SHELOVESGYM
Proud Parent
I know it's generally believed on this board that parents should NOT, under any circumstances, but extra pressure on their gymnast to gain skills/improve scores, etc. We parents should not even ask about these things -should not ask if a skill is coming along, etc. I followed this for the first 4 or so years that my DD (now 9) was in gym (rec, preteam, team). I am now considering changing as I really think my DD is one who can benefit from a little external pressure and I'm wondering if anyone has been in the same boat and if so how you dealt with it. Yes, I realize that ideally the desire to improve comes from the gymmie themselves. My DD, while she will not hear of quitting the sport or even moving to x cel, is just not a hard worker in the gym. We have now heard this from several coaches. She is very social during practice and uses any time she can to chat with her gym friends rather than to do more rotations. When it is her turn to work with the coach she is often unfocused, etc. While I have always believed that first and foremost gym should be fun, I am at the point where if she doesn't start working hard to gain some skills I would prefer to pull her out as I'm not sure that the amount of time/energy that she and our entire family put into gym is really paying off. Would love to hear any thoughts on how to best handle a gymmie that doesn't work hard. I am thinking of giving her an ultimatum -if she doesn't get her level 4 skills in time to compete the level (which would leave her to do a 3rd year of level 3) she will have to leave JO for either a different sport or an xcel team. Now I want to emphasize that if she were putting in the effort and the skills just weren't coming I would be admiring her dedication to keep at it -but by now I'm quite sure that this is not the case.