Parents Coaching while watching an infant child... is this ok?

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MaineDad

Proud Parent
Hey parents, I need some perspective on what you feel would be acceptable in your gym. Our head coach is part owner of our gym and she just had her first baby earlier this year. She regularly brings her infant to practice in a carrier or a bouncy seat and keeps an eye on her while she coaches our girls. In some cases during warm ups she is carrying around the baby. I will say that this is not every day every practice but it certainly has become a pattern. To me this is very upsetting for a bunch of reasons. #1 for safety reasons. How can she be spotting my child or keeping her safe as a 10 year old Level 9 doing some very challenging new skills when her attention is only half on coaching and half on watching her baby? Some practices there are 2 or 3 coaches coaching but sometimes it's just the head coach alone. #2 I pay a LOT of money to have my daughter get the best possible training from the coach and I feel a bit cheated by this. The rest of us parents had this same problem and had to arrange for child care when we were at work. We couldn't bring our infant children to the office with us and I feel it's reasonable for our coach to do the same.

The boosters club feels that this should be addressed as individual families and they won't bring it up with the coach as a united front. How do you guys feel about this? I can almost understand an older child that can take care of themselves but an infant that needs constant attention? Maybe this is normal... I dunno.

We are the only family in the gym with a 2 time TOPS team member and we are often doing training that requires us to bring the coach with us on trips with just my daughter and us so we don't want to do any harm to our relationship by complaining about this. We know that coach/family relationship is so important.

We are in a tough spot of trying to decide if this gym can meet the needs of our gymnast who will need extra training for HOPES next year and are considering whether or not we need to find another gym.

This is not helping matters. Any thoughts?
 
Our previous gym has had many coaches have babies, and none were allowed on teh gym floor during practice. They might come in and say him, everyone coo over the baby, and then baby was with a sitter while the parent worked. This is normal. I would be concerned about the baby getting hurt, and the girls getting hurt with diverted attention.

I do not think it is a booster club issue, but a team issue, and parents as a team should discuss it. You could bring it up as concern for the child, etc, that a child could be out of control and land on or injure the child.. Honestly, as the child becomes more active/mobile, the situation may resolve itself.

We did have one coach that could not afford care, so the parents took turns watching the child in the lobby while the parent worked. We did this until they were able to figure out other options for childcare. It was kind of fun :)
 
Our previous gym has had many coaches have babies, and none were allowed on teh gym floor during practice. They might come in and say him, everyone coo over the baby, and then baby was with a sitter while the parent worked. This is normal. I would be concerned about the baby getting hurt, and the girls getting hurt with diverted attention.

I do not think it is a booster club issue, but a team issue, and parents as a team should discuss it. You could bring it up as concern for the child, etc, that a child could be out of control and land on or injure the child.. Honestly, as the child becomes more active/mobile, the situation may resolve itself.

We did have one coach that could not afford care, so the parents took turns watching the child in the lobby while the parent worked. We did this until they were able to figure out other options for childcare. It was kind of fun :)
That is an excellent point. I knew I had 3 reasons it bothered me and you just reminded me of the 3rd. The safety of her baby!
 
A couple of things come to mind.... my first thoughts are that she's a new mom. She needs time to get adjusted to new routines and get acquainted with her new role. I did not trust day care providers or child care centers with my first child and she didn't leave my sight for the first 6 weeks. I relied solely on family until she was about 14 months old and then I quit working altogether. Sometimes, special arrangements were necessary. If parents are allowed to stay, maybe someone can volunteer to watch the baby from the viewing area. Where I live, day care centers close at 6pm. That's not helpful for coaching hours. She would need a personal sitter and those are even harder to vet!! Definitely not a situation I'd like to be in.
 
I was once at a gym where what you describe went on a lot. It wasn't just infants (who probably aren't so disruptive in a bouncy chair or porta crib), but toddlers and older kids who were constantly playing on the equipment and being very disruptive during practices (some of it was fun for the gymnasts I'm sure, but I wasn't paying hundreds of dollars a month for my kid to be the coaches' kids' play date). I didn't like it at all and felt it showed the gym wasn't a professional environment that took coaching optional level gymnastics seriously. Their lack of professionalism during training was honestly one of the bigger reasons we left that gym. I wasn't going to say anything cause the coaches that they allowed to do this (and other unprofessional stuff) had been there forever and my DD was not there long so we just moved on (it wasn't the perfect gym for other reasons as well so not a huge loss IMO).

I would think the coach could take a complaint about something like that very personally. It could definitely destroy relationships. If all parents involved in OPs situation want to stay at the gym long term, I agree that a united front talking w/ ownership so this coach wouldn't know who individually brought it up would be best. Highly stress to whoever you talk to that you want it to be kept confidential who complained.
 
There's a big difference between having a baby in a baby carrier while the athletes are doing splits and hollow rocks and while spotting a pak. Which is it?

I had an infant who absolutely refused to take a bottle. We were able to afford half-time daycare for her, but after that, she was under mine or my partner's care, and sometimes that meant she came to the office with me. I'm glad my employer wasn't fussy about it, as it was a fairly short time in my career there and that simple accommodation made it possible for me to make it through those approximately six months. My employer was the long-term gainer by providing this flexibility. If you can figure out a non-confrontational way to do it, it might be worth checking to see what the longer range plan is. I'd sooner see a baby than a toddler -- toddlers require much more vigilance in a busy place like a gym. If the plan is just to get through the first 8-12 months of the child's life, you will have to weigh carefully the risk of losing your relationship with a coach who's apparently been very successful with your daughter.
 
That is an excellent point. I knew I had 3 reasons it bothered me and you just reminded me of the 3rd. The safety of her baby!

In the gym I described above, it wasn't uncommon for these kids to disappear in the gym for significant periods of time to the point where everyone (including the gymnasts) was engaged to help look for them them. Once a toddler wandered out into the parking lot! Luckily no one ever got hurt while we were there, but I didn't understand why these families wouldn't pay for a dedicated caregiver as opposed to this half-baked solution.
 
In the gym I described above, it wasn't uncommon for these kids to disappear in the gym for significant periods of time to the point where everyone (including the gymnasts) was engaged to help look for them them. Once a toddler wandered out into the parking lot! Luckily no one ever got hurt while we were there, but I didn't understand why these families wouldn't pay for a dedicated caregiver as opposed to this half-baked solution.

Whose children were they, what were the parents being paid, and what is the average monthly cost of infant and toddler care in your area?
 
Whose children were they, what were the parents being paid, and what is the average monthly cost of infant and toddler care in your area?

They were the coach's kids. I don't know how much money they made, but I don't think saving what child care costs is worth endangering your child by bringing them to a workplace that isn't safe for them and they can't be properly supervised.
 
I am not trying to be tendentious here but rather to heighten recognition that the lack of availability of affordable, high quality child care is not just a problem for parents of young children. I view it as a win for everyone if care is available so that highly trained professionals who are difficult to replace -- like gymnastics coaches! -- can afford it and not have to take 4-5 year hiatuses in their careers if they are single parents or have partners who also work full time. It's often said that working parents "can't have it all," but that individualizes what is a bigger social problem. We as a society can't have it all as long as we expect people to solve their child care problems individually and out of sight of everyone else without any fuss or bother -- or alternatively get the heck out of the workforce.

The flip side of your observation, Gymmommy, is to ask whether the parents care enough about good coaching to pay the coaches sufficiently to afford high quality care for their own offspring in order to take them out of the Hobson's choice among 1) finding inadequate, unlicensed, and possibly dangerous caregivers, 2) cobbling together a makeshift solution in the workplace, or 3) exiting the workforce.

As a side note, Mainedad, you might want to be cautious about revealing a lot of personal information when asking a question that could be taken as a criticism of your gym. The gym world is small and quite chatty! If you have any reason to worry about how your gym's owner might react if your posts reached the gym, you should contact the moderators and ask them to edit out some of the identifying information.
 
I'm with profmom on this...
It's probably not the best situation for the gymnasts, coach, or baby. However- if the baby was born this year, it's 6 months or less. At that age I would never have left my baby on a regular basis, or been able to find care for non-standard work shifts. Plus there is the extremely high cost of child care for babies under 12 months. So the options are probably coach with baby present, or no coach at all.
I think I would be ok with it as long as this is a short-term solution, until the baby is a little older. I don't think I would be ok with bringing a toddler to the gym.
I don't see an issue with holding the baby during conditioning, but the deciding question would be, If baby cries while coach is spotting someone, will she loose her focus on the gymnast or be able to ignore the baby for a short time?
 
Not good. Coaching at any level requires a coaches full and undivided attention, for both safety reasons and to allow gymnasts to progress to their potential.

As the baby gets older the problems will increase 10 fold. Once the baba you is at a point where he/she can crawl etc and even worse walk. It is only a matter of time until they crawl or walk into the oath of an athlete going full out and one or both of them can be seriously injured. Better to address this issue now, rather than allow it to continue, and allow this head coach to think that all the families are okay with it.
 
Not good. Coaching at any level requires a coaches full and undivided attention, for both safety reasons and to allow gymnasts to progress to their potential.

As the baby gets older the problems will increase 10 fold. Once the baba you is at a point where he/she can crawl etc and even worse walk. It is only a matter of time until they crawl or walk into the oath of an athlete going full out and one or both of them can be seriously injured. Better to address this issue now, rather than allow it to continue, and allow this head coach to think that all the families are okay with it.

I agree. And where do you draw the line. We had 4 coaches with new babies of varying ages all at the same time. Suddenly, 4 babies in the gym. I know at some points we had 3-4 kiddos of coaches being watched in one of the little meeting rooms for short periods. What if all of those were on the floor?

I think there are some alternatives that can be looked at that can make the situation much better. Babies/toddlers in the gym are a potential problem. Although nothing might happen (so hope), why risk it?
 
Our coach had a baby and he was cared for at the gym by a sitter until he was old enough to stay home away from mom. Sometimes she would hold him on the floor during warm ups or stretching, but never while coaching events. I see videos on Instagram of babies/toddlers running all over gyms while classes are obviously in session and I always wonder WHO are these kids and WHY are the parents of gymnasts ok with this? It's one thing to have to bring your child to the gym with you while you work. It's a whole other thing to let them run amok during classes. I think a balance can be struck somewhere.
 
The politics of raising children aside. This will be a bit long

Short answer, no if it was more than an occasional thing I would move my kid. What's the saying, you can't serve 2 masters. I pay for the gym/coach train my kid safely. I would be skeptical that that could be accomplished with the coach also watching her non training child.

I'm friends with a lot of teachers who have kids at the schools they teach at. They do not however teach their own kids.

The liability risk is huge. If a gymmie gets hurt because the coach was distracted. Can you say settlement.

I get it, things happen. But it should be the exception and there should be a plan in place to assure the gymmies are safe.

The coach needs a better plan. More time off. Someone in the gym watching the baby while she/he is on the floor coaching

I have been a working not mom person.
A SAHM.. For more years then I ever thought I would, which was 4, I thought I would be home 1. But she needed more and we are still paying off the cost of that to a degree. And now I work crazy shifts to maximize my time with my girl while she is awake.

My husband has a job where he can bring her to the office or work from home on occasion. My job absolutely not. Not ever. I need to use sick/PTO time when I had it. Now I don't work, I don't get paid.

Life requires choices sometimes. And with kids you need a plan, along with a couple of back plans.

.
 
The politics of raising children aside. This will be a bit long

Short answer, no if it was more than an occasional thing I would move my kid. What's the saying, you can't serve 2 masters. I pay for the gym/coach train my kid safely. I would be skeptical that that could be accomplished with the coach also watching her non training child.

I'm friends with a lot of teachers who have kids at the schools they teach at. They do not however teach their own kids.

The liability risk is huge. If a gymmie gets hurt because the coach was distracted. Can you say settlement.

I get it, things happen. But it should be the exception and there should be a plan in place to assure the gymmies are safe.

The coach needs a better plan. More time off. Someone in the gym watching the baby while she/he is on the floor coaching

I have been a working not mom person.
A SAHM.. For more years then I ever thought I would, which was 4, I thought I would be home 1. But she needed more and we are still paying off the cost of that to a degree. And now I work crazy shifts to maximize my time with my girl while she is awake.

My husband has a job where he can bring her to the office or work from home on occasion. My job absolutely not. Not ever. I need to use sick/PTO time when I had it. Now I don't work, I don't get paid.

Life requires choices sometimes. And with kids you need a plan, along with a couple of back plans.

.
In my current district and the last two school districts I attended as a student, there were parents WO did teach their own kids.
In the case of OP, if this coach took more time off, then his gymnast would suffer too.
It would be nice if parents observing practice would offer to watch the baby - it might be a good way to bring up the baby being in the gym.
During warm up, stretching, conditioning, a young baby is not a problem.
It is when the coach needs major focus that it could be a problem.
 
I think you have a reasonable concern. And it's perfectly acceptable to bring it up. Not sure about How it will be received, that all depends on the delivery. I would advise against creating a united front. Instead try addressing it on your own as your concern. Don't involve others as this will be taken differently. Not to mention some parents will hang you out to dry. So go it alone on the same level. Start off about happy you are and what a great coach she is. Then kimdly address it. You also may want to look into a possible solution amongst the parents(someone may watch her for cheap ). start a go fund me page for her. Solutions And praise accompanied by concerns always works better. :)
 
At our gym, we have many coaches who are parents of young children. The babies may be cuddled during warm-ups by the other coaches as an "Oooh! let me hold the baby!" sort of thing, but are taken away by sitters before any actual instruction or rotations begin. I have never seen an infant on the floor unattended in a bouncy seat or car seat, nor a coach wearing a baby in a carrier or just holding a baby while working, and frankly given the level of activity at our gym, I would be very concerned for the baby's safety if this happened. Much more so than for the gymnasts'! There have been times when sitters have fallen through and the gym owner has offered up "points" for parents who are able to take care of the coaches' babies at the gym during these times. At our gym, all families of team girls have to do a certain number of "points" (mandatory service hours) depending on what level your kid is. If you don't earn the points at the end of the season, you have to pay the gym $10 per point. Parents of gymnasts have taken care of coaches' babies for "points" in emergency situations, right at the gym. It's not happened often. Not sure if this would work at your gym, OP, but something to maybe bring up to the coach as a suggestion if she's having separation anxiety from the new babe.
 

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