Parents Why gymnastics?

[cathiann]

When my oldest daughter was 3 1/2 we were watching gymnastics on TV. When a commercial came on she decided to get up from the sofa and chuck a backhandspring (onto her head!). She looked at me dazed afterward and said "I guess I should learn how to do that first..." The next morning I called a local gym and signed her up for a trial class...my younger daughters have followed in her footsteps...

This made me laugh ! I can just see her doing that too.. and I don't even know her!

 

[MdGymMom01]

We should have known from birth that our DD would be a gymnast. She held her head up at birth and started rolling over at 3 weeks. She was/is so flexible that as a baby and toddler she would sleep with her legs in the straddle position and her head and torso laid straight down. (Hope you can visual that) I was scared for her sleeping like that and I asked the pediatrian about it. He said not to worry; she was just very flexible. Every once in awhile I catch her sleeping like that now and she is 10! Even so, since I knew absolutely nothing about gymnastics, she didn't start until she was 6 1/2, but she loved it from the start and has never looked back. It is clearly her passion and her love and dedication is inspriring.

I can totally relate to this Claire!! My dd is also very flexible (almost freakishly) and as a baby and toddler (and even today-she is 11) she would sleep in the "butterfly position" but flat on her back! If she ever grows tired of gymnastics I know that she can always get into contortionism or join Cirque de Soleil!!!

 

[Flippers Mom]

Flipper was constantly doing gymnastics in our living room. When she was 3.5, daddy saw an advertisement in the newspaper and decided to enroll her in a recreational gymnastics class thinking it would keep her from breaking her neck and burn off excess energy.

Flipper was adopted internationally and was developmentally delayed. At 18 months, she hadn't even started trying to walk (didn't really even crawl, mostly just rolled wherever she wanted to go). Our pediatrician sent us to an ortho thinking that her hips had issues. Turns out that the problem was she was too flexible. Her leg and hip muscles hadn't tightened up enough to give her control of her legs. The hi-tech solution was to tie her legs down when she was in the stroller. She had been crossing her legs behind her head. She is still very flexible - her gymnastics coaches lament the fact that we worked at loosing some of her flexibility.

We often warn friends that say they are putting their kids into gymnastics to get rid of energy - it doesn't work! The gymnasts just get in better physical condition and have even more energy.

 

[mariposa]

Gymnastics was not what I wanted my girl to do. I had dreams of soccer or softball, as I sucked at any kind of team sports, LOL. She wanted to do ballet, so I put in her a little class at the community center. She was bored silly, but loved the tumbling portion. Then she saw a commercial on PBS for the Little Gym and asked to try that. I took her and she loved it. Figured it wouldn't last too long as she showed no natural affinity for it, except that she is a climber.

 

[emandelsmom]

Thank you all! I love hearing the stories!

 

[Gymdad2]

Emandelsmom,

Can you stand one more? In our case, dd didn't start going to gym - the gym came to her, literally. When dd was 4 we had just moved into a new house and enrolled her in a nearby daycare center. When I picked her up one afternoon there was a flyer in her folder adveristing a local gym. When I asked about it, the teacher told me that they had a contract with this gym to bring in mats twice a week and teach phys ed and tumbling to the kids. I asked dd if she would like to go to the real gym sometime and see what it was like. She went, and that's all she wrote. She is now a jr. in high school and a Level 10 gymnast. I've often wondered how different our lives would have been if it hadn't been for that flyer. One things for sure; I'd have a lot more money now!

Its funny that this topic would come up just now, because I was looking at some old photos the other day and there was one of her original L5 team. Of the 10 girls from that team she is the only one still at the gym (and the only one still doing gymnastics, as far as I know.)

 

[pixie flips]

This is an interesting thread. My dd had a hard time learning to walk. I didn't really think anything of it until we started to really to motivate her at 14 months. She seemed to want to walk to get the colorful YOGO's from us. (colorful yougurt balls) We also noticed that her walking was just "off" kind of like she had massive spaghetti legs. At 15 months she fell and broke her leg while she was walking. We got therapy for her and her diagnoses was that she was just hyperflexible. Well, when she was 2.5 I figured out that gymnastics classes where less expensive than therapy and much better!!!! What we figured out from gymnastics is that she is not just flexible but equally strong. So gymnastics has helped put these two together for her as well as helped her with her body awareness. She also had trouble eating and gaining weight due to an undiagnosed food allergy that is now under control. Now you could never tell she had any issues at all!
I think it is interesting to note that my dd does gymnastics at every other sport she does (like on the soccer field, the dance floor,...) but doesn't even think about the other sports when she is at gymnastics.

What a great story! Thanks for sharing

To the original question: You would think being a former gymnast that I would have put Pixie in gymnastics as soon as she started walking but I didn't.

I first enrolled her in tap/ballet, when she was 3. Pixie has always been very shy and reserved I just thought it's be more of a natural fit. But, it wasn't. Pixie could not stand going to dance and often begged to not go to practice. But that was toward the end of the season and they had a huge production they were in the middle of. I promised her after the production was over, if she still wanted to stop taking dance lessons, I would let her.

Well, she remember and asked not to go back so she didn't. So, I thought we'd give gymnastics a shot and she took to it instantly and loved going to practice she was 4 when the switch was made. She did that for several months but then I took her out of gymnastics due to me having to travel back & forth to work. She was out a year and I changed jobs and didn't have to travel so far and she asked to go back. She went back and has been going ever since!

 

[emandelsmom]

Emma started at her daycare as well. With her same coaches. We stopped for a couple of years-dance and soccer years. And I found the nearest gym. It happened to be the same coaches from her daycare. I did not know that at the time. Emma has been with them since she was 3. They are like family to her.

 

[Panda-girl's Mom]

I just thought of it as an activity to try not really putting much thought into it, I think now if I only realized the money, time and committment I would of run for the hills!! My older daughter always tried alot of different activites and tried gymnastics but she was not good at it. Younger daughter, my gymnast always wanted to follow her sisters footsteps she wanted to dance so when she was 2 did dance but not at the studio like her sister( her dance teacher would not take her till she was 3 and potty trained) so she did it a Y program and loved being on stage. When she was 3 she tried tumbling at a local community center and I had 2 teachers come up to me and tell me she should try gymnastics. When she was 4 she was doing cheerleading non-competitive for the local little league football team one of her good friend did gymnastics at a regular gym and daughter wanted to try it. She was not able to get in to a class until she was 4 1/2 She went with her friend to a preschool class that was taught by the owner of the gym. Anyway she put my daughter in the invite only class when she was 5 moved her to preteam when she was 6 and team when she was 7.
When I look back she was a kid who was on the go from the start when I was pregnant she was constantly moving and she taught herself how to do a cartwheel at 4 with straight legs and all. So I quess she had the personality and the talent. Despite of this she has had to work very hard in this sport but it is something she truely loves.

 

[emorymom]

We started as a Mommy and Me activity. My kids are 15 months apart. DD 6 Level 2 fell in love with the total package of gym. She loves the girls, the practices, the meets, the leos, etc. It's great for her overall development at this point and as long as it's not much over 6 hours it's not something I have to think too hard about.

DS 5 was really flippy from the get go. He had a nice cartwheel at age 2.5, was diving headfirst into the pool at 17 months, etc. He recently moved from a 3.5 hour power tumbling team to a 3-hour/week MAG preteam so I could do less driving. I don't know how long he will stay in gym. He seems to have an awesome time when he's in there but he still makes token complaints about going. I think he is tapering off that though. Right now it's mainly part of his home school PE.

 

[kristilyn73]

For some reason I always thought Beetle woud be a figure skater. So much so that my Mom bought her skates and lessons for her 2nd birthday. Without going into too much detail, we moved so much that it wasnt until she was 4 that I was finally in a position to put her into some sort of activity.

By that time she was flipping over the couch and doing handstands 'til she turned blue in the face. It so happened that there was a gym 3 miles from where we lived. I brought her into a trial class and signed her up. Within 3 weeks they asked to put her in an "invitation only" class... she was moved to L2 by the time she was 5, she competed L5 at 8, and it is all history from there..

I find the thread intresting where so many kids started walking at an early age.. Beetle was the same.. always wanted to stand by herselfbarely crawled.. Walked/ran at 10 months..

 

[AlexsGymmyMom]

Before Alex was 2 she was doing half flips into her playpen from the sofa. She would toss all the throw pillows in there and just have a ball! She would climb on EVERYTHING!! Still does. We did a mommy and me class when she was 2 in Iowa but then we moved to Missouri. Then when she was 5 put her in dance....tooo boring!! So we put her back into gymnastics. Unfortunately her daddy was laid off so we had to stop gym for a while. Started again when she was almost 8. Also tried soccer but she did not pay attention to what was going on on the field! She was to busy doing cartwheels!! Now she is 10 and never talks about having any interest in any other sport.

 

[MamaofEnS]

My dd went to the nearest club on a field trip in kindergarten. The owner of the club was also a parent at the school, and sponsored field trips every year for grades k-1. After the field trip, my dd wanted to go back, so I signed her up and her little sis in the summer. That was almost 8 years ago! We are still at the same club.

MamaofEnS

 

[greyhoundrescue]

Sorry it's been ever so long since I last posted. I got elected to the PTA board and just about lost my mind for a year with everything I had on my plate. I think I'm slightly more balanced now...well, maybe ;-)

Coming from ballet I knew I wanted my kids to be in "active" activities from an early start. My boys were hitting their milestones early. I swear we never even taught them to swim, they just knew how--now they are on a very competitive swim team. DH suggested we put them in a gym class as sort of a "pre-team sports" experience. Well, I'd never been into a gym before, but I knew it was a good fit from the start.

By that time, of course, my girls had joined the world and were pretty much drug along to their brother's toddler/preschool classes. It was the only thing my girls wanted to do! I tried the creative movement ballet classes, music lessons, and swimming like their brothers; but, nothing else really stuck. My girls were teeny and begging for more time---stay gym, mommy! stay gym! lol

Needless to say, gym to a backseat for my boys and my girls took the lead. We've never really looked back.

 

[ejgymmom]

This is a great thread! So interesting to read how all of our kids started.

Like many of yours, Anna started walking really early, around 9 1/2 months old and was running shortly after she turned 10 months. I didn't consider gymnastics for her initially though. We tried ballet around 2 1/2 but it was too slow and boring for her...especially since she had (and still has) the attention span of a fly.

Tried t-ball, which was fun (especially for the parents who were watching..) but still a bit slow.

Put her in gymnastics 10 months ago when she was 3 1/2 and she LOVED it and picked up things pretty fast. She moved up through all three preschool levels at her original gym in about a 4 month span. We moved cross country last October right before she turned 4 and have her at a new gym here which she's doing well in. They just bumped her up to the 5/6 year old class and I imagine if she can learn to listen and pay attention a bit better she'd probably get moved to their preteam at some point...but I'm not going to try to rush that.

Gymnastics has seemed to be a good fit for her though. We're going to try soccer in the spring though and see how that goes. ..and maybe swim lessons at the Y as well. Might as well make sure gymnastics is the sport she wants to keep doing for the long run.

(Sorry this turned out so long.)