I was curious if there were any skaters out there whose parents have really pushed them into skating. I have seen a few at our rink whose parents are constantly pushing and you know they are there only because there parents put them there.

I know a couple competitive skaters who, it seems to me, don't really like skating all that much but their parents push them into it. AAMOF, the whole family dynamic is centered on skating. If the kids didn't skate I don't think the parents would have anything to do.

Kevin

Nope. My dad isn't really involved in with my skating at all, my mom is the one that drives me to the rink hundreds of times. Several times we've paid for an hour session, I've skated for 5 minutes and decided that I'm too tired or sore for whatever reason, so we leave. But I know what you mean, there's this one girl whose mother is constantly yelling at her everything that she's doing wrong. My mom doesn't really understand skating so theres not much she can yell at me about.

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Unfortunately there are always some parents who try to live their lives through their kids. I knew of a mum and dad who when there lad decided he wanted to play rugby (I know, a world away from skating), they appeared at the rugby club 2 or 3 times a week acting as if they had been going there for ages and as if it was the whole of their world. Shame that the poor lad soon tired of the sport.

I know one kid who gets dragged down the rink by her dad. He wants her and the big sister to skate. they don't. they're not even very good skaters, the eldest just finished LTS and the younger one is still in it. they started 5 yrs ago. When the two of them wanted to skate a couple of years ago, he wouldn't take them down to practice or buy them privates complaining its too expensive, but then can't see they make no progress and I think the kids are just bored now, as they are still doing the top LTS class for years. Then again he dropped out of LTS when I switched to privates because of work, so I think he's trying to live his skating fantasy through them.

I've been really pushed... into piano playing.

They SHOULD've pushed me into skating, at least I would've stayed in it.

There are a couple of very smalls at my rink who I wonder about..... but mostly, the coaches are rather good at discouraging the over-pushy parents, I've noticed!

And this, for me, is one of those terribly vexed issues. You see, I couldn't have pushed my daughter into a sport of any kind, I'm not the kind. She might have been rather good at swimming if I could have organised her a club and training and so on.... but then again, she might not. She wasn't old enough to know the choices she had, and I didn't feel I could choose for her. And at least once she demanded to know why she couldn't have started skating earlier than she did (at 14) so she could have had a chance of being good at it. But I couldn't have made the decision for her, and she didn't know about it, so....

But then, my sister-in-law did make that choice for her daughter, did push her, sometimes against the child's own inclination, with the result that my niece is now one of the best dressage riders for her age and is in the British Junior team, usually winning her competitions in this country ("Everybody else groans when they see our lorry arrive!" said my brother) and coming 4th or 5th abroad. Should I have done this for my daughter? Who was right?

And you see other kids being pushed by their parents and then one day it "clicks", and they suddenly see the point of all the hard work and start to work without being pushed, as my niece did, and become good at it.

I wish I knew what the right thing to do was!

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Mrs Redboots
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I love my computer because my friends live in it!
Ice dancers have lovely big curves!

Tough thing for parents, when and what to push and what not to.

My own Mom thought skating was an absolute waste of time and money and wouldn't even come to the rink so I had to earn my own skating money.

At one rink where I skated last year there were parents who pushed their 8 year old daughter on to the ice, literally in tears, and blocked the gate so she couldn't get off and they would scream at her from the boards. This happened time and again. They even had the child's coach too intimidated to stand up to them! There were a few times my coach had to hold me back from confronting the parents. I felt SO sorry for the girl. I wanted to befriend her and try to make skating a more positive experience but I know if I had done that I WOULD have locked horns with the parents. That is one child who will HATE skating

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Dianne
(A.O.S.S.? Got it BAD! )

if the kid never wants to do it without the parents pushing it onto the ice so to speak (behind the piano/into the pool etc), it's not gonna grow up to like it.

Mine don't either. My dad asks when I'm going and how I'm doing but that's about it. My mom used to drive me but now that I'm 16 I drive myself everyday. She comes sometimes but I'm still trying to teach her mohawks so she thinks what I can do is amazing.

My dad took no interest in my skating (except when it started costing him a fortune!). Mom would be the one to drag him to my competitions. She drove me to almost all of my practices, too.

My mom really never pushed me too hard with skating, though. She kept saying to let her know if I wanted to try something else. I think the only time she would've forced me to continue skating against my will would be if I'd just gotten a new pair of skates and then declared my desire to quit (one of the girls at our rink did this). Mom said I would've had to skate until they were broken down to get our money's worth, but that's about it.

I do think there's a fine line between pushing too much and pushing just enough. My mother never once let me get away with skipping a planned skating lesson, especially if I was going to get a lesson on it. If I wanted to skate extra sessions, she usually let me, but she never pushed me to skate any more than I wanted to. Overall, skating's been a very positive experience for me.

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"Without Vision the People Perish"
שלום לעולם תמיד

We had one family where the parents were so off the wall with it and they infiltrated everyone else's lives at the rink, and on and on, they actually got banned from the rink! There kids came first no matter what, and the whole situation got so out of hand....

Maybe one day they will see what the real problem was.

LOL, I'm in exactly the same situation as you! But I wonder too, if being pushed was the real reason I quit piano...

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Not at all. My mom was the one who got me into skating as a kid, but she wanted my sister & me to do it for fun, exercise, and "learning experiences." Maybe that's why I stuck with it for so long as a kid, and then came back to skating as an adult. Of course, I didn't get very far because I didn't really "train," but I almost always loved going to the rink. And some of my best childhood memories involve skating. I did ISI competitions, and while I was scared to compete, there was never any pressure or anything. It's nice when your parents are beyond proud of you even though you place dead last in your group

I hope I can be the same way for my kids. I don't want to be the pushy parent screaming, "Work on your axel!" from the boards.

Well with me it was a nervous break-down on stage so that's kind of a clue. But I would've quit eventually anyway. I can't sit still for long. Even sitting before a computer I'm always moving my feet around.

Well, right or wrong, I just sent my daughter off to skate a week with her old coach - where the ice is cheap - ($50 a week of 6 am-2 pm freestyle) so she could work on her novice moves and test them on Friday. She didn't want to go, she's afraid she won't pass again. This would be her 4th try. I just felt like I had to make her face her fears, that if she didn't try again she would regret it. And this is her best chance to pass them, all the ice time and the judges there like her skating better than the judges here seem to.

She was NOT happy when she left. It's the pushiest thing I've done as far as her skating goes. She's 17 and however it turns out, it will be the last pushy thing I do as far as her skating goes.

j

Yeah, it's really hard sometimes to know when you're pushing them to do something you want them to do, or pushing them to do something you know THEY want to do. I just went through this with my daughter's recent Senior test. She expresses her fear and anxiety by not wanting to practice programs - she avoids making mistakes that way. I had to keep encouraging her, and keep reminding her that she was the one who wanted to finish her tests and she knew what she had to do in order to pass. When she did pass, she was really proud of herself, and I made a point of not tarnishing her Gold test by mentioning what we'd gone through in the preceding weeks. She did have to conquer fears in order to accomplish that, and deserved to celebrate her success.

Good luck to your daughter!

It was for me - I have NEVER liked being pushed! I quit piano for that reason (plus it was BORING!!!!) But then I turned right around and started playing in a garage band (rock & roll) and playing folk music for my grandmother because I enjoyed it and it was fun. More than 40 years later I still like to play once in awhile.

I guess a piano would be considered "a prop" wouldn't it?

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Dianne
(A.O.S.S.? Got it BAD! )

Yeah but making a child face their fears is slightly different - although you could seriously mess up with that if you're not careful too.

A kind of shocking example of how far some parents will go to live their fantasies through their children: my piano teacher told me about one other student she had (the sick part was that she admired the parents' parenting style) who would be put in front of the piano, and two belts were laid by the side of the piano. One thin one, one thick one. And a bag of candy to the other side of the piano. If he played well, he got the bag of candy. If he made mistakes, he was beaten with the thick belt. If he didn't try hard enough, he was beaten with the thin belt (since that hurts a lot more than a thick belt because of the narrower area over which to distribute the impact force). That's just one story, I know SO many of this sort of stories, mostly from piano playing and exclusively with Russian parents, by the way...
At least that's one I thing I *really* like about the Netherlands. That sort of pushing just almost doesn't happen here. Almost everybody I know who skates at our rink actually really really wants to be there. Some are kind of indifferent and it's mostly the parents who want them to skate, but pushing out onto the ice and locking the door won't happen. If a student doesn't pay attention our coaches tell it to get off the ice and I don't know *anybody* who would even think of arguing with Elly (one of the coaches). Whenever she opens her mouth to voice her dissatisfaction with the way a parent or a student acts, people start looking for a far corner to crawl into. She's actually really nice, but she's just SCARY sometimes.

I suppose that's true. The difference would be whether you were making them face fears because you thought they needed to, or because the fear was standing in the way of a goal you knew they wanted to accomplish for themselves. In this case, I was more willing to take my daughter's temporary resentment as I kept on her case about doing program runthroughs, than listen to her regrets later if she never passed her Senior test after being so close to it. She's very happy and proud now, so I seem to have guessed right this time. No guarantee I'll get it right the next time, though. Parenting is hard!

LOL, and speaking of which, there was a girl at our rink who actually brought her violin on the ice for an ISI spotlight event. The music started, stopped and she continued on the violin!

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Evgeni Plushenko brought a violin-playing friend of his to the Olympics, so I guess why not haha!!!

Depends on the child too I guess. Some kids (especially a lot of A+ students at school seem to fall in this category actually) are very self-pushing, self-motivated. And some parents don't seem to get that you can't push somebody who's already pushing themself to the limit... I was befriended with a girl who burned out at 15(!) cuz she was incredibly pushing herself already and then her parents were pushing her some more, cuz "look how good she was without even trying"... She literally never scored under 9,5 (out of 10) in school, when an 8 will already get you into any college and study and is considered "excellent" and generally thought to be the equivalent of getting an A in the American system... When she burned out, her parents CONTINUED to push her... Anyway she went to study ABROAD. She didn't say so, but I think it's just to get as far away from her parents as possible. Haven't heard of her for a few years but last time I did she was doing pretty well.
I think part of the problem was that the mother really had NO idea of the psychology that made her daughter tick. Cuz sure, some students need a little pushing to get good results in school, others however are quite capable of motivating themselves. So I think the parents need to know their children well.

Be VERY glad you didn't get pushed into the SCIENCES instead! I actually would have loved to have been pushed into piano playing (since I love studying music) and/or skating, but they want a "college degree that makes a lot of money" in the family. Given that no one else in my family made it thru college, the burden was on me to make it happen. And if it wasn't for my wonderful physics tutor (now DH ) and studying for my music (to save my sanity) degree as well as my computer science degree (that made some money, though not a lot of money...) I probably wouldn't have survived college myself either.

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Cheers,
jazzpants

11-04-2006: Shredded "Pre-Bronze FS for Life" Club Membership card!!!
Silver Moves is the next "Mission Impossible"
(Dare I try for Championship Adult Gold someday???)

Thank you for the support, you guys!!!

Oh, I was... I was to study physics or mathematics, and nothing else, because everybody in the family has a degree in physics or mathematics. Mom and I fought a lot about it when I was like 14. At the time, the maximum she agreed to was if I'd take biology and extra (latin) language classes next to my math/physics curriculum so I could later on choose between physics and biology/chemistry. Then I got sick, dropped out and homeschooled, went to Russia and was told I might very well die and I had to deal with my despotic grandmother in Russia. Something snapped and I learned to really stand up for myself (that's the one thing that was good that came out of the sickness).
I still did physics for my diploma, but then I applied for law school anyway. Mom said I was gonna be one of those people who defend murderers. I told her that if I was, at least I'd get a lot of money for it, and that otherwise I'd be putting them away.

But then guess what? We got into a legal conflict with the local government (over a shed we built) and with a provider (over pretty high bills). And who dealt with that? Sessy did. To the point that when they took it to a lawyer, he went through the whole thing and said what I'd done was perfect and I took it again from there. And we won those conflicts. We also won a legal conflict with the government over money/alimony issues that she'd been trying to get since I was 8 years old and always fruitlessly: I got a scholarship that paid for more than my study was costing for 2 years (right now, it's paying exactly what my study is costing) cuz I *finally* (with a little help from one of my teachers) got it recognized that my father had never been in the picture and that he wasn't paying for anything (which got me some extra benefits). So at this point, mom was like, WOW. One of her friends divorced, oh, guess it's not just criminals that lawyers defend! She really started liking having a lawyer in the family when she realized that she could just shove every letter that was too complicated for her to understand my way, and have no more worries about it. When we also got tax law class, she discovered "evading taxes" (really just paying no more than you must) is apparently something they teach in law school as well. She started appreciating my choice then.

And now, I have a photo from a masterclass I attended where I'm sitting in the judge's chair wearing the judge's toga (dress) and she's printed that out and shows to everybody now.

And I'm studying the one thing in retrospect that I've wanted since I was a child - although at the time I didn't realize it yet. I get to be an argumentative know-it-all and it's considered a GOOD thing!

Nice that you got a husband out of the deal at least! What are you doing now for a living if I may ask?