I normally find your posts very insightful and offering sound advise. Regarding your current blog, I am disturbed that you use the concept of POOR PERFORMANCE as a behavior the parent needs to address. With years of coaching beginner to elites, I never addressed my gymnasts as having had a POOR PERFORMANCE. I focused on what they did well and what they need to work to improve. Ultimately, the bottom line was “DID I DO MY JOB” to help my gymnast to be her best. If she failed to implement our workout goals, we went back and continued to correct her errors. The real problem is measuring one performance with another. Often the gymnast and parent are focused on the podium and hardware as a measure of how they performed, not on performing with goals in mind. We all give in to the podium measure determining weather a gymnast had a successful meet or unsuccessful one. I would recommend that the parent do what they do best, encourage, support and love the gymnast, what every her performance. I find a word of support and a hug can generally fix the performance concerns. The bottom line is it is the responsibility of the club management and the coach to prevent a “A POOR PERFORMANCE”!
Interesting perspective, Lon. In this case I guess I was writing from the perspective of how a parent should cope with a disappointed child after a rough meet. We all know that despite best preparation an athlete can make mistakes or simply have an off day. That’s sports. And in those moments parents are then tasked to help their child cope with that disappointment as that is one of the responsibilities of parents. So while I agree that the podium and measuring one child’s performance against another’s is seldom the correct way to determine success, I do know that there can be meets where kids fail to reach their own goals and the disappointment they feel is real and appropriate and parents can either make it worse or help the child process it in a healthy way.
JAG GYM Blog 
I don’t have a child in sports but this is classic. And it works in any type of performance.
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I normally find your posts very insightful and offering sound advise. Regarding your current blog, I am disturbed that you use the concept of POOR PERFORMANCE as a behavior the parent needs to address. With years of coaching beginner to elites, I never addressed my gymnasts as having had a POOR PERFORMANCE. I focused on what they did well and what they need to work to improve. Ultimately, the bottom line was “DID I DO MY JOB” to help my gymnast to be her best. If she failed to implement our workout goals, we went back and continued to correct her errors. The real problem is measuring one performance with another. Often the gymnast and parent are focused on the podium and hardware as a measure of how they performed, not on performing with goals in mind. We all give in to the podium measure determining weather a gymnast had a successful meet or unsuccessful one. I would recommend that the parent do what they do best, encourage, support and love the gymnast, what every her performance. I find a word of support and a hug can generally fix the performance concerns. The bottom line is it is the responsibility of the club management and the coach to prevent a “A POOR PERFORMANCE”!
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Interesting perspective, Lon. In this case I guess I was writing from the perspective of how a parent should cope with a disappointed child after a rough meet. We all know that despite best preparation an athlete can make mistakes or simply have an off day. That’s sports. And in those moments parents are then tasked to help their child cope with that disappointment as that is one of the responsibilities of parents. So while I agree that the podium and measuring one child’s performance against another’s is seldom the correct way to determine success, I do know that there can be meets where kids fail to reach their own goals and the disappointment they feel is real and appropriate and parents can either make it worse or help the child process it in a healthy way.
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