SITUATION POINTS:
We have a very competitive 11-year-old gymnast who trains 30 hours/week, 6 days a week. With our 2 hour round-trip commute to the gym, this is a 42 hr/week commitment.
Given the training, we home-school.
We consider ourselves very balanced, loving parents and give our little gymnast plenty of slack. We have another child, 17, who has turned out fine, even through the difficult teen years. No stress, no issues, good focus and habits, polite, etc... Our gymnast is sweet and has a good heart, but is extremely difficult to manage sometimes. And perhaps partly due to the psychological make-up of being a competitive sports child, our gymnast tends to be self-centered and very self-confident.
THE ISSUES:
Our gymnast can never be wrong, and always blames someone else. If we have to install penalties for behavior issues, it's because we didn't do something or we changed something, etc...
Our gymnast won't ever "finish" anything at home. Literally the last mouthful of milk, juice or water will be left in cups. The last bite of sandwich will be left on the plate. The washed clothes will be taken into the room, but not put away. The homework will be done but papers will not be collected and scraps will be left around.
THE QUESTIONS:
We cannot get our gymnast to clean up or finish things completely at home. And with the "blame someone else" issue, when we institute penalties for not cleaning up or finishing something, the blame will be shifted and our gymnast will "hate" us for executing on our penalties.
We are wondering ---- with such an intense competitive situation outside, could this "not finish things up" phenomenon be somehow psychologically related competitiveness? Should we maybe back off and just let these "unfinished tasks" continue to occur? Any ideas for other ways to try to fix the self-centered-ness and blame-others attitudes?
We certainly don't want to damage our child nor do we want to impact our child's ability to perform in the gym. Our gymnast is on-track to be a very very good gymnast, probably ultimately in the top 150 or top 100 in the country eventually. Further than that is impossible to predict.
Thank you for any helpful feedback!