Gymnastics coach bringing up 5yo weight

[BoldUser]

My daughter has a stocky build- as did I as a child. Very strong, but I would agree she is carrying some puppy fat too.

She has been attending a recreational gymnastics class for last 18 months and absolutely loves it. She spends more time on her hands than her feet.

Coach today invited her to trial for the squad for a term in September. However she said that whilst she is great at everything else, she struggles on the bars- can hang and swing but lacks upper body strength to lift herself up and over. Alluded to her losing some weight and that this would help her. She also said if she didn’t manage to master the bars then she would fail the trial and go back to her current “fun” class.

I’m torn- she’s clearly got the skill to at least give competitive gymnastics a go. She enjoys it and seems like she would enjoy the challenge. We are working on making healthy choices at home, drinking more water, fuelling our body with the right energy and being strong. However I don’t want to potentially put her in a situation where her self esteem/body image is impacted. The coach mentioning her weight so explicitly is a red flag to me- although I know what she’s saying makes sense. She’s only 5 and I feel such responsibility to get this right as the early years are so formative.

Part of me is so proud that she’s dedicated so much time to practicing that she’s been invited to trial. The other side of me wants to protect her from any body image issues. Parents are not allowed to watch the classes so I don’t have an idea of language used within the gym. What would you do?

I wish someone had ‘pointed out’ that me being ‘stocky’ at 5, in 1968 actually meant I was heading for adult obesity.

Have you looked around recently? There are kids who genuinely and obviously need to lose weight. And absolutely agree that putting them on diets in the ‘you’re going on a diet’ sense of the word is not the thing to do. But parents need to honestly and accurately take stock of what their children are eating (often quantity is less the problem)..

i remember a school chum who was described as having puppy fat 40 years ago…she was actually 9 stone at the age of 9. She would never have grown into that weight until she was an aduly and she is naturally a smaller frame anyway so maybe even not then.

Her mum actually let her eat a lot of chocolate and crisps and donuts etc (for that period of time, now we’re all even more lax) in between healthy dinners.

She wasn’t put on a diet as a child and now has a sustained eating disorder and weighs much less than she did at 9. Worrying about developing eating disorders is not a reason to bury your head and let them continue to be unhealthy.

but op can easily find out - note down what the child eats for a few days and shove it into chatGPT.