Gymnastics - is it normal for parents not to be allowed to watch lessons?

[redglobox]

My child's gymnastics club only allows parents to watch for 15/30 minutes every couple of months. Is that normal? They have an area that would make a great viewing area so that's not the issue.

I’m going to take a shot in the dark here and ask if you were a competitive gymnast in the 90s? (Speaking as a competitive gymnast in the 90s with a few memories of things that, looking back as an adult, really should not have happened.)

@Mumoftwoinprimary not a gymnast, I was an athlete but with very similar dubious practices going on.

The problem is that most parents did not have a clue and most kids didn't have a clue what was happening to them. There was a lot of being helped to stretch with the odd very quick slip of the hand end, a hell of a lot of talking about our developing bodies, and others had so much worse.

Parents can't leave it to children to report abusive behaviour as it can be so subtle and build up slowly you genuinely don't know at the time.

My child’s club lets you watch. Parents don’t tend to watch all the training sessions. Dd trains 6 hours a week so I wouldn’t want to watch it all. When they are little how would you help them practice routines if you can’t see them do them with the coaches?

Another club in the same city doesn’t let parents watch, which I wouldn’t feel comfortable with personally. The other club isn’t so good competitively anyway.

Unless all the parents have Disclosure it's inappropriate for them to sit and view children.

Also, it's 100% PITA for tutors. Guaranteed time wasting WhatsApp group moans and perceived slights. Most of the time it's barely worth it for tutors to run any groups. I'd be wary of moaning too much about 'viewing' anything incase they decide its too much trouble from the parents.

The safety and enjoyment of the young people who do the sports should be at the centre

Except that elite competitive sport is not about safety or enjoyment. It is about winning, and defeating every other competitor on the planet.

Elite coaches are not there to provide pastoral care or 'fun' activities for people's children. They are there to identify talent, weed out the weakest, and push the remainder to do more than they ever believed themselves capable of. Their role is in many ways antithetical to 'good parenting'.

Most gyms have two 'products' - a suite of recreational sessions which are about earning revenue to cover overheads, and suite of elite sessions which are about achieving the objectives mentioned above. I've no problem with tubby little Mavis Cruet prancing about in a tutu in the former session, but to moan about body shaming in the latter is fully missing the point of what elite sports is all about. Criminal behaviour, on the other hand, is exactly that and should be dealt with through the criminal justice system.

Yes it’s “normal” but the environment is well known to be toxic.

Yes normal not to be in the room

We have a parents room with screens up where you can watch

Our only gymnastics club was run by a horrible man. As a result we pulled our dc out, couldn’t risk it. I stood outside and watched through a small window the few times they went. I was uncomfortable about the arrangements and the close contact.

Normal - but then I ended up pulling my daughter from gymnastics after horrific abuse at 3 clubs.

The only one she didn't experience abuse at was the one that had a viewing gallery. Make of that what you will!

Don't put your child in gymnastics. It's an utterly vile sport with mainly nasty coaches (all of whom were coached the same way - you will never ever change the culture)

My daughter is 10. She was a decent standard, National Grade 3. Her mental health is in utter tatters. She was training 22 hrs a week.

The worst club was the one run by a former Olympian!!!!! The abuse from her and those coaches was utterly disgusting. They humiliated her in public age 7 in front of the entire squad. She still talks about it now and says its why she doesn't like being in public. She won't even take swimming badges for eg into school to celebrate.

Pull her out now and find a club with a viewing gallery. Trust me, the abuse that has actually come out is merely the tip of the iceberg sadly.

You pulled her from 3 clubs? And they were all wrong? I wonder what the odds of that are ...

You sound like one of these abusive coaches. Take a long hard look at yourself and what you're doing to small children (and no they're not ladies, they're 8 year old children)

Elite competitive sport isn't about safety - FFS. That will be why one of my daughter's best friend nearly died and not one coach gave a shit, other than shitting themselves that the other gymnasts would talk to BG ( so threatened them to keep quiet and said they'd seen nothing!)

The bullying and threat of being kicked off the squad is rife.

We moved house from the first.

There's no 'odds' about that. My point is about the nature of the sport. And it sounds like people like you are at the root of it!

@Mark19735 do you think the fat shaming that Olympians Ellie Downie, Amy Tinkler and Jennifer Pinches were on the receiving end of?

Children in sports should be protected from abuse whatever their ability.

Perhaps the word to used should be ‘normalised’, not normal.

Interesting to see it is fairly normal/certainly common, I had no idea. I feel uncomfortable with it but its the only club locally. The facilities are good. I do find the owners/some of the coaches/staff pretty hostile towards parents generally. The no parents rule is from pre-school age onwards. Trying not to saying anything too identifying, but the rules have recently changed so that parents are pretty much not allowed in the building at all (ie not the changing area either).

I'm on a gymnastics Facebook group that seems to mostly have US mums and from what I've read there it seems to be normal for the parents to watch.

I was a high level gymnast. My Dh was an international at another sport. My Dd is the national champion for her age for a third sport.

From what Dh tells me, for his sport, even when he was representing his country, it was fun. The aim for dd from all her coaches is that she enjoys it. And she does.

Gymnastics was not about fun. As the pp said - it was all about winning. And being screamed at. I loved the sport. But, when I was in the top squad, I was miserable.

No matter what I was never going to be an international. But I think that under a different system I could have been better. When I was 13 I couldn’t hack it any more and I moved out of the squad and moved to a recreational group. Dropped right down to 4 hours a week with a coach who just wanted it to be fun. (His daughter was another “squad has-been”.) And suddenly I started enjoying it again and started learning new skills at a ridiculous rate. I even medaled in the county championships that year!

@NerrSnerr - that sentence is missing a verb - I'm not sure what you're asking.

If it is "Do I believe them?" then the answer is yes.
If it is "Do I think it was OK?" then it is more complicated. How much of their success was due to the culture of their gyms? Does anyone really think they would have won so much if they'd been praised non-stop and given food-treats for every minor accomplishment? It's not puppy training.
If it is "Do I think the toll on mental and physical health endured in pursuit of success is worth it, given the astronomically small chance of it and its fleeting nature?" I'd probably say no, not for most people. Elite sport is competitive. There are people all over the world doing unimaginable things to their bodies in order to perform better. Very, very few people are cut out for it. And of those that are, almost all of them will fail to attain the ultimate accolades and will feel like losers at some point or other. It's all very well a generation of gymnasts retiring with a trophy cabinet full of medals and then saying "oh but it was really horrid". All the other gymnasts they beat into lower placings didn't win because they didn't train as hard and didn't sacrifice as much. These gymnasts contributed to that culture just as much as the coaches they later criticised.

We live in a world where even the slightest criticism or opprobrium is challenged as some kind of abusive violation of someone's dignity. But there's lots of dark mutterings about 'horrific abuse and humiliation' without there ever being any transparency about what is actually being alleged. To be clear, criminal behaviour must be dealt with through the criminal justice system. But weight management is an integral part of many elite sports. Just like being punched in the face is an integral part of boxing. Don't like it? Get out of the ring, by all means. But there's no point remaining ringside complaining about those whose choice is to continue to strive, by whatever legal means available, to win.

We are at a well known competitive club and have viewing areas.

But weight management is an integral part of many elite sports.

With the examples I gave it is bollocks. Ellie Downie was forced to diet because she is a bigger build than other gymnasts. She proved that she can have a bigger body (not fat as she was never fat) and still win Olympic medals. She was still told to lose weight. She had publicly stated this.

Jennifer Pinches was punished by her coach for having fruit as a pudding at camp. An elite athlete doing hours of training having fruit.

Amy Tinkler was called a 'fat troll' in an email from a GB coach when she was a teenager.

None of this is acceptable. It does not happen in all sports and the culture in the sports it does happen in needs to change.

Winning at all cost, even if it fucks up the physical and mental health of children is wrong and 100% should be challenged. These kids going into elite gym squads at age 8 or 9 doing many hours a week do not realise what it is going to do to them.

I only got in for the first time to watch my daughter last week. She's been going since October. We were able to stay for the full class, it was nice to see what she as was actually doing!

I'm not sure if ur allowed to stay for the younger classes but I was thinking of putting my 3yr old in but I don't think she'd stay without me being there, certainly not alto begin with anyway.

It's not just coaches I've seen parents push kids to train and compete through illness and injuries and where the kid is practically fainting with sheer exhaustion. I've seen kids throw up and carry on with a fever while their coach screams at them to stop being pathetic and a parent who should step in does not. We are not talking Olympic level here either more local and regional stuff but where parents are so overly involved and invested they actually lose sight of their role as advocates and guardians while they live vicariously through their DC. Parents do have ultimate responsibility here but sadly too many are caught up in it all to speak up.

We are allowed to watch as much as we like at DD's club. Parents were allowed back in to the viewing area as soon as covid restrictions permitted. I agree that normalised doesn't mean normal, or perhaps normalised shouldn't mean accepted without question.

When DD first asked to do gymnastics, knowing the sport's history, it was crucial to me that I could have the option of watching. There were two possible clubs she could join - the one she did join, and one that didn't allow parents to watch. Since then I've heard that club doesn't have a good rep for the way they treat their athletes (coincidentally they don't perform as well at competitions either - maybe we live in the same city @IkaBaar !)

i run a gymnastics club and always allow parents to watch.Most clubs dont, not because they are trying to hide abuse, but because they dont want you to see how little individual attention your child is getting, and how long she is spending waiting in line.
The distracting thing is a red herring, mostly children behave better when their parents is watching and to be honest their classes cannot be that engaging if mum sitting on a bench is more fun than what they are supposed to be doing

Presume you're talking about the rec gymnasts with the waiting in line? Certainly not our experience with a squad gymnast !

To a lesser extent squad possibly, but no both!