What Your Child Needs From You

Your child has a coach for technique and judges for scoring. What only you can give is the steady love that does not rise or fall with the result.

You are the most important support system your child has outside the gym, and the role is more powerful and more specific than most parents realize. When gymnasts are asked what they actually need from their parents, the answers are remarkably consistent, and almost none of them are about gymnastics.

What Gymnasts Say They Need

• Love that does not move with the scoreboard. The score should change nothing about how the car ride home feels.
• “I love watching you compete,” rather than “you should have done better.” This single sentence is the most requested one in the sport.
• Trust in the coach, so the child is not caught between two sets of instructions.
• Practical support: transport, good food, a protected sleep schedule, equipment on time.
• Emotional safety on the hard days, which outnumber the medal days by a wide margin.

The Sideline Rule

At a competition your job is to support, not to coach. Instruction shouted from the stands, even correct instruction, splits your child’s focus and undermines the coach. The most useful thing you can be in the arena is calm and visibly proud.

Finally, guard against making the sport yours. Build her love of gymnastics, on her terms, at her pace. The children who stay in sport longest are almost always the ones who felt it belonged to them.