was sitting behind me quietly willing the little girl (L3) on beam to fall off "Come on, fall. Come on, fall. Just 1 fall ..." so HER daughter would win the All Around. The girls were teammates!?!?!? She didn't fall, and they ended up tying in the All Around ... for 2nd place after a girl on our team had the vault of her life!

 

[Anonymous (5cb4)]

One of our level 10 moms sits in the lobby and watches every.single.practice. 25 hours a week. My daughter and all her teammates think it’s super cringy and weird. As do all the other parents. Oh and they live less than 30 min from the gym, and we have 5 hour practices.

 

[Anonymous (357e)]

Sad to say my mom is kind of like these parents...

For the past three years, there was this one girl from a different gym who competed the same level as me and would score higher than me in every single meet. After all of the meets, she would say "That [girl's name] beat you again, you would have won if she didn't compete!"


She also said this about one of my teammates this year who is really good and came back her senior year after quitting due to a concussion

 

[Anonymous (4266)]

One of our level 10 moms sits in the lobby and watches every.single.practice. 25 hours a week. My daughter and all her teammates think it’s super cringy and weird. As do all the other parents. Oh and they live less than 30 min from the gym, and we have 5 hour practices.

We have multiple optionals moms like that. They line up along the viewing balcony and talk to each other without moving their heads from looking straight forward like pigeons on a wire.

On the other hand, we have a handful of elite moms who seem to show up at the gym when their daughters aren’t even at practice just to bring treats to the front desk staff. They make a point of attending random compulsory and lower optional sessions at JO meets. I’m not even sure their girls ever did compulsories? It takes all kinds, I guess?!

 

[LCsMom]

One of our level 10 moms sits in the lobby and watches every.single.practice. 25 hours a week. My daughter and all her teammates think it’s super cringy and weird. As do all the other parents. Oh and they live less than 30 min from the gym, and we have 5 hour practices.

Well! ....I came here to say that it seems the crazy gym parent behavior falls off at the higher levels...but maybe there's always one!! Seriously though....as the same kids get older and progress through the levels (and a lot of the ones with crazy gym parents drop out)....we're all rooting for all of them, and they root for each other, even though they are competing against each other. It's great to see what awesome humans they've all become.

 

[Anonymous (f4c7)]

Bringing travel mugs/tumblers full of wine to the gym to watch practice...

 

[Anonymous (6533)]

Last season we had a mom loudly tell one of her daughter's teammates (after competing, before awards) that she ought to shift her floor routine around so the judges don't see her bent back leg in one of her leaps.

Another mom will not accept that her 15-year old Xcel gold is unlikely to get a college scholarship. She frequently posts on a Facebook group I'm a member of with the same question, gets the same "not likely" answers every time but is still absolutely convinced it will happen for her daughter. The daughter is also consistently injured and has to scratch multiple events and can no longer do a back handspring due to one of her injuries.

 

[Anonymous (9380)]

Level 4 mom clearly thinks her daughter is a future olympian (spoiler alert: she's not), and the girl does at least 5 privates a week. She is currently injured (overuse injury...what a shock!), but she's still doing the privates.

 

[Anonymous (f1a7)]

I live in a world between rec and squad in the UK (eldest is rec and middle is squad) and I find the rec parents are properly mental- I avoid at all costs!
I was on rec run recently and a squad is training at the same time and one mother backed by the others was going to write in an email to suggest her rec child (who can barely do a forward roll) should actually be allowed to watch the squad and copy what they are doing, because that’s what they really should be doing…. Tumbling passes….. they want to do the ‘proper stuff’. She just needs to send these instructions to the coach and get it sorted……
Like these parents have no idea
Took everything I had not to say anything!

 

[Anonymous (f8cf)]

Last season we had a mom loudly tell one of her daughter's teammates (after competing, before awards) that she ought to shift her floor routine around so the judges don't see her bent back leg in one of her leaps.

Another mom will not accept that her 15-year old Xcel gold is unlikely to get a college scholarship. She frequently posts on a Facebook group I'm a member of with the same question, gets the same "not likely" answers every time but is still absolutely convinced it will happen for her daughter. The daughter is also consistently injured and has to scratch multiple events and can no longer do a back handspring due to one of her injuries.

Oh wow- pretty sure I responded to that woman recently and she blocked me! Is she the one who said her 15 yo Xcel Gold might be willing to consider a D2 school but is really aiming for a D1 spot?

 

[Anonymous (a5ff)]

We have a girl that was doing 6 hours of privates a week!!

Then just the other day my daughter told me after practice, "I don't know what we did but that mom does NOT like me!" I asked what happened and she explained that after practice she was gathering her stuff and standing right by a teammate when this mom comes over and wishes the teammate luck at the upcoming meet and goes on and on all while staring my daughter in the eyes and never says a thing to my daughter! The petty side of me was a little happy when my daughter beat the teammate!

 

[Anonymous (d8eb)]

Many years ago when our daughters were around 8 years old, one of the mothers was calculating what year olympics her daughter could aim for. This level of delusion was so shocking I was quite literally speechless. I just sat there with a 'deer in the headlights' expression. She never brought it up again.