Most dance and gymnastics websites tell you the class times, the age ranges and the price. Almost none of them tell you the one thing you actually need to know if your child is autistic, has ADHD, or struggles with coordination: what happens when the room gets loud, the routine changes, or your child hits a wall halfway through. So you end up guessing. You book a trial, hope for the best, and find out the hard way whether the environment works. That is an expensive way to find out, and not...

The question usually arrives in one of two forms. Either a parent is watching a three-year-old attempt a forward roll off the sofa and wondering whether that energy could be pointed somewhere safer, or they've got an eight-year-old who has suddenly announced they want to do gymnastics, and they're quietly worried everyone else started at four. Both worries are reasonable. Neither is quite right. The short version is that children can start structured gymnastics much earlier than most parents...

Ask two dance parents whether competitions are good for children, and you will get two confident, opposite answers. One will tell you it was the making of their daughter: the discipline, the goal to work towards, the friendships built on a coach trip at seven in the morning. The other will tell you about the year their child stopped enjoying class altogether, or the scoresheet that undid six months of confidence in an afternoon. Both of them are describing something real. That is the honest...