My daughter is 6 and does gym in a large city gym which is very closed door with parents. She is in the squad and does a lot of hours and has absolutely loved it to date. Recently however has started to come out upset because she’s being asked to do things that hurt and are increasingly difficult. She feels she is the worst in her group (there are some awesome little gymnasts in there). The coaches are quite hard on them which I’m told is industry standard.
Despite being very upset about being in pain or scared by a fall, she wants to stay because she wants to see her squad friends. I’ve suggested she moves into an easier group and we do play dates with squad friends, but she said she wouldn’t like seeing all her friends together and her in a separate group. I definitely think we need to cut her hours whereas her coaches say she should do more if she’s finding it hard, to catch up.
My mum instinct says pull her out completely and protect her from what feels like a very cult like activity with uncommunicative coaches and some crazily competitive parents. We fell into gym rather by accident and I never expected her to be spotted or any good - if I had I would have never let her start it. We are very hands off parents who deliberately don’t push our kids in any field including school and we want her to have fun and just ‘be’ when she’s not at school and try lots of activities and sports. This feels increasingly like a job, an addiction, an obsession, not fun. The hours of training and competitions at weekends have crept up on us and feel too much - we want to chill at the weekends as a family and do normal stuff, but it seems so hard to leave. The lack of communication with the gym doesn’t help and makes me go into over protective mode and want to just pull her out and remove the problem.
She loves the gym itself, constantly doing it at home for fun, and loves her expanding repertoire. She loves showing us her stuff. She loves her friends. She loves an awful lot of the training sessions too. And that’s making her want to stay.
Do I let her continue despite the warning bells or is six just too young to make an informed choice and should I just make it for her? And is it reasonable to take into account the fact that we don’t want our lives to be taken over by this? I’m aware it will only get worse.
Would really welcome your thoughts, especially from any gym parents out there.
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Am I being unreasonable to pull child out of gym squad
37 replies
Gymwidow · 04/02/2018 09:04
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