Please tell me if I’m being an overprotective parent or is my gut correct? My daughter has been riding for a few years but not in a jumping program. Just gaining general riding skills but what I have seen as a positive and safe environment. The seasoned trainer is certified in equitation instruction and has been teaching a variety of disciplines, including flat work, lateral work, trail riding experiences, some very basic jumping and even bareback…plus horse and barn care. It’s definitely a pleasure riding program ( in jumping or general purpose english saddles) but I have seen her confidence grow and she has had no issues handling a variety of horses, even one considered quite challenging and has done great with her, learning to have quiet hands and seat…and has become a gentle, sensitive, skilled rider from what I can see. However, we’ve had some trial lessons with three jumping barns so far this past week and her confidence has been really shaken. I’m not an overly-protective parent, however, I’m not sure if I should continue putting her through this. So far she has not received one positive comment about her riding ability. I know there has to have been something they could’ve said. But it’s all been about everything she’s doing wrong. At one point she got flustered and followed directions incorrectly because she was nervous (she went left instead of right) and the instructor said she had no business going beyond a walk if she can’t tell her left from right! Yikes! She really let her have it for following that direction wrong and didn’t give her a chance to try it correctly or explain and became clearly impatient. She didn’t even bother to find out if maybe she was just nervous or really didn’t know. It was really uncomfortable to watch. Meanwhile she canters beautifully in her current barn on her familiar lesson horses and is in total bliss. I don’t wanna ruin her love for riding but she wants to learn to jump and can’t go further at her current barn. Having said all that, I am totally open to the idea that she’s been lacking in some instruction in areas that will be important for jumping. I’m certainly not saying that there aren’t things that are probably incorrect. She also isn’t used to the bigger strides of these jumpers compared to her current lesson horses…so that was a challenge. However, I cannot believe how harsh and critical these instructors have been in these trial lessons. I thought the idea was to kind of gently explain what needs to improve at least in the initial assessment? I have no issue with my daughter having a tough trainer but this seemed a bit much. I don’t even know what to think. She has two more trial lesson scheduled for next week and I don’t know if I should take her or not. But she really wants to learn how to jump so I may not have a choice. Am I just being too soft?
Ask her how she feels about it.
Sometimes when new riders arrive, coaches are extra critical to make them think they have learned nothing in their current program and must come here now.
Some really competition focused coaches might feel they need to be harsh to get results.
Some coaches are just sour or having a bad day.
I wouldn’t want to ride with coaches like this as an adult or as a child. Keep looking for a better fit.
I’m surprised you tried out three different jumping barns and found them all harsh and overly critical. My daughter has had four different hunter/jumper trainers over the years and none of them have been harsh or demoralizing, although some are more “chipper” and positive than others.
I guess my thoughts/questions would be:
-
How did you pick these barns? Do you know any kids who are in training programs and already showing locally? Perhaps you could find out who their trainers are and get some “intelligence” about the trainer’s style before sending your daughter there. Or, go to a local show and “spy” on the trainers at the ringside to see whose child riders seem happy and whose style you like.
-
Is it possible the trainers weren’t given an accurate idea of your daughter’s riding ability, and perhaps had safety concerns that made them less warm and fuzzy? I’m not suggesting anyone deliberately misled them (I know you wouldn’t), but if you tell trainers a kid “has been jumping” and then they feel the kid doesn’t know canter leads or whatever, it could affect their teaching–although I will agree with you, they should still be able to remain positive and kind in their interactions with a student.
Good luck–I hope you find a trainer that supports your daughter’s enthusiasm!
I did that exact transition as a young teenager - started riding at a pleasure barn and was a star student. Met a friend at summer camp and started riding at her H/J barn.
I cried like the first eight lessons or something.
It’s a tough transition, for sure. Those horses do not go the same, at all. But I didn’t cry because the trainer was an @$$. I cried because I was having such a hard time getting the hang of that new, big canter. So, if these trainers have really been as mean as you say, I’d keep looking for a different coach. If she’s just struggling with the change of disciplines, well, she’ll get it eventually.
As a side note - please use paragraphs when posting such long posts.
As someone who recommended a barn on your original thread, I’d certainly hope it wasn’t the one I suggested, as that doesn’t sound anything like the trainers there.
However, a hunter/jumper program is not like a pleasure barn, nor are the horses. It can be a real shock to experience the forward gaits and to adjust to them. Cantering on a pleasure breed horse is so different!! The learning curve is steep but if your daughter wants to jump, she’ll need to step up. Is she discouraged? Is she upset? If not, keep those lesson appointments and see if you are more comfortable at a different barn/program.
Make sure you are honest with the new trainers about the types of horses she’s been on, and the level of riding rigor. Bopping around for fun on a sweet, slow quarter horse isn’t the same as a hunter lesson. But if your kiddo really wants to learn a new discipline, she will dig a little deeper and rise to the challenge.
Feel free to PM me if you have questions about programs in the Portland area.
How about looking for an eventing barn, which would likely have a different culture? Take away the words “horse” and “jumper” and concentrate on the teacher. Would you permit any other teacher to reduce your child to tears through destructive criticism?
Keep looking for a good fit for your daughter.
Seek out trainers/programs that focus on beginner riders and that compete primarily on a local level.
Make sure to not overstate your child’s experience and riding ability with the trainers you encounter. In fact, I would encourage you to grossly understate her ability and come to this new discipline as an absolute beginner.
Let the trainer know you’d like them to treat your daughter as an absolute beginner. Once the trainer gets a handle on her capabilities as a rider, the lesson’s complexity will quickly accelerate to meet her where she is.
All that being said, do not tolerate an emotionally abusive, insecure, egomaniacal trainer. They certainly do exist and you may have been unlucky.
All of this. Also do not brag or overstate your daughters competence. Many of us can revert back to almost beginner when we switch disciplines or horses. Let her tutn up an unknown factor.
If you say been in lessons for 2 years, they assume their own lessons and don’t know what’s going on when it’s clear the kid doesn’t know things.
I rode mostly Western as a kid, returned to riding as a middle aged adult in h/j, took 2 years to become competent, had never heard the words 20 metre circle, though I had done them, etc. I rebuilt my h/j seat and then slid over to dressage where I looked like an absolute beginner for 3 months because of the different saddle, bigger gates, and expectations. It’s totally normal that stepping up to bigger horses will unsettle her for a while. Even competent adult ammies get tossed around a bit when they ride or buy a much bigger moving horse.
It’s really hard to give advice here.
How old is she, how long has she been riding, what is she currently doing at her barn, and what were the expectations communicated to the new barn?
What parameters are you using to assess readiness to start over fence work and what parameters are expected by these barns?
Being a soft rider can mean anything from having an independent neutral seat to someone who has good natural balance but lacks body control and is a liable to getting pulled out of the tack.
I’d look for more objective measures when communicating current skills with a potential barn:
My daughter is X years old. She is comfortable walk, trot, and canter. She knows her diagonals and leads by sight but not always be feel. She can pick up a stirrup if lost but has not done much intentional work without stirrups. She is of average confidence but can get flustered at times and struggles with processing real time instruction. Currently, she rides horses that require a good bit of leg. She does not have experience on a forward horse but can handle a horse that roots or tries to stop at the gait. She is interested in beginning over fence work.
Would this be a match for your program? If so, could we do an evaluation lesson where you help us understand what components you feel should be solid before she can progress towards jumping?
Mom, do you ride?
Gotta say, I’m pretty annoyed at the harping on OP not “overstating” daughter’s riding abilities.
A, you have no idea what information was given to the instructors before the lessons.
And B, it really doesn’t matter. Of course proud parents might make a kid sound more talented than they are. People want to impress. As a trainer, any new student’s description of their skill level should be taken with a grain of salt, and evaluated by yourself at the first lesson to determine how best to progress. It is wildly unacceptable for trainers to behave in the manner described by the OP, no matter what they were told about a new student’s experience level. Especially:
Trainer really had no business saying this out loud. Keep crappy remarks in your head. Kids and adults alike get flustered and anxious. It’s ridiculous and cruel to berate them for it.
If a new student you thought was solid cantering is having trouble at the canter, it’s quite okay to simply have the kid come back to a trot, wait a few more lessons to canter again, or put the kid on the lunge line to canter.
It just is not hard to be kind. If you can’t be kind, definitely don’t sign up to teach kids, preferably don’t try to teach period.
The transition from pleasure riding to a hunter/jumper barn can be very difficult. I started at a competitive HJ barn, took lessons for 5 years, bought a horse. A year later, when my horse had a career limiting injury, we moved him to an all-round pleasure barn with low-level jumping. I went from one of the most beginner students to hands down the best rider in the barn, to the point where I didn’t lesson for 2 years because I wasn’t learning anything. I was very aware this ‘best rider in the barn’ status was extremely artificial, and that I wasn’t a great rider, but when I left after 4 years to go to another jumping barn there was still an adjustment period that totally sucked. And I was aware it was going to happen! I was back to the lowest level classes and was watching kids a couple of years younger than me jump far higher than I ever had, and it was discouraging! But what a mistake that would have been to throw in the towel and go back to a low-level pleasure barn so that I could feel comfortable. It’s a good way to learn resilience and adaptability.
The switch from gentle stock horse to jumper is also going to be rough. When I moved from a lease pony to my first horse, I suddenly couldn’t sit his washing machine trot. Every lesson I’d get in trouble for bouncing everywhere. My mom asked my instructor why I was struggling, and she explained that ‘grandma could sit that pony’s trot’ and that I needed to learn to sit his trot. So I spent months doing tons of no-stirrup work. And by the end, I could trot no stirrups just as well as with stirrups. Your daughter will likely need a ton of practice, strengthening, and time in the saddle to ride a jumper the way she rides at her current barn.
You also have to know how much more dangerous jumping is than flatting. These instructors need to keep your daughter and their horse as safe as possible. When you’re jumping, you need to make corrections IMMEDIATELY. If you’re flatting and don’t half-halt when you should, it’s not a big deal. You can recollect and try again. If you fail to half halt in the middle of a line, you might get to the next fence on a half stride and flip over the back rail, and you and/or your horse could die. If you mess up directions and jump an oxer backwards, again, your horse could misjudge the distance and you could get into a serious wreck. The stakes are so much higher and the margin for error is so much smaller; discipline in following directions has to be instilled from the get-go. That doesn’t mean an instructor should be rude or condescending - but you have to understand that jump instructors will have a shorter tolerance for errors, especially if they have to point out the same error multiple times.
If you’ve only ever been at this barn, your daughter may also have some incorrect basics that need to be unlearned, or entire facets of riding that need to be learned, because she’s only ever been exposed to one instructor’s methods. For example, I’ve been at a barn that had never heard of inside leg to outside rein, and it took me over a decade to meet an instructor who taught me about the indirect rein! The low-level jumping pleasure instructor I rode with had a lot of incorrect riding in her methods as well, including insisting that when riding a trot fence, the horse should trot to the fence, leap over, and land at a trot (no canter steps allowed). This is completely incorrect - you should trot in, jump and canter away smoothly.
If you had this kind of feedback at one, or even two barns, I would say keep moving and try to find a barn that fits. But once you get to three barns - all with the same issue - I think you have to consider there may be some merit to what they are saying. The instructor who berated your daughter for going the wrong way should be crossed off the list though. Any trainer that yells or belittles should also be crossed off.
In my experience, when you’re trying a horse to buy, you will be praised for your riding ability (and what a good match you are for Dobbin of course). When you’re trying an instructor to lesson with, it will mostly be about the holes in your riding, and very little will be said about what you can do right. Instructors, in my experience, don’t see a new student and say ‘my! What a nice lower leg you have’ or ‘what a quiet rider you are!’. That’s not the point of a lesson. Constructive criticism should be expected, and, in my experience, praise can range from no feedback is good feedback, to a short ‘good’ or ‘there’ (as in there, that’s how you do it), to lavish praise of what a great job you did. Sometimes it can take some time to pick out when you’re being ‘praised’ by a new instructor.
Finally, I would caution you against an instructor who is all praise and few corrections. Generally, these trainers are either going to under-challenge you (not bad if you’re timid or getting your confidence back, but you won’t progress very much or grow as a rider), or they are going to let dangerous riding slide. I watched one instructor teach a guy who had just begun riding, who had bought a going Grand Prix horse to learn on. In 4 months he was jumping 1.00m fences and the holes in his riding were extensive. He couldn’t 2 point, didn’t release over the fence, couldn’t steer very well (resulting in drive-bys), and blamed everything on his horse. The instructor didn’t correct him, because if he was unhappy he would take his horse and his money to an instructor who would tell him what he wanted to hear. At one point, he did a 6 stride in a 7 stride, when he was supposed to do 8. The instructor asked how many strides he counted, and he said 7. She told him he had done 6. He argued with her and insisted that he had done 7. She let it slide. He was lucky that his horse was so extraordinarily athletic that she could jump him out of any hole he dug, because on another horse it could have been disastrous.
In short, it’s going to be a rough transition, but as long as kiddo is up for it, go to the upcoming lessons, and then pick a barn where you liked the horses, the instructor wasn’t condescending or rude or straight up yelling, and stick with it for a month or two. It should get better but the learning curve and culture shock will be steep.
