I love the long awards ceremony revolt plan. Especially this year, since on the boys\’ side we now have Division 1 and Division 2 in each level and age group. (We don\’t do the elaborate cheers on the boys\’ side.) Division 2 is for boys doing compulsory routines without any bonus skills, and was apparently meant to let non-bonus kids earn some medals, but we watched so many meets where there were only 1 or 2 boys in Div 2, standing there looking embarrassed while they were given medal after medal despite having no competition. A friend\’s son who spent the whole season coming home with 7 gold medals from most meets said he\’d rather not medal against an actual competitive field than keep suffering this way.

So, at my kid\’s Level 7 meets, you might have six events plus the all-around, three age groups for each, and within each age group, Div 1 and Div 2.

Now that our kid has been competing for four years, we have heaps and heaps and heaps of generic USA Gymnastics gold, silver, and bronze medals. There\’s no way to tell what year or meet they\’re from–and really, nobody cares anymore about that one really terrific meet my kid had as a Level 4. I want there to be some kind of recycling program, where we can turn them in to be used again, because it seems like such a waste (like returning soda cans for a deposit!). All those bronze medals are especially burdensome as objects to be stuck with–at L4 and L5, the boys are still excited to get a bronze for 9th or 12th place, but by L6, a lot of them think of anything below third as \”not a real medal\” anyway.

I was also going to say: our family left Twistars a year ago, for various reasons but mostly because of John Geddert. When I read the CNN article about Geddert, I was struck by how many parents saw abusive behavior without recognizing it as such. We got out of there almost as soon as we had any personal dealings with Geddert, but I think one reason we left before Geddert had a chance to get truly abusive with my partner or me, or carry out his threats against our son, is that I have extensive past experience with megalomaniacal control freak egomaniacal narcissists, and it has left me with a very well-developed radar for asshole-ish and abusive behavior, and no tolerance for having it in my life. The challenge, I think, is that people who haven\’t been through it don\’t get it. I want people to understand this, and to protect themselves, without having to live through an abusive situation of some kind, but it\’s very hard to reach people, in my experience. When the victim impact statements and more recent reports of Geddert\’s behavior came out, other gym parents said things to me like, \”Wow, now I understand why you were so mad.\” I told them exactly what our experience with Geddert had been, but without the kind of past experience I\’d had, they didn\’t really understand it.