Reply to How much is too much for kids sports?

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[quote=Anonymous]Mine did competitive gymnastics. 9 hours a week is just the beginning. It quickly got to double that plus the competitions - local and travel. And it’s an 11 month sport with recommended optional practices for month 12. Mine did 6 days a week, 3 hours at a pop on weekdays, 4 or 5 on Saturdays and two weekday post practice clinics, which were 30-60 minutes a week with two 15 minute breaks stretching the time at the gym to 4.5 hours on those days.

Family dinners don’t happen. You end up taking them food so they can eat in the car on the way home. It’s a plus if your gym has a microwave you can use.

I didn’t see any kids where homework or grades were an issue. Every single kid was driven in all aspects of their life.

Vacations get planned around the sports schedule though that’s not different than HS sports where there are summer practices.

You might think all kids make gym friends. But if your kid gets really good and advances beyond her years, she won’t be spending much time with kids her age and the older kids won’t be her friends. Older girls can be really bossy and tough on the younger ones.

It is expensive so you have to be prepared for that. And there can be missed school if she makes the international team. But as I said, these kids are driven so it wasn’t really a problem. As an aside I remember my daughter’s fourth grade teacher making math videos and we’d watch them in the hotel during competitions.

It is hard if you have two parents who work, especially if it’s in person, not flexible and big jobs, which was us. Most kids on our team had a SAHP or a WAH with flexible job parent. We were one of the few with really demanding work lives for both parents.

You definitely have to figure out how to make family time if that’s important to you. We have other kids so we were always having to find ways to be together and being careful not to miss important events for the other kids.

Many kids age out because of body changes as PPs have noted. COVID was my daughter’s end. When sports reopened, she was going into HS and wanted more friend related sports, activities and time so she moved on.

No advice. Just sharing that in our experience it was a lot. [/quote]

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