You can teach your kid certain things, but you don't want her to start resisting you because you're her parent. For example, Clark recalls that when he encouraged his daughter to practice her layups, she reacted negatively, but when the coach of her all-star team told her to go home and shoot 50 layups, she took it seriously. Anne Vexler, a former gymnastics champion at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, now runs a gymnastics school there. She found that when her daughter Talya, a talented young gymnast, was 10, she could no longer coach her effectively. In gymnastics, there's a fear factor.
Kids gain confidence by learning to do something by themselves.
Your instincts as a mom are conflicted with your job as a coach when you send your child to try her first backflip on the balance beam. It's hard enough to do a good job as a parent. It's impossible to generalize about when it's time to stop coaching. Bunker recommends using your child as a barometer. But Bunker also notes that all young athletes have periods of frustration, so parent-coaches need to avoid rushing to judgment.