My 5 year old daughter has been going to dance class and has a new teacher. They start off doing warm ups, which consist of a variety of different stretches and exercises. Some of the common ones are jumping jacks, front fold stretching, and some dreaded crunches.

I don’t necessarily mind crunches if they were low in the number of reps and done infrequently for kids. I don’t think they have the core strength to do a solid one at this age and with the number of reps they were doing, the form was terrible. The teacher wasn’t correcting it and the girls in class were just bending their neck super high up to count it as a rep. The teacher wasn’t going around and correcting form either.

I didn’t want my daughter to do those exercises improperly and develop bad posture, so I tried to show her how to do a proper crunch when we got home. She tried a few, but she didn’t get the form correct. I ended up telling her to just avoid the exercise and to just lay there when they do it next time.

The next class came and the crunches were again part of the warm up. My daughter gives me a glance and when the teacher starts to do crunches, sure enough all the girls start bending their neck upwards instead of lifting their heads with their core. The teacher asks my daughter to do the sit ups and my daughter just mails in a few while not bending her neck like crazy. After the crunches part of the warm up, she gives me a smile and a thumbs up. I laugh.

I’m glad that my daughter trusts me to give her the right guidance and that she really listens to me. When another authority figure chimes in with instructions, it seems like my daughter will remember my advice and still lean towards it. I want what’s best for her and all my kids and it’s great that we have this trust built up. Over time, I’ll teach her all the core exercises to get her core stronger. We just need to follow the right form!