In this current world, a lot of parents are keen of getting their children into some extra curricular activities be it sports or music or any other activities. For myself, it was more of an activity which will keep my daughter occupied as well as keep her fit. I never had dreams for her to be a world class figure skater or an Olympic hopeful! We do not have the hundreds of thousands of dollars anyways! But here I am sharing with all you parents with young children to think carefully before you encourage them to compete in any level!
I only know one sport but I have learnt a lot from friends who are parents, too! When my girl first started to compete at the tender age of 4, she got a lot of wonderful praises and admiration! And she loved it and lapped it all up! So she continued to skate and want to skate. Then when she get to the tween stage that is when she started having a lot of 'battles' with her coach who had high hopes for her and always harping on her not reaching her potential! After about 3 years, she was all broken as her Russian coach was also verbally abusive so I had to change coach to one who used to coach her when she was younger just to see her through her competitive season. Now she has swapped to her current Czech coach whom she respects and is happy with her skating again.
So, number 1 is coaching style. Then next is the part with making friends with other fellow skaters! Here like in the school ground there will be lots of ups and downs and friends come and go as part of the life package. But as they grow to teenagers, you will come across some peer skaters who will pscyh all their competitors out before they skate their programme or programmes. Usually the skaters are gathered in a room before their scheduled time to prepare themselves mentally for their skate. A lot of coaches are aware of these tactics so they will remove their skaters to other places and to reduce the stress and pressure.
On ice even before the competition, the skaters are supposed to give way according to certain heirarchy but some skaters do not bother to give way even though a skater has the right away during a programme skate with music. Usually they will give way only if your are bigger size as everyone knows that if you crash into someone bigger than you, you will suffer the consequences no matter whose fault it is! There are also instances where ex coaches can be vindictive and purposely ignoring the rules and sending their skaters into your way disrupting your programme. If I have a $1 for everytime my daughter complains about this issue, I would be rich by now!
Then there are the 'skating mums'! Before I knew the connotation of the title of 'skating mum', I would think I am a skating mum as I do not skate but am just the chauffeur and the bill payer! But do not cross the path of skating mums! They would do anything to push their 'skater' to the point of tears and tantrums! Sometimes you can see the battles between mothers and skaters and it is not a pretty sight! I have always believe that a child must have his or her own determination to do well in anything they do and if your parents need to wake you up to skate in the early mornings, you do not have it! But sadly with most young skaters, it is more of the parents pushing and more pushing! I can understand as figure skating is an elite sport and thus a big drain on the wallet(easily $10,000 - $20,000 a year depending on locations of away competitions, etc)! Another skating mother who has a son doing competitive swimming tells me the cost is no different in swimming! A good pair of goggles is easily a few hundred dollars and double that for swimming trunks! And when we complained of the early morning starts (my daughter's earliest lesson is 5.30am) swimmers are worst! They have to be in the pool by 5 am most days! Where skaters have injuries due to falls, swimmers usually end up with chest infections!
One of my close friends whose children was also musicians apart from skating told me it is no different in the music world! With competitive parents, she told me that there are occasions where blades are taped to the piano ivories to injure competitors!!! What?! This is just at school level children and not even the world class levels where people sabotaged your music equipments, etc! And in sports, the use of drugs and hormones! When my daughter had a bad ankle injury last year she had to take pain killers before skating but when competing, we had to be extra sure that the painkillers she took were not on the banned list of drugs.
In New Zealand, parents have to pay for all sports and music activities. If you are in a team sport, you have to pay for the rental of the sport uniform (which was fund raised in the first place) and pay for any rental of sports centre and equipment if you do not have your own. Then of course transportation and accommodation is entirely on the parents or caregivers on away games if the children fails to raise the money through fun raising! Everywhere you go children are always fundraising for this or that!
So parents of young children, think carefully if you want your children to excel in sports or activities of any kind! It comes with lots of $$$, stress and not to mention injuries, too! It looks like it is the same no matter what competitive activity you choose for your child to pursue.
