The YMCA and Competitive Parents

Recently, we signed Lucy up over at the YMCA for swimming and gymnastics. She's having a blast, and that's exactly what I want for her. Since starting both activities, I have had the opportunity to chat with and observe other parents with their kids in these same activities. The ones I've talked to are nice, and are there for the same reason I am--our kids need some activity, and we want to give them a chance to explore some different, fun things to do.

But the parents I won't talk to, the ones who get dirty looks from me, are the ones who are obviously there because their child WILL be an Olympic swimmer/gymnast. If they have anything to say about it, that is.

My first experience with this was in the gymnastics class. Now, the title of the class is "Preschool Gymnastics", and the description contains phrases like "for ages 4 and 5" and "basic introduction" and "supportive staff". This is what I want. So we show up on Day 1, and the teachers are doing some warm-up stretching with the kids. One father is standing just a few feet behind his daughter, and she's trying her best to keep up with the warm-ups and do them just like the teacher. But she's little. This is her first class. No matter. The father picks her up and says, "If you can't do it the way the teacher says, then you're not doing it at all." She starts to cry, and he begins walking toward the door. Excuse me? Uh, she's four. And come to find out, she had just turned four the previous week. He finally brought her back in and let her finish the class, but the fun was completely sucked out of it for her. And I wasn't sure if what I had witnessed was an abusive, controlling parent, or an adult living vicariously through his child. Either way, it's disgusting.

And if you thought that was bad, I almost smacked the woman I watched yesterday. This time, it was during swimming class. I first saw this witch rapidly walking through the locker room telling her 7 or 8 year old daughter to "hurry up and get in the pool". So Lucy and I catch up with them just as the girl is getting into one of the lap lanes and I hear the mother say, "Fifty breast strokes. Go." And the girl does her fifty. Then the mother barks, "Fifty back strokes." And again, the girl takes off to do fifty of those. Meanwhile, the mother is making her younger son write all his upper- and lower-case alphabet letters before HIS swimming class. She's in the middle of telling him that his K's are all wrong when the girl gets back to our side of the pool, and is waiting there for her next instruction. The mother gets done with the letter K, and turns to the girl and says, "Did I say you could take a break? Fifty butterflies. Go." And the girl says, "How about 25?" And then the mother says, "I'm in charge, and I say fifty. You'll do fifty." And I'm thinking, "Geez, lady...what did your parents do to you?" What got me the most was that there was NO praise, smiles, or compassion. At all. And I thought of those poor kids who live with this crappy, controlling mother, and I wanted to shout, "They're going to resent you, you know. I hope it's worth it."

I am so grateful I didn't have parents who pushed me into anything. In fact, we had to beg my mom to allow us to be involved in music, since she herself was so burned out with it all. If I had wanted to be on the tennis team, fine. If not, oh well. My parents knew we wouldn't be the next Andre Agassi, Nancy Kerrigan, Lance Armstrong, or Michael Phelps. And bottom line, I doubt that the majority of pushy parents get an olympian or even a professional athlete out of all their demands on their kids to be the best. I don't care if my kids are the best. I just want them to be healthy, happy, and just plain, good people.

Gina