Parents What would you do?

[MeetDirector]

I do think she would "shut down" if she stays with this coach....

OP -

It sounds pretty obvious to me - if gymnastics is her passion and she has desire still to go further, then you move her. It doesn't matter who makes the decision to move, if she still has the fire burning in her, she needs to be with coaches that will feed her passion. At these upper optional levels, the gymnast-coach relationship is absolutely critical; there has to be a high level of trust between coach and athlete given the crazy-hard skills. It is clear to me that this trust is not and will not be present at her current gym. Move her.

Good Luck

 

[CTMOM]

I would see about a trial at the new gym. Sometimes the grass is greener.

 

[GymMom4]

Imho a great coaching relationship matters above almost anything else. Even without long-term results, the main issue sounds like your daughter's relationship with her HC. I have found that regardless of our/other outside input, having a coach that doesn't click with our athlete means that our athlete doesn't improve. A coach who is great will work with your kid and will search out resources if needed to help your child advance. Find that...even if it's a new place.

Speaking from recent experience, that is absolutely true and has made the biggest difference for my daughter.

 

[Iwannabemargo]

I third the coach/athlete relationship is what matters. My Pink had fears on beam. I was told she was "uncoachable". I tried having meetings with her coach, but there was no trust on my daughters part and there was no progress. New gym, new coach and she got silver on beam the last comp.

Mine thinks with her heart and loves and trusts her new coach. She knows she believes in her, and that has led her to believe in herself.

I would seriously consider switching

 

[Ms.Pak-Man]

Can you discern what dd wants, without her having to make the decision herself? She may not be old enough mentally to let herself make that big of a decision, even if it's clear what she wants. She just needs the backup reassurance that her parents are the authority. She's 14, which is still totally a kid, but mature enough to know what she needs in the short term, at least. Maybe it's her long term goals that is making the decision hard on her. My suggestion is to listen to her and take authority to confirm what her gut is telling her. If you can leave on good terms for a "trial" period, I don't see what harm could be done, and if you don't do anything, you won't know if it would have made a difference. Hopefully the adult coaches involved would not begrudge a 14 year old for needing to see if another dynamic is a better fit.

 

[bookworm]

I totally agree with skschlag and Meet Director...the coach/athlete relationship will be the key to her progression...and I too, say this from experience...we left an Olympic coach not because he wasn't a good coach or that we didn't hit it off, but, gymnastically, he wasn't the right coach for my youngest. If we had stayed at that gym, she would have quit gym as a 7th grader but instead, we moved to a gym with a fabulous coach that "got" her and coached her to multiple trips to JOs and getting a college scholarship for gymnastics ...with the prior coach, although he was a great coach for others, this never would have happened...

So the long story short on this is that you need to move her so that you stop wasting your money on coaches she has an obvious disconnect with.....

 

[GymMom4]

I third the coach/athlete relationship is what matters. My Pink had fears on beam. I was told she was "uncoachable". I tried having meetings with her coach, but there was no trust on my daughters part and there was no progress. New gym, new coach and she got silver on beam the last comp.

Mine thinks with her heart and loves and trusts her new coach. She knows she believes in her, and that has led her to believe in herself.

I would seriously consider switching

Why do coaches tell kids this? Mine was also told that she was difficult to coach and that she was frustrating to him. He was either mad at or ignoring her most of the time. We had to get out.

 

[dancingimmie]

I'm dealing with a similar problem. The HC and owner of my dd's gym thinks she's difficult and not worth his time but her main coach thinks she has what it takes to be an elite. Is she difficult? Yup, she is. Is she headstrong, yup. Does she let anything stand in her way? Nope. HC has no idea how to coach her, thank god he has someone who does.

 

[Seeker]

I wouldn't leave my daughter in a situation that made her feel "less than" on a daily basis. Besides the damage it's already done, she likely won't progress much under those circumstances. She needs to find her footing again and work with coaches who believe in her. She likely won't last under current circumstances-- not happily anyway, so I would look seriously at moving her asap so she has the whole summer to adjust and gain skills and confidence.

 

[sppd]

Our experience is a little different, but at our daughters previous gym the coaches were certain that our daughter was on track for Elite. So much so that they had her stop competing for an entire season to focus on training with a target of level 9 after a year off from competition. The first time we approached the coaches with a concern (nearly 3 years at the gym) about them failing to tell us about an accident/injury my daughter had everything changed. Suddenly the coach refused to allow her to try or learn new skills, and basically "dropped her to level 7". The coaches reason was that she was not physically or emotionally ready for anything new. My daughter suddenly had all these "issues" that were never discussed with us before. In our case my daughter did not want to move, and we had no intentions to move her until a major scheduling issue with training times forced our hand. Once we moved her to the new gym she is has bonded with the new coaches and they are allowing her to train new skills which she has picked up very quickly. I am attributing this to a great coach/gymnast relationship and the move was the best thing we never wanted lol! In our case the bridge was burned (IMHO not by us) with the old gym, but as it stands right now we are overall very pleased with how everything turned out.

 

[auswi]

It seems that OPs Dd is not progressing anyway at her current gym; with College gym as an end goal this won't happen here- I would definitely be trialling the new gym.

 

[John]

Time to try a new gym. Everyone has it right. If she loves gymnastics and the fire burns don't let it go out without an attempt to fix the situation. I would say this about any endeavor our children pursue in life.