6 Year Old Kicked Off Cheer Team After Parents Complaint
 

"Our backs ache, our skirts are too tight, we shake our booties from left to right."

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/09/15...est=latestnews

Is this a cheer a 6 year old should do or is this much ado about nothing?

There's a lot of information missing. Who wrote the cheer? How many times did they do it? What's the dynamic between the parents? Why are PARENTS voting on who is on or off the team, anyway?

Who cares?

THIS.

No. It isn't appropriate.

Her parents had the right to complain and I suppose the team had the right to remove her, but it sounds like they should find her a different team or activity anyway.

Maybe other parents, other cheer squads, football/basketball leagues, lawyers.

Why do their backs ache? They're 6! They barely even have backs.

Otherwise, it's a pretty funny cheer. But not for first-graders.

I'm sure that the cheer trickled down from college cheerleaders. I was a cheerleader in junior high, and HS girls taught our cheer camps. Who taught them? College cheerleaders. It sounds to me like this was one of those "silly" unofficial cheers that one of the girls learned from an older sister somewhere.

Does it make it right? No. The problem should have been nipped in the bud by the coach. All "cheers" should be approved at that level. The solution is for the coach to instruct the girls as to what is appropriate. They probably have no idea what "our backs ache" or "our skirts are too tight" might imply outside of the literal definitions. I saw the picture of the uniform - it's very floaty and long.

How many kids come out with trash that they heard elsewhere?

As I've said....why are 6 year olds cheerleaders at all??

Yes, I know cheerleading is a legitimate sport, but that isn't what these girls are doing. These girls (and their moms shoving them into it) are thinking of the "all cheerleaders are popular" concept. It's ridiculous to have that kind of thing so young, and with approval by the parents. $125 for a uniform??? Seriously??

Put your un-uniformed kids in a meadow and just let them play kickball, for crying out loud.

It's pretty much the same cheer that everyone in my high school knew in the 70s (except this current version messes up the meter):

My back is achin', my skirt's/shirt's too tight,
My bottom's/body's shakin' from the left to the right.

Meanwhile, co-sign 33-girl.

Wow, I've never heard that before.

Elementary-age cheerleading is just a way for the moms to live vicariously through their daughters, to make up for stuff they wanted to do and didn't get to do.

If I had been on a cheerleading squad at age 6, and I were doing that cheer, they wouldn't have had to vote me off the squad. My father would have pulled me off the squad himself. Probably by the hair.

This way, when mommy and daddy break the news to little Kennedy, they can blame all the other mommies and daddies for being mean.

Agreed.

I'd be curious to know what the choreography was. Were the little girls actually shaking their (nonexistent) booties from left to right?

would it be insensitive to say, "Well at least they aren't in front of the TV playing them bad video games and getting fat." ??

Yeah...

Find her something else to do.

"We're probably going to look to get her into gymnastics," Duane Tesch said.

meanwhile a doctor at Johns Hopkins Hospital was shot today and the suspect was killed.

More news coming later.

Oh come on, it's just like ballet or soccer or any other team sport/activity.

Word- I'm pretty sure my hockey equipment at that age was at least twice as much, and parents are paying upwards of $500 on eBay for the latest and greatest composite little league bat . . . any childhood activity will have costs and elements of living vicariously, but those don't define the activity (they define the parents).

Which leads me to agree with Kevin - who cares? Either you think "booty" is too risque or you don't, and past that there's nothing interesting at all about this.

True, to an extent. But, don't you think pre-competitive sports cheerleading, more than those other activities, attracts a "certain" type of parent? I feel like I don't hear the nonsense related to hockey or soccer or even ballet for little kids. Note, I'm not even talking about HS or even middle school cheerleading.

I just think that the cheer is really funny. My back aches right now.

Little league football and cheering is pretty big around here. And $125 is nothing compared to the other sports. My parents paid about the same when I played tennis at that age. Before I played competitively, they forked out about $1000 between lessons, uniform, new racquet, new tennis shoes, etc.

The little leaguers when I was that age did

"My back aches, my skirt's too tight, my hips shake from left to right. Uh! Engowa (no clue wtf that means) give me some of that Pirate power!"

But I don't think young girls were as sexualized back then as they are now. Maybe we hear about them more now but it seems that the number of pedophiles has gone up and that might have to do with the internet.

Another thing about little league cheerleading, or cheerleading at all, the parents have gotten WAY out of hand. My friend was coaching middle school and she left because the parents would find something to be pissed about and threaten her.

I think the situation was treated poorly on both ends. The team shouldn't have kicked off the little girl and did away with that chant as well as any other chant deemed inappropriate, and the parents should never have gone to the news. This didn't need to become national.

I'm guessing you don't go to many hockey or soccer games for little kids . . . :D

There are regional travel/tournament teams for 5 and 6 year olds - meaning tryouts, cuts, politics, in-fighting and power struggles. "Those parents" will find a way to be douche bags no matter where their kids end up - it's not a cheerleading-centric issue. It's the same everywhere.

This is soooo true. There were douchy parents when I was in these types of kiddie sporting events, too.

I guess I'm just thinking about my nephew's soccer team vs. my niece's dance team. My nephew's team, even when he made the All-County, was pretty normal. There were a few parents who freaked out, but it wasn't too crazy--about the same as when I was in school.

My niece's dance team, on the other hand, is all drama all the time. It's way worse than when I was in school. The mothers text each other about what's going on, lies are told, it's just weird. I still feel like cheerleading and dance teams, because there used to be and may still be a beauty/wealth/popularity thing attached to them, are much more emotional for the moms. This may be worse in my hometown because many of the moms and teachers and coaches grew up together and went to the same high school and there might be residual stuff going on there.

I'm even seeing this in people our age--the moms who are most involved in the 4 year old cheerleader nonsense are the same ones who weren't the "in crowd" growing up.

I learned it as "My back aches, my bra's too tight, my hips shake from left to right. Left. Left. Left, Right, Left."

And we used it as part of a V-I-C-T-O-R-Y cheer for Sigma Kappa. "I split my V, I dot my I, I curl my C T O R Y." And so on.

I can't be bothered to care about the rest ;)

I coached soccer and the kids were great, some of the parents were awful! And non-competitive parks and rec softball was a nightmare too. One kid got confused when someone caught a pop fly and he had already started running. He kept running. Of course the kid was out and it was an important lesson for him to learn but one dad went ballastic verbally, accusing this SIX YEAR OLD of cheating. Ugh, parents!

Thank you for the ear worm! GO MICKEY!

PS Those uniforms looked a lot like mine - sweater with stripes down the arms, a huge logo on the front, collared shirts underneath.

hard to believe that she is 66 now.

I always thought the cheerleaders in that video were super scary.

They are...athletic! Yeah, that's the word.:rolleyes:

well uhh in the 80's people were in shape...;) remember the Jane Fonda videos??