Reply to Explain to me your thought process (parents) with being highly competitive with your swimmer

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Thanks for this.  I keep thinking she’s 10 so she has 8 more years to develop since she’s on younger side.  But swim is such a tough sport.  Older kids play soccer, volleyball, team sports.  It’s very different when it all falls on you.[/quote]

Be slow.  I think when they are young it is so tough to see all the things that they can do better.  I always told mine, that is great.  It means you can learn (X.Y. or Z) and you will drop time.  And you know what?  The take it slow approach pays off.  My kids are in their teens and dropping time every year.  When they were 11-13 and barely keeping up with the superfast kids, and now those kids have plateaued.  
 
So now there are two scenarios - plateaued swimmers will keep having to wake up early and grind it out.  They might not have their next drops this year, or next, but have to keep working.  That is VERY hard to do mentally.  And the longer you can prolong that the better.

Less pushy or coming to the sport a bit later.  Keep making time drops as they improve.  Less time/chance of plateauing and feeling that frustration.  So breaks for vacations are great. Take a day off to do fun stuff or be with friends every once in a while.

Swim is a mental long game and your swimmer will have bad seasons or flat seasons.  So they need to love it and want to be there, even if they are not having success. [/quote]

This story of mediocre swimmers suddenly rising to the top and passing all the elite age group swimmers just doesn’t happen often. It’s exceedingly rare, although it is a common fantasy of the parents of 12 year old B swimmers. In reality, the very best elite swimmers generally were always good. There are some who maybe got a late start in the sport, but had they started swimming at 8, they also would have been good all along. Very rarely do you have a kid who plugs along for years barely getting B times, and suddenly at 15 becomes elite. Sorry, that’s reality.

Now, there are some ups and downs during the puberty years as some kids (especially boys) gain size/strength earlier or later than others. But generally the cream will rise. [/quote]

Torrid Huske might be the best example of a mediocre/good swimmer becoming the ultra elite. [/quote]

Uh, she had AAA times at 12. [/quote]

Which was when she hit puberty.  She started swimming at 6 and was not a phenom at a young age by any stretch.  In fact, she went pretty unnoticed until 11-12.[/quote]
At least based on what I’ve observed through my own swimmer, it’s not uncommon for there to be changes at the top with the girls when they hit the 11-12 age group. Puberty, kids that didn’t start swimming until they were 9-10 but are now hitting their stride, etc. all make a big difference at that age. What I have not seen a lot of is girls who are still B/BB swimmers at 11-14 all of sudden hitting AAAs when they are 15/16/17. [/quote]

I think that is a fair statement.  But you have a lot of parents on here that think there AAA 10 year old is college material and that the B 10 year old is not.  From what I have seen is you have to really wait until puberty and those years are the indicator.  Almost all girls will have started puberty by 14.[/quote]
I totally agree that no one should be predicting future success based on what a kid is doing at age 10. There are so many variables that have yet to come into play at that age, plus if you’re putting that kind of pressure on your 10 year old you will inevitably make them hate the sport. But if a girl is 13 and has gone through puberty and has not made strides beyond the B/BB level it is highly unlikely she is going to all of a sudden break out in HS. I looked through some of the posted studies and applying them to this discussion is a bit of an apples to oranges comparison. At least one was studying swimmers that would all be considered “elite”, swimmers competing at a junior national level. It wasn’t drawing conclusions about kids who were B/BB swimmers becoming superstars at the senior level. [/quote]

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