Parents Thoughts on changing gyms?

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Love2016

Proud Parent
My daughter turned 5 back in September and was in an advanced rec class at her last gym. For the first time ever there, we had a bad experience when she was asked to come to "pre team" and then asked to leave after 2 days for reasons that were never made 100% clear to me. She has a September birthday and if the kids at her gym are not being choosen for team they stay in her more advanced preschool rec class until AFTER kindergarten, so that would mean she would be in her class she had already been in for the past 1 year, for possibly another 2 years if she was not asked to try pre team again in kindergarten. She LOVES her teacher but was starting to get extremely bored, they start putting kids in her class when they turn 4 if they show talent or strength and there were a lot of new 4 years olds which means they were working on simple things like cartwheels and forward rolls. My daughter is older so she already has many of those skills (pull over, back hip circle, back bend, kickover. Etc.) She has a friend a little older than her that does rec classes so we decided to have her try another gym that lets kids come out of the preschool program at 5 opposed to after kindergarten with hopes her and her older friend could be in the same class. Well, new gym pulled her out right away of the class she was trying and had her try their pre team which is really tough and was hard for my daughter to adjust to at first, she is the youngest in it and all of the other kids are in kindergarten. They also told me she is really talented which is something no one has ever told me before and they really bring the best gymnastics out of my daughter. Her previous coach reached out to me a couple months later and said that if she came back she would definitely do pre team in the summer per the team coaches there, my daughter has adjusted to the new gym pretty well but there's way less fun there which has me feeling guilty lately that she is doing this type of class too young so I went ahead and signed her up for the previous advanced preschool class to see how we would like it again before officially making the switch. Well, of course she loves it but I noticed when she is at her old gym she does not try nearly as hard and it's almost as if alot of the things she has learned at the new gym goes out the window. She tells me that is the "fun baby class" lol. Any suggestions here? Should we do fun gym for now and try pre team in summer there or stick with pre team at new gym? Old gym is only 12 minutes from my house opposed to 22 minutes with the new one which is also a plus.
 
Your daughter is talented, if she is doing pullovers, back hip circles etc at 4, she is good. When you have a talented 4 year old, the top priority is keeping them safe, there are certain skills they should not be doing at 4 due to their physical development. The second priority is enjoyment, if they don’t find gymnastics fun, they will not want to stick at it in the long run, and that talent will go to waste.

Let her have fun and love it, the passion to work hard will come with time, she needs to have fun and love it first.
 
Your daughter is talented, if she is doing pullovers, back hip circles etc at 4, she is good. When you have a talented 4 year old, the top priority is keeping them safe, there are certain skills they should not be doing at 4 due to their physical development. The second priority is enjoyment, if they don’t find gymnastics fun, they will not want to stick at it in the long run, and that talent will go to waste.

Let her have fun and love it, the passion to work hard will come with time, she needs to have fun and love it first.

She definitely still loves it at the new gym, but it isn't near as fun and although I love seeing her work hard and seeing little things improve at the new gym I feel guilty in the back of my mind that the seriousness can wait a little longer to start?
 
If she is still enjoying the new gym then I would stick with that, it is easier to go from a stricter gym to a fun one than it is to go from a fun one to a more serious gym. If you think she is not enjoying the new gym and that it is too much for her then definitely go back to the fun gym. This is assuming that she is learning better basics at the stricter gym, of course this may not be true either.
 
If she is still enjoying the new gym then I would stick with that, it is easier to go from a stricter gym to a fun one than it is to go from a fun one to a more serious gym. If you think she is not enjoying the new gym and that it is too much for her then definitely go back to the fun gym. This is assuming that she is learning better basics at the stricter gym, of course this may not be true either.

She still enjoys it but there are times where her age shows and has to be corrected which is what had me wanting go switch back. Her coach tells me shes doing great. Shes only been doing this new class at the new gym for 4 months now and I think it took until last month for her to really adjust and start to catch on to the way it works. Her teachers do not play any games when it comes to safety and if they see kids doing things they are not supposed to do they make them do push ups or something like that lol so now I let her go back to the old gym with the intentions of switching her but I no longer want to and I feel like a crazy gym mom when she is only 5. How do I tell the old gym we are in fact not coming back with being nice?
 
She still enjoys it but there are times where her age shows and has to be corrected which is what had me wanting go switch back. Her coach tells me shes doing great. Shes only been doing this new class at the new gym for 4 months now and I think it took until last month for her to really adjust and start to catch on to the way it works. Her teachers do not play any games when it comes to safety and if they see kids doing things they are not supposed to do they make them do push ups or something like that lol so now I let her go back to the old gym with the intentions of switching her but I no longer want to and I feel like a crazy gym mom when she is only 5. How do I tell the old gym we are in fact not coming back with being nice?

She is doing gymnastics. She will always be corrected. How that gets accomplished may be different at different gyms or with different coaches and the what’s and how’s change with skills and how they age but she will always be corrected.

If there are no corrections the gym is not doing it’s job.

Regarding telling the old gym. You don’t need to be nice, just direct.

We thank you for the opportunity however we have decided to stay where we are. This is the best decision for our family at this time.

Polite and direct. You don’t need to over share or pretty it up.
 
Yes, just tell them she has adjusted to where she is and you don’t want to change things around on her again right now. That is reasonable and when said politely it leaves the door open for a future move back if you ever reach a point where you need that option.

22 minutes is still super close by, in the gym world!
 

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