From: Caitlin
Dear Jessica,
First, thank you for your invaluable service. I read it all the time and have learned so much. In fact, I did look in the archives and found some interesting mail relating to my question, but it also raised new questions for me, so I hope you can help me. I'm really in a quandary about this.
I started my daughter (before I even knew about Horse-Sense and your great advice!) riding at a local stable at age 4. Many children start at that age at this stable. I grew up riding in Montana, where a lot of people start their kids very young and casually, so I confess I didn't really think the safety issues through carefully. I saw a lot of young kids riding, and it coincided with my experience, so I bought her a helmet and off she went!
She rode for a year with no mishaps. She did weekly 20-min., and more recently 30-min. lessons; rode ponies and mainly did posting trot around the arena, trotting over poles in posting trot and two-point, and some sitting trot. She seemed to be doing really well; she has excellent form and she has an incredibly long attention span for her age, and listens and responds well to instruction. However, the downsides you mentioned about starting at that age (particularly the physical limitations) came to the fore recently when she was riding a pony that just didn't want to trot. Her teacher was throwing pebbles (I know, this cannot be a good sign) at the pony's feet to get her to trot, and at one point she was just too vigorous, the pony spooked, and my daughter lost her balance and fell. It was scary to watch,
b/c she hung by the stirrup until the pony was stopped by an instructor.
After that, I explained to the instructor that safety was of paramount importance to me, and I didn't care how quickly my daughter progressed, or whether she even got the pony to trot, and that throwing stones seemed like begging for a disaster.
Coincidentally, this instructor quit her job a month or two after that. However, before she quit, my daughter participated in a little local show (just the kids from the stable). It was, in my opinion, typical of this stable, in that safety was not carefully observed. Just imagine, all these 5 and 6 year olds on cranky ponies, and you can guess it got a little out of control. The ponies bunched up, and stopped doing what they were supposed to, and at one point my daughter's pony cantered off w/ my daughter, who'd never cantered, and when the pony screeched to a halt off she fell. She got back on and finished (the instructors now led the ponies, having belatedly realized how poorly this was all going), but that was the instructor's last day and my daughter has not had a lesson since.
Now for the question (sorry for the long preface). I know that you don't recommend kids riding before age 7 or preferably 8. I can now see why, although I do think that riding has given my daughter confidence and pleasure, and she shows real ability and interest. But what I really hate to do now is to end on that note and not pick it up again for 3 more years. Do you think that's the way to go? Does it make any sense to try to find an instructor who will take things much more slowly, letting her ride on a longe line or leading her and/or walking around w/ her as she rides, just so she continues to learn balancing and form w/o the risks she has been (I now am appalled I exposed her to!) subject to? Do you think if I just have her quit now, she will associate it with her fall at the show, and have negative feelings about riding? I do think that overall, her experience has been very positive. She is very proud that she rides, and she doesn't seem traumatized by her falls. It's mainly the fact that both occurred so recently and would have immediately preceded a hiatus from riding that concerns me. As far as this stable goes, you can tell I am disgusted with their general approach to safety, but it's the only one near me.
Thank you so much for any advice you can give.
Here's the way I see the situation:
Your daughter should not be riding at this particular stable, because safety MUST be the number one priority at any riding stable, in any lesson program, and whenever children are involved. I think that you've already figured this out -- and the situations you described were, as you suspected, accidents waiting to happen. There will always be risks associated with riding, but we can do the best to minimize those risks by acting sensibly and taking proper precautions. If you find yourself, or your child, at a stable where the adults in charge do NOT make safety a priority, do not act sensibly, and do not take proper precautions, your best move is to Get Out Immediately.
If this is the only stable in your area, your daughter will be better off going without riding lessons for a few years until you can make other arrangements for her. Bad lessons are far worse than none. It's not just your daughter's physical safety that was being put at risk -- she wasn't likely to learn anything very useful at such a stable, either in terms of riding skills or in terms of horsemanship.
Discontinuing bad lessons is NOT likely to cause your daughter to lose interest. As many, many non-horsey parents know, it's virtually impossible to make a horse-mad child lose interest in horses. ;-) If your daughter knows that she wants horses to be part of her life, it will happen eventually -- whether you want it to or not! So don't worry about that.
There ARE ways to cause children to lose interest, though: they can't maintain their interest if they are dead, or badly injured, or badly frightened. You are lucky -- in spite of the conditions at this place, your daughter is still alive, uninjured, and apparently still keeping a good attitude about horses and riding. Keep her safe until you can find good lessons for her. If her overall experience has been positive, that's great -- get her out of that stable before she finds out exactly how much danger she was in. If your daughter enjoyed riding at a bad stable with poor instruction when she was four, she'll have a wonderful time riding at a good stable with good instruction when she is a little older.
It's not easy to find the right stable and instructor -- I completely understand that! It's hard to find good guidance. I wrote "The Horseback Almanac" so that kids 8-12 would have a good introduction to English riding, and I wrote the "Parent's Guide to Horseback Riding" so that parents like yourself would have some help with these and other dilemmas. Both books include a LOT of information about lessons, safety practices, and the importance of securing the best quality instruction possible. You might want to check the ARIA/ARICP website and find out whether there are any certified instructors in your area. Certification isn't a guarantee that you'll find someone whose personality will "mesh" with your child's, but it DOES mean that you'll be able to identify instructors who have proven (and must prove again, every five years) their teaching ability, their knowledge of the particular discipline(s), and their understanding and observance of horse care and safety practices.
American Riding Instructors Association (ARIA)
28801 Trenton Court
Bonita Springs, FL 34134-3337
Tel: 239 948-3232
Fax: 239 948-5053
On the Web: http://www.riding-instructor.com/
E-Mail: aria@riding-instructor.com
In the meantime, while you're waiting for your daughter to grow up a little, and while you're keeping an eye out for a better barn and some good instruction, you don't have to cut your daughter off from horses. If you have friends with horses, visit them. If there's a local petting zoo, pay the ponies a visit. If there are breeding barns in your area, call and ask if you and your daughter can have a tour, meet the horses, learn about the breeds.... most barn-owners welcome visitors, as long as they make an appointment! ;-)
If all else fails, there are horse books and horse videos and model horses that will, in the absence of live horses, keep your daughter's interest steady.
I've known several parents in situations similar to yours. Some managed to shift their children's focus to ice skating or dance classes, both of which help develop coordination and balance -- very useful for potential riders!) One managed to find somewhere to take the children for supervised rides on (led) ponies once or twice a month. Children are surprisingly resilient, and are much more likely to understand your decision ("I don't want you riding at a barn that I now realize is unsafe, and I don't want you taking lessons from an incompetent/dangerous instructor") if you explain your reasons -- and make it clear that your decision isn't on the table for discussion or a vote.
I don't think that she will develop negative feelings about riding. Quite young children can have a clear understanding of quality -- something being "better" than something else -- so you will probably be able to explain that you need to find her a better place to ride.
Your daughter sounds like a precocious, talented, intelligent little girl, but she IS only five. She may accept the idea that you'll spend the next year or two finding her a safe lesson barn, or she may not -- and if she finds it difficult or impossible to understand the "why" of your decision right now, that's okay. She isn't old enough to understand the safety issues or the horsemanship issues, even if she does understand that she was learning skills and doing well (in spite of the conditions). If she DOESN'T understand your decision, don't let that change your mind or make you feel guilty. You're the parent, and you have to make the hard decisions -- it's written into your job description. ;-)
Good luck, and please let me know what happens.
Jessica
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