Go away, mom!

From the keyword search: "When parents interfering is crossing the line." I know this one, sadly, from the inside out, because I was That Mom. Here are the warning signs:

•  Coach is letting all your calls go to voice mail.

•  You call the coach more often than you call your mother.

•  Coach is suddenly doing about-faces when she sees you in the lobby.

•  Kid stops skating the second you show your face inside the rink door.

•  You research skating techniques so you can drill the coach on the latest discussions about skid or no skid on double axels.

•  You're thinking of getting certified as a judge.

•  You try to join USFS and ISI as a professional member.

•  You know the IJS long program rules for your daughter's current skating level.

•  You are convinced that your daughter's poor rank at the latest non-qualifying competition is due to dishonest judges, club favoritism, incompetent coaching or all three.

•  You're considering calling Brian Orser about coaching your Intermediate skater, who has never made it out of a qualifying round.

•  You're considering hiring a sport psychologist for your Intermediate skater.

•  You make your skater review everything she did wrong in practice or, worse, the competition, on the car ride home.

•  You bought K-picks for your 8 year old.

When did you know you had crossed the line?

The cookie cutter coach

This is one of those "there are two types of" posts. Because there are two types of coaches.

Well, okay, three (um, four).

The first two types have a good handle on their own teaching style, and respect for students.  These are, first, the coach that adapts their own goals and teaching style to each student. This coach will have a couple of serious students, a synchro skater working her way through the tests, a once-a-weeker, someone working on the axel, and a couple of tots. She works with each student at their own pace and learning style.

The second coach has one of those types of skaters, 17 times over. This coach has identified the type of skater she works best with and seeks them out. She's honest with parents up front, telling them exactly what she expects of her skaters.

Then there's the cookie cutter coach.

This coach has the range of the first coach above, but forces every student into the same mold. This is the coach that is telling some poor clueless parent that their child isn't working hard enough, or has the wrong body type for figure skating, or needs more lessons. Or worse, drops the child, loudly blaming the child or the parent for the child's poor success.

Some cookie cutter coaches aren't dishonest in this way, they're just clueless. They don't have a good range of teaching approaches to adapt from, so they just keep giving the same lesson to everyone, regardless of whether it's working or not.

The cookie cutter coach will take any student that approaches them. Rather than actual successful (whatever your definition of that is) skaters, she's got PR--she's the coach of the "popular" kids, or makes a big fuss when they're all going to some competition (but no corresponding fuss when they all do poorly). She sells her kids matching outfits, makes a production of group lessons, and talks a big game.

In a way, the cookie cutter coach is like coach #2--they are able to teach just a certain type of student. But unlike coach 2, they're not being honest with themselves or their students about their own teaching style, whether deliberately or not.

Have you ever encountered, or taken lessons from, a cookie-cutter coach?

When should you say something? (and a prize)

We've all witnessed it:

The mom standing in the door, "coaching"

The mom pushing her kid to finish her ISI tests, so she can compete at US Nationals (true story)

The new skater who wears her tights OVER her spanky pants

The beginner tot in the freestyle blades

The beginner in "we found them in granny's garage" four sizes too big and with blades so rusty they're black

And then there's the bad behavior: The mom screaming at, or worse, hitting her skater because of an error, or getting off the ice early, or losing her guards, or whatever; the monitor who breaks the rules for her kids, or her coach's other students; the overheard conversation of a coach telling some clueless mom a pack of myths and lies; the dad explaining that "only girls figure skate; men play hockey."

It's an enormous social gaffe in our culture to "get involved" but it's painful to watch especially newbies to the sport having to figure all this stuff out for themselves, or to have to tolerate bad behavior, knowing that these idiots are modeling this behavior for our children, or knowing that they're being fed a line of hooey.

I can't tell you how many comments I've gotten on this blog that start "I wish someone had told me...." I've said it often myself. It was one of the reasons I started the blog. 

The problem is, that the classy moms, the ones from whom you'd get really good information, stay out it, while the evil moms feed you horse hockey ("Coach Mine only works with the best students, and if you're not with Coach Mine, clearly he doesn't think you're up to snuff", or like the coach I overheard telling her very very talented student that ISI tests were the way to get to USFS Nationals.)

And I confess, I don't have the solution. I see a lot of well-meaning mothers offering bad advice, like  Mom A with an advanced little one (skater about 7, working on PreJuv test) telling a beginner 7 year old's Mom B that she needed to get "good" skates, rather than the perfectly acceptable beginner skates that she already had. She then showed her the freestyle blade, explaining that this was a "proper" figure skate. And yes, I stepped in, and yes, I got reprimanded for it–by Mom A's coach. (!! She claimed I was trying to solicit that skater, rather than that I was trying to correct misinformation. My guess is Coach had sent Mom A, in fact, to solicit Mom B.)

So this is the minefield we're all skating through.

A coach hearing another coach lie to skaters has literally no recourse. If you say something to the coach, they can make your life miserable; if you say something to the mom, you're tampering. You can't file a grievance with the PSA unless a child is in risk of harm, or the situation directly affects you. Otherwise they'll just laugh you out of court.

A mom on the skate-tying thread was thankful for a more experienced mother stepping in over aging out of mom's help, but another mother would have been offended (as in fact, several people in that thread clearly were, and I'm not even confronting them directly!).

So I'll open it up to you–what advice do you wish you'd gotten from a trustworthy mom? Did you ever get unsolicited advice that you needed, or had someone step in to help? Have you been the victim of bad information, or had an intercession that annoyed you? Tell us your stories.

****

Oh, did I say prize?  On Valentine's Day I'll select from the comments using the widget at random.org. Winner will get a "Yes I'm THAT Mom" t-shirt (designed by @rinksidedamned from Why Me, St. Lidwina).

Mommy, will you tie my skates?

As I was taking my skates off today, I was sitting next to a mom and her 5 or 6 year old son putting on skates.  He asked to try tying them himself, so mom talked him through both ways of tying--end over end and "bunny ears."  After about 6 or 7 minutes, the boy asked his mom to finish them so he wouldn't miss any class (you could see the other kids starting to enter the ice).

This mom had it together. One of the hardest things to do is sit there while the child struggles with tying his or her skates, knowing that s/he's doing it wrong–too loose, too slow–while the money you spent for him/her to be on the ice is tick-tick-ticking away.

At skating camp, where the kids come on and off the ice several times over the course of 3 or 4 hours, and the moms aren't there, it can take 40 minutes to get skates on all the kids. It's maddening.

A reader asked me how old a child should be before you make them tie their own skates, after observing what appeared to be teenagers sitting while their moms tied their skates for them.  (One wonders how far they take the personal services for these kids, if you know what I mean.) Here's my guidelines (oh, you knew I had guidelines for this.)

When can a kid really handle tying their skates?
Eight.

Younger than 8, kids often don't have the strength or coordination to tie up complex footgear like a figure or hockey skate, although I've seen kids as young as 5 handle this. A further impediment is added by the fact that street shoes no longer require tying; even if they have laces they are often permanently laced and the kids just slip them on. It is then further complicated by harried moms and overscheduling--the kids get to the rink with just enough time to run into class. It feels really wrong to miss ice because your child is trying to learn how to tie skates, and moms start feeling very pressured as the lobby empties out.

How old is too old?
Nine.

Seriously, this child needs to learn to tie shoes. If s/he's really struggling, make her tie them with the promise that if they feel wrong, you will retie them. But let the kid tie her own skates. This is such a minimum level of self-sufficiency that I'm continually appalled that parents aren't getting their kids here. If you don't have time to sit and teach your child to tie shoes, you are seriously over-scheduled and need a break.

Time crunch
But I get it. You are, in fact, seriously over-scheduled, and harried after school activities are an established cultural norm. If your 8, or 9, or god-forbid 13 year old is having trouble tying skates, either try to get to the rink with 10 or 15 minutes extra to spare, or let her coach know that she's going to miss warm up so she can learn to tie skates. Then sit back and let her do it, don't keep sticking your fingers in. Let her do it wrong. In a month, she'll be doing it herself.

Peer pressure
If someone makes fun of your 13-year-old for letting mommy tie her skates, I say go with it. Tell her, well, at 13 you really should be able to dress yourself. If you don't want the other girls to make fun of this, then learn to do it.

Nope, sorry, don't have time at the rink
So do it at home. Kids these days are master multi-taskers. So every night for a week, during your skater's tv watching time, have her take her skates on and off, on and off, on and off. She's also insulated from the peer pressure here in the privacy of her home.

Let the coach teach them
Years ago at the Ice Rink of the Damned, we solved the problem with camp by taking one of the on-ice periods every day for a week to just work on skate tying. By the end of the week, even the 5-year-olds were master skate tie-ers. Sadly, when a new coach decided he was in charge of camp, this ended, because apparently teaching self-sufficiency was stupid (or maybe it was just because I proposed it, who knows) and we were again stuck with spending 30 or 40 minutes tying skates. 

But if a coach is finding too many kids late to the ice because they can't tie their skates, let them teach this as part of the session. It's a good lesson.

It's part of figure skating
There's a level of poise, self-sufficiency, and maturity that can come from participating in and mastering this sport. And it doesn't just happen gliding around on the ice. It happens because skaters learn to be responsible for taking care of their equipment, keeping their skating bag neat and stocked, not losing gloves, guards or shoes (yes, there are always shoes in the lost and found. And jackets. And skates. It's mystifying. How do you leave an ice rink in the middle of winter without your shoes and jacket?)

Kids need to be allowed to establish these habits themselves. Like I said, Mom is harried: she's worrying about Younger Sib, Older Sib, dinner, the car repair that the family can't afford, and where the hell she left the house keys. Take this off your plate.

Make the child responsible, at a bare minimum, for dressing herself.