Can you really tell who may be successful at age 5?

[Sarah'sMom]

Thanks everyone for your responses. I found it very interesting. It felt good to ask and hear the points of view.

As far as I can tell, that gym does not have an elite program - they go up to level 10. But in any event, we left as quietly as we could. There's no point in burning any bridges. Who knows what the future might bring. And we were happy with the instruction in the rec class that my daughter had. They did play a part in getting her ready her for what she's doing now.

Also, if focus was an issue, then it's probably a reason they excluded my daughter, because although she has the passion for it, she does have some listening skills to work on. But I'm not even sure if it was that because in the call, one comment that was made to me was that they currently have this one little girl in the preteam who if she could get her head out of the clouds, then they were sure she would be good.

I really enjoyed the comments about "parent commitment" and running credit checks, etc. I had wondered whether they were watching the cars the pulled into the parking lot as their sign. To me parent commitment sounded like I would be committed enough to keep my daughter going no matter what, particularly since we would have been lucky for her to have been selected. But I'm not comfortable with that. To me, parent commitment should be listening to what your child wants and helping to guide her to learn the skills to achieve goals, which at 6 is listening better.

Thanks again!

 

[gymdog]

I can see which kids are progressing and have the strength and personality for it (able to shake things off, not too afraid, able to ignore a little discomfort in stretching/conditioning). Beyond that I try to give them all a chance to progress if I see they're progressing. It is hard to tell because like some others I have seen some kids who have gotten a lot better with age.

One thing I do think is important is some personality components. Personally I'm okay with a little lack of focus in the younger kids, many of them are like that and I try hard to keep them on task. But I do think they need to be pretty determined to do things, and also able to tolerate the physical discomfort. If they have the strength and those properties, and are progressing (even if they seem uncoordinated in some respects) then I tend to think they can have potential as long as they're keeping up. I have known some incredible L10 and elite gymnasts that as little kids could do the skills but were all over the place in the compulsory routines and early levels, never scored well, could barely do a coordinated routine, etc.