The Challenge of the Adolescent Dancer

[joyellen]

I ran across this dance medicine paper while surfing the net this a.m. It really seemed to describe the past few months for my dd. Here's the web address: http://www.dancemedicine.org/adolescent-dancer.pdf. They also have an interesting paper called "Fueling the Dancer" that I think will be helpful in my quest to add lbs to my skinney dd.

[eskimopieo]

Aahhh, so that's what's been going on! I knew she was in a growth spurt because she has grown about 3/4-inch since January. Although that was much less obvious than the pointe shoes she outgrew in less than a month! And this is going to last 18-24 months? At least the shorts & capris for the warmer months won't be noticeably short. But I hope it doesn't mean she's outgrowing shoes every month. Maybe she can just go barefoot!

[Pauline]

I just wanted to say thank you.

 

My daughter is going through this stage also, last year she grew 4 inches and so far this year she has grown 3 inches (with a month till her birthday). She is still petite (just about hitting 5' ) so she is hoping to grow a few more inches. It is kind of funny but, last week I looked at her and could not believe how long her arms were (almost abnormally long!). I am so glad to read this, now I am sure the rest of her will catch up. She has definately been struggling with controling her legs (on and off for about a year now).

 

I will log on to the dance education website to read "fueling the dancer" because even with all this growth she is still underweight also.

 

Thanks again, I will print this to share with dd. Good luck to you and your dd

[tu2mama]

Interesting! My son who turned 14 in September has grown before our eyes in the past six months. He was growing so quickly that he had pains and thought that he had broken his ankle. I was very fortunate when I took him into the walk-in to get a doctor well versed in youths and sports. My son had been doing dryland training (swimmer not a dancer) and forced to do a lot of running. The doctor told him to tell his coach to have him do something else such swimming laps rather than running during this time of extreme growth. My daughter who is a dancer was a slow grower and rarely had these kinds of problems. The trouble for the girls is that they are usually starting pointe during these growing years. It is a challenge for them in so many ways at this age. I can tell you that my son is very happy to finally be tall. After being a shortie for so many years we thought that he'd never grow and now he's taller than my husband and has size 12 feet to grow into. My husband's short and I am tall. My daughter took after the short side of the family much to her chagrin.

[Jacqueline]

Joyellen, thanks for this post. This is an excellent reference and I wish I had had it about a year ago, when my dd was going through a growth spurt. Her knees were not tracking right (her orthopedist said her growth plates were still totally open) and she basically had a miserable summer of sitting out a lot. She had physical therapy and got through it with flying colors, but it would have helped simply to know that this is normal! There may be one more growth spurt on the horizon, so I'm saving this. Thanks again!

 

Jacqueline

[dancemaven]

This article was very interesting.---Once when my daughters were very young, my mom sent me a newspaper article regarding a recent medical "discovery". The article reported that research doctors had shown that infants literally could grow an inch overnight. I found it curious and amusing at the time, but thought "yea, right!".

 

The other week at DD's pilates class, I was talking to her PT/dancer/instructor about how much I felt the pilates reformer was helping her with her sway-back tendencies. However, I told her instructor that I had noticed that the curve in her back seemed to be becoming a little more pronounced again, but not as bad as when she had started. She looked at her and checked a few alignments and then said, "Oh, she's probably grown some recently". So, for fun we checked her height measurement. Nope, same as it had been since September--5'5 1/2".

 

Over the next couple of days, several people remarked on how much DD had grown recently. We'd smile and say, "Nope, optical illusion. We just measured her." Then about a 10-days after when her instructor had measured her, she was standing next to me without her shoes on. I thought she seemed much taller than usual. So I got out the tape measure---5'6 1/4"! I couldn't believe it. I measured her twice more thinking I had to be mistaken. But it came out the same each time. I even used different metal tape measurers. All I could think about was that medical snippet article my mom had sent me years and years ago.

Edited March 21, 2004 by dancemaven