Parents Parents who Coach Too?

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Do you find it difficult to be a coach at the same gym your daughter or son trains at? Have you ever coached your own child?
I coach where my daughter trains and I find it works for us. I try very very hard not to ever be her coach, but let her coaches do all that. Of course she loves to show off when I am in the gym but I try not to play into it too much..

Any one else in this situation?
 
No... but my ds had a coach (head coach) and his step son was in the group.
The kid was treated pretty much the same as everyone else, maybe the coach was a bit tougher with him.
He was average ability for the group.
The kid did try to back chat the coach and take advantage, but this was nipped in the bud and was not tolerated.

It worked ok for them, but this was a generally strict coach anyway.
 
It happens in almost every gym. I have seen it work really well, almost as if the parent and child made an agreement that at home I am your parent but at gym I am your coach.

And I have seen it work out terribly, for example a head coach who has free access to the gym all the time had her kids in her class and she spent 80% of the time coaching them, 10% of her time dealing with their non gym needs (kids asking if they could go to friends house after gym, lenghty disscussions) and 5% actually coaching everyone else (the other 5% in this case went to talking on her cell phone or running off the the restroom or to get drinks) of course also in this case the kids were not in the correct class for their ages and she is basically using it as free daycare so that she can get paid, not pay a baby sitter and get her kids better at gymnastics :rolleyes:

I think it really depends on the age and maturity of the child as well as the parents ability to turn the parent off and the coach on, I would have to say a lot of people cannot handle it. Oh and yes the child does need to be in the correct level, not levels above just so the parent can coach them and not have to bring them to another class.
 
Pickle’s coaches both this year and last year both had daughters in the competitive program (although working with different coaches). The differences in how the coaches handled it were astounding.

Her current coach rarely looks over at her daughter if she’s working out at the same time. She hardly ever mentions her daughter to parents, and when she does it is only in situations where she thinks we could benefits from her experience (for example, “I know how hard it is when your daughter is juggling gymnastics and homework and here’s some things that have helped us..â€￾ or “â€￾when my daughter was injured and crying because she couldn’t come to gym, I did this…â€￾). And she never compares the young gymnasts to her daughter.

Her previous coach was constantly distracted by her daughter on the floor. She also bragged to parents a lot about her own daughter’s progress. And she once actually brought her daughter to work independently in the gym while she was giving a team member a private.

I’m not sure this really answers your question, but I thought it was worth sharing.
 
I have been a coach to all three of my DS's.

Most of the time this works fine.

Most of the coaches at our gym have coached their own children at some stage. It depends what level the coach is coaching and what level the children are in.

There can however be issues at times.

For young children there can be behaviour problems which would not exist in the same way if someone else was coaching. My youngest DS would at times become jealous of my attention to others. This would sometimes result in attention seeking behaviour. This was mainly when he was 6yo to 8 yo. This has been a common problem other coach/parents have had also.

When my middle DS reached 12 yo he started a bit of argumentative behaviour, typical of teenagers. This is where it can be hard to separate being a parent (and dealing with normal teenage behaviour - hormones!) and being a coach. There have been times when I think it would have been preferable for someone else to have been his coach.

All my three boys have completely different personalities. A problem with one would not be a problem with the others at all. So personality also plays a part.

I have always been extremely careful to make sure that every gymnast in my group gets exactly the same amount of attention.

My boys are 9yo, 12 yo and 14 yo.
 
I don't coach my daughter and really hope to avoid doing so as long as possible. Her level 3 group trains during the time when I am coaching and generally I am so busy that I forget that she is there. Our team groups are rather large right now so there is never a down minute in the rotation for me to even look over at her group. I think this is for the best as a few weeks ago I did glance over at her bar rotation just in time to see her forget to switch her grip on the stride circle and almost crash to her back (luckily her coach was there and caught her...). After that I decided it was best not to look!
 
I've never coached my daughters but I had to teach my eldest in elementary school. It wasn't the ideal situation because I sometimes would try to enforce school subjects at home (in her case learning written English) and in turn she'd bring home her frustration and bring her frustration from home into the classroom. We're from a small, rural school district so at the time I couldn't bring in another instructor. We had to set some very strict boundaries about what I was doing in class as her teacher and what I did at home as her mother. It eventually ended well but was quite the headache while it was going on!
 
I have been asked to coach at our gym but I have deferred. I want to wait to see what direction my dd goes in, whether it be usag or recreational team. It would not be a good situation for me to coach my dd. She is the type to get jealous or upset if I were to pay attention or praise someone else in her group at this stage. I will probably eventurally coach but hopefully never her.
 

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