Should I enrol my DD (4) into a dance team?

[Lorelei2]

I received an email from the dance school my DD attends once a week for nursery ballet saying she shows potential and would like to invite her to join a dance team for working towards competitions but she'll have to take a compulsory ballet, tap and training class each week. It's difficult because I don't want to deny her that feeling of pride and success that it could bring and may lead on to some exciting opportunities however I also feel the school is quite full on. A lot of the pupils take many classes a week and there's messages on their Facebook page like 'you've got to turn up to class if you want to succeed '. I wouldn't want her to feel any pressure at her age. I also feel if I refuse this they may dismiss her in future because I wasn't willing to 'commit'. I haven't asked if anyone else has received this email because I don't want to make people feel bad for their kids. It's that whole thing about supporting your kid but not wanting them to feel like they're suddenly better than those around them. Anybody have any tales of what it's like having a DC going through the dance school system and the pros and cons, thanks.

Dd used to dance. 4 is way too young to join a team! Just let her choose what she enjoys, the rest can follow if she wants to pursue it later. Ballet underpins the other styles. Sounds like a money making exercise.

Yes, thanks LIZS I think 4 is too young. She's almost 5 and will start school after summer. I think the class is a pre yvolution class, don't know what this is. I think it's maybe a type of dance that the leader of the school has invented. I can't help but think she thinks a lot of herself. Which is fair enough, and I'm sure she gets good results from her girls and boys but I just wanted my DD to do ballet for fun.

Competition is quite time consuming, and if Dance Moms are anything to go by quite bitchy! Let her do what she enjoys and there’s plenty of time if she wants to take it further.

Yes Pipandmum, a dance mum is definitely not me! Although I don't want to hold my DD back because of my personality and because I never got that serious about dance when I was young. I did get heavily into music competitions but that was when I was a teenager and decided myself.

I'd save competitions for secondary school. I firmly believe until that age it should be for fun, and at most getting kids used to the idea of committing to attending something regularly - but not 4 compulsory sessions a week!

Yes catalicious I agree it's too much, especially since she's starting school and will be tired.

At 4 my now serious dancer was doing 2 classes a week, covering ballet tap modern and musical theatre in those two classes. She did her first competition aged 4, but solos not team and no extra classes for them. Just odd rehearsal around comp time. I wouldn’t have agreed to team and 4 classes a week. She now dances 5 days a week min and we don’t do comps any more. I didn’t like the environment for her and moved her to a school that doesn’t do them.

At 4 mine was doing 2 classes as well.
Whilst there's plenty of time, if they want to be dancers just like musical instruments, the sooner the better.
She didn't do competitions though and there were no teams. They just started doing the exams and performing in shows from about 2.5

I think 4 is too young. Mine were 6 and 4.5 when they started dancing. The younger one did a solo at festivals from the age of 7 but the older one was 9 when she did the same. (so started at the same time). Their school starts with general ballet from the age of 3, tap from 4/5ish, modern from 6. ballet compulsory.
no competition team there.

I think it depends very much on the child and their personality, how much time you have to commit, how much money you have (it can be really expensive) but I would suggest just starting simple, adding dance styles if she is keen and then in the future if they want to then think of competitions perhaps but different schools offer different amounts so do look around if you think the whole team thing is too much as there will be other schools that offer the opportunity to just do one solo if that is what they want.

Our dance school doesn’t do competitions, well only for hip hop, which is the one style neither of mine are into.

If I were you I’d want to find out a bit more before I committed. Maybe let dd trial the classes for the first week and see how she finds it, the teacher should agree to that. If it’s just a development class which is moving at a faster pace than the normal classes for the more able kids, then I think it would be fine (both of mine have done these for ballet when young). I’m not sure I’d want them thrust straight into competitions so young.

I know at my dds dance school, even for the girls in the progressions classes it’s all quite low key and kept fun.
However I know of another local dance school which is exactly like dance mums, pyramid and everything! Kids leave there and come to my girls school traumatised with the confidence on the floor. I wouldn’t want my girls anywhere near a school like that, so sus it out first before you make any decision.

People who have a genuine aptitude for ballet tend to progress through formal grades rather than doing competitions. A ballet dance team? Sounds a bit chavvy, like dance moms. I wonder how focused they ate on actual ballet? Is there a dif dance school where it's not a competition environment, could be better

Yes that does sound a bit much for 4.

My 8 year old DD was probably doing 2 classes a week at that age - just ballet as her school doesn't offer tap.

At that age though the focus should really be about having fun... lots of dancers who go on to train at a high level start much later and success is often predicated on having the right facility rather than the number of years in training.

My semi-serious DD (still too young to know 100% if she's heading down the vocational route) currently does 4.5 hours at our local school and another few at an external programme at the weekend. Seems enough. No competitions (not something her ballet focussed school does other than those run by the exam boards).

My dd is now 17 and in professional training. At 4 she just did stagecoach for fun. At 6 she started ballet, 1 class per week then added tap and modern aged around 8.

Quality over quantity at that age.

At 4???

They just want to get more money out of you.

Sounds like the dance school my daughters used to attend. They no longer attend because of how the dynamics of all the classes changed once they picked out their future competition kids... these kids were there at least 3 days/evenings a week (from age 5) and basically it rapidly became the parents' entire social world - so it was cliquier and cliquier and previous friendships just disappeared as they were hanging around with the people they were with every blooming day of the week.

Plus although it was "only" so many classes a week - in reality they all got sucked into taking all the extra classes to curry favour with the school owner and make sure their kid was included in everything and arsekissing on social media like some kind of MLM zombies. The kids all pretty much lost their friendships with the casual kids in the classes and it just became ridiculous in a very short space of time - and the blatant cash grabbing was insane - onesies, hoodies, backpacks, dancewear - and they all felt (rightly or wrongly) that they "had" to buy it all as they were the "competition team" kids so had to show that throughout.