AIBU to think overseas ballet intensives are too much for children and teens?

What @dabdab said - a close friend has a dd in this world and we’ve talked a lot about the best way to support her dd. It’s a brutal culture and there have been quite a few massive safeguarding fails that I know of in the UK. Abroad with no family nearby is an even higher risk.

There is a pipeline pumping out many more from the vocational schools than there are professional ballet jobs. I worry that all the intensives do is provide a huge income stream to schools, and false hope to parents trying to do their best for their DCs.

At 15 I was travelling on my own. Unaccompanied flight, bus from airport to train station, train to final destination. All in a foreign language. My son did exactly the same last summer. Parents seem to have much lower expectations of kids nowadays.

Other countries/cultures have different expectations of children. In some countries it would be unremarkable that an 11/12 year old would be able to navigate trains and public transport and take a flight as an unaccompanied child whereas in the UK a lot of parents would consider this to be unusual. In some countries going to school unaccompanied from age 6 is the norm, in others it would be grounds for a safeguarding intervention.

Having someone who has taken ballet intensives in the UK, from around 15, and later a European intensive, I would research and think very VERY carefully about the culture surrounding ballet and the particular company your child would be going to. They do need to start very early, but it is such a massively impressionable age, and there still exists a fair amount of unhealthy attitudes.
That said, I also know someone who went to the US to live on their own at 16 to attend ballet school there and have been subsequently employed by several companies.
Perhaps start with one in the UK that is reachable and see how that goes?

If she wants to have much hope of dancing professional ballet to any level, she'll usually need to be boarding from 11. It's very rare that girls would start fulltime training much later than this, and they'll be expected to be independent enough to cope. Intensives will help with this. I doubt she'll even really notice that she's abroad as she'll be kept pretty busy! If it's a good, reputable event they'll be bringing in children from all over the world, and will be very well practiced at looking after them. But she should definitely have attended local intensives first, in case she hates them. Ballet's kinda brutal, and intensives are a huge step up from usual class. And whilst British ballet has worked on being a bit less psycho, that's not necessarily the case everywhere...

You might not feel comfortable with it but it is very standard and a lot of people do it.

even PGL offer weeks abroad for kids in France and the like.

Your daughter doesn’t have to go but if she wants to then I don’t see anything wrong with it.

Hmmmm it really depends. I don't come from the world of ballet, but from another high performance endeavour where you have to invest a lot of time in your teens.

If your child wants to do ballet just as a hobby, then of course it is probably too much.

If your child wants to excel... Any child that I have known to excel, unless they are lucky to live in one of the relevant performance hubs, they have travelled extensively around the world and done long camps with the training group from age 12 onwards. Many I know have moved away from their family before age 16 to live with another family permanently and pursue their activity. Alternatively the whole family has relocated, e.g. from the US to Italy. One of the kids I was with moved from Korea to Europe at 11, she is now one of the best in the world. Elite performance really does require commitment and sacrifice, total dedication to the craft.

Ultimately if you want to be world class, you have to find the best coaches/teachers and conditions. This is why, for example, you do not see many people from obscure countries excel in the olympics unless the country is a performance hub for that sport. If you do, their parents are obsessive, e.g. Williams sisters.

You may find this useful: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-gold-mine-effect/rasmus-ankersen/9781848317109

Look at the former principal dancers of the RBO or National... A lot of them left home at 12-16.

A ballet 'camp' would be total immersion. Intensive classes, sharing with other students, learning about recovery, fitness, nutrition, traditions, mindfulness... It's also exciting to meet other high performers... To be honest time with family at the end of every day would be a massive distraction to performance, and even learning about other cultures.

Generally though, don't kids leave home for long periods of time anymore? During my upbringing, it was normal to be away from your home and parents several weeks a year for various reasons, e.g. sport camps, fun summer camps, school trips away or abroad, away with your sports team, study abroad, visiting family etc, from age 8. Nearly everyone from my family did this, some even went away for 3-6 months, or even longer.

Do i sound like a Russian performance coach yet? 😆I'm not, but for all the talk about 'treating children like children', the ones that do excel at the highest levels unfortunately still do display an extreme dedication.

If you want your child to have a normal childhood and stay close to home, it's better to keep ballet as a fun hobby and focus on education.

My kids did this for a different activity. It took them all over the world. Europe, Asia and North America mostly. From 12 there were intensives in Russia, Germany and USA, these lasted anywhere from 2-8 weeks. Three of them now work professionally in the same field, they've made nice careers out of it. I'm being deliberately vague about what it was, but there were many parallels to the world of ballet.

The truth was, at home, they were middle sized fish in a small pond. They needed the intensives with others from around the world so they could see what was possible and push themselves to the next level if that's what they wanted.

It's not for everyone though. At 12, she's old enough to be fine for two weeks and if she hates it, old enough to contact you to come home.

Plenty of kids go to camp at that age. I get you don’t want to send her and that’s fine, but it’s not weird or unusual, especially if the child is skilled or has been identified as having high potential.

It doesn't sound like it's term time.

Well if you live in England you would likely get fined for having her out of school to do anything else during term time anyway. Seems unlikely that a head would approve that time off regardless of whether it was relevant to a future career. So it would be a total non starter in England these days.

Different sport but I'm sure one of my kids would jump at the chance to do a week or 2 of intensive training/coaching in a different country!

My other kid would absolutely hate it

Something isn’t ridiculous for other families just because it doesn’t suit you.

And bloody reckless of parents who were letting their children fly all over Europe alone including to Russia at 16?!

Do you realise many teenagers that age go on holidays with their friends?

None of this really has anything to do with you.

It's not mandatory. Do what works for your family, and others will do what works for them.

Noones asking you to do it though?
I used to go abroad for a languages school every summer from my early teens onwards though for a couple of weeks and I absolutely loved it. It was my choice. I made heaps of friends from around the world and we had loads of fun together.