We all know about “that” gymnastics
moms and dads, and we all hope we aren’t and will never turn into one. IK School of Gymnastics in Miami prepared a list of common mistakes that parents of young gymnasts tend to make and useful
tips that can help enhance your child’s experience of the sport of rhythmic
gymnastics.
1. Comparing your gymnast’s results with that of other gymnasts – When you compare your child with others, no matter whether it is
gymnastics results or academic achievements, it lowers your child’s self-esteem
and self-confidence and makes him doubt in your love.
How to Avoid
– The best way to avoid comparing gymnastics achievements with others is to
concentrate on your gymnast’s individual progress, marking the progress every
time.
2. Associating yourself with your gymnast’s
success or lack of it – If you base your own own ego or self-esteem on the success of your
gymnast’s, your unhappiness with the results makes your child feel guilty for
not coming up to your expectations. This negative feeling affects your child’s
both mental and physical health, causing neurological conditions, low immunity,
psychogenic headache, stomach or back pain.
How to Avoid – Allow yourself to get pleasure from your child’s gymnastics experience,
but do not get overly emotionally involved. Stay calm, keeping in mind that your
positive attitude is the best way to improve how well your child performs and feels
about gymnastics.
3. Basing your love and positive attitude on your gymnast’s success – Conditional love and approval harm your child more than you can
imagine. Being constantly approved or disapproved for gymnastics achievements, children
get used to the idea that continued love and good attitude from parents depends
on results in the gym – a thing they even are not able to fully control.
How to Avoid – Just keep in mind that your child's
success should depend on your attitude and not vice versa. You both will enjoy
it more that way.
4. Interfering with coaches and their coaching duties – When you interfere with coaching duties you undercut your gymnast’s
confidence in their coaches and in this way make coaching your athlete more
difficult for them.
How to Avoid – Leave the coaching to the gymnastics professionals.
5. Expecting a monetary return for the time and money you are spending – Thinking of time and money you spend on your child participation in
gymnastics as an investment or a sacrifice in most of the times leads to you to
frustration and can also make your child feeling guilty if failed to meet your
expectations.
How to Avoid – Don’t expect anything more from your gymnast except the best effort.
6. Competing with other parents – Competing with other parents you help create an unhealthy atmosphere in
the gym and deprive yourself of communicating with people, who will understand
what you and your gymnast go through.
How to Avoid – Use all opportunities to make new friends among gymnastics parents, and
you’ll get additional benefits as, for example, shared pick-up responsibilities,
while your child will easily make new friends in a safe environment.
Most of
gymnastics parents want the very best for their child including the opportunity
to be safe and learn new skills. It’s critically important for parents of
gymnasts to remember that our job is support our children and give them our
unconditional love. To achieve this goal, concentrate on helping your child set
realistic goals, respect coaches, make friends with other athletes and have fun
when doing gymnastics.
