Has your child experienced burnout and was able to recover from it?

[Anonymous]

One of my kids took a break from their sport for about 6 months at that age and returned when we figured out the burnout wasn't with the sport itself, it was more about the ultra-competitive environment they were in and too much pressure from the coaches. Went back but took the intensity down a notch and is now happily making progress again with a different coach.

My other kid is also 13 and is currently in what I jokingly call the death spiral of her participation in her sport (gymnastics). She was getting burned out and injured frequently so she switched teams to have lower practice hours, then she switched programs so they dropped again, and now she's talking about doing the same lower hours program with a different team and that would drop them again. She's been talking about all of the things she wants to do in high school and the potential conflicts with practice seems to be an afterthought so I really don't see her continuing for too much longer, let alone ramping things up again. I'd love it if she found something different to do that isn't as hard on her physically.