Help needed Childs confidence issues

[Horses24-7]

Hi all

After a bit of help teaching my 4 yr old on her tiny shettie

She was doing fantastic until she had a fall the end of last year and now she won't do any trotting. It doesn't bother me cause she loves riding him and we do games on him in walk on the lr , go over polls etc and she has great fun on him.

She will trot if I bribe her :-S but obviously can't do that all the time!

Anything I could do with her to increase her confidence riding again would be greatly appreciated. Don't want to make an issue of it, but she really does want to do it, but just hasn't got the confidence.

Thanks x

 

[Amos]

Hi,

I had the same issue with my daughter with canter. She had her first canter at PC camp aged 3. All was fine but I pulled him up a bit quick and it un-nerved her. She then flatly refused to canter. I didn't worry as she was so young etc. However, it carried on for a good couple of years much to my .............

Anyway, after a couple of years being very patient, I decided that it had gone on long enough. One day I said thats thats, have a canter and you can have some sweets or something along those lines. She did and has NEVER looked back. In fact, I'm rather bored of all the running now!

So my advice would be leave it and let her enjoy herself she is still very young. She will get there but it might take time. It is very frustrating seeing lots of other young children cantering around on their own when your's refuse to but they are all different and putting them off forever by pushing them would be alot worse. Good luck x

 

[Dubsie]

Is she in the Pony Club? My daughter's confidence has grown immensely since making friends in PC and wanting to keep up with her mates of similar age (she's 12). I know ours do a short training at working rallies for lead rein and there's great camaraderie in the mini lead rein group, so I'm sure they encourage each other.

 

[rossiroo]

I have found that with my child reverse-psycholodgy works, dont mention the trot word and wait untill she does, then say oooh are you sure? my child then takes great delight in showing me how wrong I am.

 

[schneeko]

Is there another pony she could have a go on? I schooled a pony for someone whose daughter had lost confidence off the lead rein and a change of ponies (she actually ended up riding my 16hh tb) gave her confidence because she hadn't had any accidents with him. Since then she's been doing really well on her own pony and they're out doing walk/trot dressage a couple of times a month

If not, i'd do as everyone else has said and not make a big deal out of it, eventually she will want to start trotting again