How does you gym handle bad behavior of a group?

[gymmom14]

Just wondering if a few members of a group are misbehaving, How do you handle it? Do you deal with the individuals or punish the whole group?

 

[All Chalked Up]

If only a couple kids in a group are misbehaving, you can't punish the whole group! It's not fair. If I gotta punish 'em, I just deal with the individuals who need scolding.

 

[Bella's Mom]

I'm not a coach but I do teach and you don't punish the entire group. That's so fundamentally wrong. You deal with the trouble makers. I feel the same way when imposing very specific rules to address the behavior of a few. Better to make general, sensible rule and then supplement for particular people. But that's my opinion.

As a parent of a misbehavior, I will say that my gym has never punished her whole group but rather either sent her home, temporarily kicked her off team, or made her sit out. Personal punishments, not groups.

 

[Deleted member D3987]

you punish ONLY the ones responsible for the disruption. the others are to be rewarded and or given special privileges. like...no conditioning or 2 freeze pops instead of 1 for good behavior. or both!

 

[cher062]

You disapline only the ones causing the issues. If you do the whole group, first its not fair to those who have been behaving and second it puts the respoinsibility of getting the misbehaving to behave on those kids who are behaving so they don't get punished too.

The best thing you can do is catch the kids doing the behavior you want and reward them with what ever (stickers, more time in the pool after paractice, whatever) The kids misbehaving in our gym get time out on the side for normal misbehaving I think they get 3 chances and if it happens again the parents get a phone call and the kids go home. Honestly I haven't really seen behavior in the gym that really needs more than a "you need to stop that and get back to work".

 

[Coach.Simon]

I pull the "mom" card.

That's right.

"Susie, if you don't start listening, I'm going to have to talk to your mom after class."

Susie starts listening.

Evil, but genius, I know.

 

[mumoftwogymnasts]

My kids gym has a four step system. Step 1 is a warning, Step 2 is sit out for 5 mins, Step 3 is sit out for 10 mins, Step 4 is out for the rest of the class and parents are called. I've only seen step 4 happen once>

 

[CoachGoofy]

I pull the mom card. And they don't get to get on the trampoline (or whatever) until I'm convinced they're going to do something productive, bc kids who want to work are there. Individual stuff ONLY-it isn't the group's fault if another kid is misbehaving.

 

[aerialriver]

It really depends on how many are misbehaving and what the issue is. I am usually on board with everyone else's about only dealing with the kids that are misbehaving but if it is catching on and now half the group is misbehaving it is hard to tell one half to carry on while dealing with the other so we usually would have a group talk and depending on the age of the children I may tell them to remind their peers if they are misbehaving again that there will be consequences. I don't punish everyone, but we do sometimes "regroup" if it is 1 or 2 they would sit out, the Mom card used etc. I also sometimes use peer motivation for things such as splits, no one wants to do them but we all stay in the split until everyone chooses to do it. You hear a lot of "Suzie come on get in your split!"

 

[gymgal]

just a parent here but wanted to weigh in. i have seen the group punishment in our schools and never understood how this is supposed to teach a lesson. the good get punished for being good and the "bad" get picked on by the good because everyone got in trouble. Just alienates the "bad" even further which sets up a revolving problem. In our gym, I have seen group punishment only a few times but it mostly because close to half was misbehaving.

 

[nationalchampion97]

Usually, if it's one person, they do 50 pushups. If it's a group, we have hardcore conditioning for the rest of the time...

 

[Aussie_coach]

Misbehavior in the gym should never mean the whole group is punished, that seems rather illogical. When there is misbehavior the coach should first always look at themselves. Kids are not mini adults and they need the right sort of environment to succeed. A coach should check what they may have done to cause the misbehavior.
ie
Too much standing around and waiting for a turn
giving kids tasks they are not ready for so they give up and play up
not giving the kids enough challenge
Not making the rules and expectations clear enough
not getting the kids excited about achieving and helping them set goals (most are not old enough to do this themselves)
Kids finding it hard to get attention by doing the right thing so they do the wrong thing
Coach being wishy washy with setting limits and kids testing it out

Little things like the way you make the class face when you are working make a big difference. Or the order in which you do things. Kids get hyped up more easily that adults, they get bored faster than adults, they have a shorter attention span than adults and so on.

Of course the need for discipline will still arise from time to time. We simply warn our gymnasts and have them sit out for a few minutes which has always been sufficient. Kids hate sitting out - it's boring and they get no attention.

 

[cher062]

just a parent here but wanted to weigh in. i have seen the group punishment in our schools and never understood how this is supposed to teach a lesson. the good get punished for being good and the "bad" get picked on by the good because everyone got in trouble. Just alienates the "bad" even further which sets up a revolving problem. In our gym, I have seen group punishment only a few times but it mostly because close to half was misbehaving.

the "group puinishment" mentality is supposed to use peer pressure. The ones that didn't do anything will preasure the ones that did to behave. It never works other than to create hard feelings between them. It's supposed to teach the kids how to disapline themselves again it never works out that way when its a behavior issue. It is the easiest thing to do for a teacher or coach instead of finding out what really happened. Just a time saver that I don't agree with at all. Any time my kids have been the victim of this type of punishment I am all over that coach or teacher (or who ever) and make them appoligize to my kids for punishing them when they didn't do anything. My kids aren't good liers I know when they aren't telling me the truth. Most teachers don't want to take 20 min or more of their teaching time to get to the bottom of things (teaching for over 20 years I've seen some really bad examples).