...on the other hand, I mention to a lot of my fellow parents that they can watch the poomsae on YouTube to help their children with their homework, and the parents look at me like....What? YouTube has videos of this stuff???
I assume you tell them which ones to watch lol. In my style Wado Ryu we are lucky, we have the founder on video showing how to do the kata though no doubt someone will say he's not doing them correctly. Our stances are short ones, with a fair few being almost upright so I guess we wouldn't do well if the judges are expecting long stances.
I've often wondered how these open competitions go, I've only been in comps in my style, I can't see how the judges can tell whether someone is doing the pattern/kata/form correctly is they don't know it. I can tell some things from watching other styles but not whether that's the correct stance etc. I wouldn't like to judge a TKD pattern against a WC one against a Shotokan one.