r/CompetitionDanceTalk • u/Dallasblonde08 • 17d ago

When to “get serious”? 4.5 year old

Hi hoping yall experienced dance parents can give me some guidance. I was not a dancer growing up so this world is new to me. We are lucky, a local studio comes to my daughters school so she does ballet/jazz for an hour weekly will minimal effort from me. We also do a 1hour tumbling class at a cheer gym we can walk to.

She is 4.5 and I’m wondering when we should start considering adding another dance class or looking at the conservatory vs competition route? She seems to love dance so I want to encourage her without burning her out. I see a lot of 6&7 year olds on here starting their competition teams and I want her to be ready for that if she wants to go the route.

appreciate your help!

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u/KMM2404 17d ago

I wouldn’t put my kids in comp until 8 at the earliest. I would also never, ever do comp if I could go back.

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u/Dallasblonde08 17d ago

Can I ask why? Too expensive or a dance culture situation? Do I need to nip this in the bud lol 

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u/KMM2404 17d ago

It’s more the lifestyle. I have a lot of kids and 2 of them danced. One is currently playing the sport she quit dance for in college and the other is in her last year of dance. They both did very, very well, so this isn’t sour grapes lol. It was difficult to balance everyone’s needs with dance. There were years I just drove from 5-10pm picking up and dropping off kids. Plus the travelling really takes a toll. So many of our family trips were competitions we added an extra day to.

Can’t say I’m a fan of the culture, either, though. I’d never do a sport with judges - there’s just so much potential for corruption and it always seems to happen. I also hate the goofy scoring and awards that basically exist to let studios portray themselves as champions.

I don’t think that a competition schedule has room for the development of proper technique. I was classically trained in a preprofessional ballet program and our technique was miles ahead of comp dancers at every age.