The Fatherhood Thread

Are you sure its her and not the coach & other parents playing their own games?

The place we bring her to has parents sitting in a viewing area so the most we can do is wave and make smoke signals.
Her coaches change here and there depending the day that she’s going, but we have one who we’re using to prep her for moving up levels. This being said, I don’t think it’s the coaches.

She’s a kid, and she acts like one (not a bad thing), but gymnastics doesn’t have a whole lot of room for kids being kids. She doesn’t act out or throw fits or anything in class, it’s simply that she gets distracted by literally everything that’s ‘more interesting’ than listening to her coach.
To clarify: she’s in a class with usually 4-6 kids total, so when she’s not actively doing whatever it is she’s supposed to be doing - she’s waiting. She’s not good at waiting

In that case I’d err with Doogie and say maybe a bit more time to mature and practice being patient would be in order.

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@Andrewgen_Receptors I’m obviously NOT a dad

2 things

  1. she could be bored in the class- staying at level 1 probably isn’t going to solve the issue. I remember being insubordinate, even downright destructive if I was bored
  2. Is competitive REALLY the best route for her? It’s not normal, or necessarily beneficial for a someone as young as your daughter to be so focused/obedient. Focused and obedient =/= discipline/grit.

Is there the option of a non-competitive track?
When I did gymnastics as a kid, I remember there was a compeitive track and a "fun track

@SkyzykS

I don’t necessarily disagree, I think we’ll see in the upcoming week or two whether she’s ready to mature enough to stick with level 2 or not. I was hoping for some advice on how to help the rate of maturity, if such a thing is even possible.


@anna_5588

My wife and I agree. This is why we’re at a bit of a bottleneck, and why I’m attempting to push her along for the time being so she is able to move up. We both agree that she’s losing interest in level 1 and that when she moves to level 2 - we’ll see some pretty major changes in her demeanor and increased interest.

Maybe, maybe not. At her age, there is little to no peer ‘competitiveness’ that goes on. This being said, she is very competitive, or at least leads both of us to believe she is. There is a level 2 that doesn’t do pre-team, but it certainly isn’t given the same level of attention as the pre-team class. I’d much rather her just have the option of going the better route if she wants to.
I don’t particularly care if she’s competitive or not at this age, but she talks about it all the time. She wants medals/trophies and she doesn’t make that a secret.

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And

:thinking:

Really?

Not trying to bust your stones, but I do very much consider my kiddo a pretty accurate reflection of myself.

Just something to think about.

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I don’t understand what this means, exactly. Can you flush it out for me?

I’m very much aware I’m not good at waiting myself lol. The reason for it isn’t quite the same though. If my daughter wasn’t ready to move up for technique reasons, I would do what I could to help her along. But because she isn’t ready to move up for maturity reasons, my toolbox is limitted. Furthermore is the decreasing interest aspect that I’m a bit concerned about. I’d be okay with waiting for her to move at her own pace as a whole, but she’s starting to lose interest and regressing a bit in skills.

Or maybe I’m missing the forest for the trees

My daughter is impatient, and so am I… Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree :sweat_smile:

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He learns what I teach him, and lacks where I lack.

How can I pass it on to him if I dont have it?

In first grade he got into a squabble with one kid, until another kid joined in against him. Then he decked the one kid in the eye.

I wasnt too surprised. He has gotten into a couple of other playground scuffles, bearing in mind it does take 2 to tango.

But I also have to own the fact that I didnt teach him better/differently.

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You’re telling me your preschoolers didn’t have good discipline and attention span? Color me shocked.

Imo, at 5yrs old I plan to be introducing a whole bunch of sports and hobbies to my kid, not trying to have him specialize. I’m not a big fan of the hyper competitive youth sports/travel/showcase scene.

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We’ve brought my daughter to do swim lessons and other stuff too, but we live in California and the whole damn state has been closed for the last 2 years (except the few places that fought the system, like her gymnastics place)…

Regardless, we would be limitted in how many sports we can bring her into anyways. Girls don’t have that many sports at that age, but boys do.

Oh, I see. For y’all n=1. I raised a step-daughter in my first marriage from the age of 4 until she joined the Air Force. And now I have 5 boys (4 of whom I’ve known since they were 5 or less). They are ALL different. You can teach and treat them all exactly alike and they all turn out differently.

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My kid is academically advanced. The technical aspects and lessons arent ever going to be a problem for him.

But he had a bad day yesterday and a couple other times because he is a little bit disorganized and loses and misplaces things.

His hard part is keeping his stuff square and accessible. Taking his mathbook to math class, etc.

He’ll get the hang of it in his own way, but Ive coached him a little to think about where he puts things and how he arranges them so that they are easiest and most useful for him.

Everybody has these kinds of things, i think.

My obstacle in life is people skills. I can technically master an activity or even a trade pretty quickly, but my people/social skills are a detriment.

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Pff, yeah they are!

JK you’re actually one of the funniest people on this forum IMO

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Mtb, skiing, fishing, ice skating, climbing, music, painting, sculpting, soccer, girl scouts, etc.

Not everything needs to be a league, team or an organized sport at that age IMO. Anyways, food for thought.

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For real though! This forum is fun and pretty light hearted.

But irl in what I call “The Fog of Work” I can really screw things up. Like telling the owner of one companies wife that she needs to shut the fuck up and answer phones.

Or going full Tyler Durden on a company where the head of manufacturing shit listed me.

And he shit listed me because I talked at him like he was an 8 year old during a safety review.

The list goes on.

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Maybe I should have clarified, we live in Southern Cali. Nearest water source is at least an hour away, nearest ski resort is 2 hours away, ice skating at 5 yrs = visit to the dentist, not many places to climb, the wife and I don’t do music, she already paints because she’s 5, soccer was nonexistent because Covid, same for girl scouts.
EDIT: and she’d be automatically excluded from any school-related sports/events because we aren’t vaccinated (we all already caught covid, natural immunity, yadda yadda), So we’re stuck with homeschooling.
I agree that not everything needs to be a league/team/sport etc, but I get the impression you don’t understand how fucked Cali was these last 2 years under lockdown. Not trying to derail thread, we simply didn’t have much for options, but what we put her in - she went all in for.

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Its worth noting that this counts as a big win.

These have been strange/difficult times.

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Strongly agree, being youngest of 5, with 1 sister and 3 older brothers.

All five of us are very much the same, yet completely different.