Barrel turn is a really simple concept but I am finding it hard to get through to my DD. The drills we are doing are just T work and dry swings with me observing and correcting. So far she can get the barrel turned as long a there is not a ball in the air. Once the ball is live she will drop the barrel while sizing up the pitch. she was able to understand and get it with the T almost instantly, she is just struggling getting it into live pitching. We have only been working on it for a couple of weeks and to be honest, not very hard because she is also a pitcher and a catcher (don't ask) so we have to work on those skills as well. Maybe someone with more expertise can recommend some specific drills to promote barrel turning. Hopefully the wolf pack will realize that this 11 year old can use some good info and will descend en masse to flood you with good info.
At the risk of sounding very elementary and throwing out a "no duh" piece of advice, something that we've worked on that has helped with keeping the sequence with our girls is to change the mental approach to the pitch. I saw it somewhere, and may have even been here. Every "pitch" on the tee is a strike. The sequence is easy to keep. The girl knows that she will swing every "pitch". And thus, focuses on what she needs to be doing. In games I found our girls were timing incorrectly or simply having breakdowns in fundamentals. We aggressively at practice and in games started stressing that EVERY pitch is a strike. EVERY pitch was coming right down the pipe. EVERY pitch was right where we wanted it to be. Until...we saw it was a ball. Having girls read the pitch to see if it is a strike before they decide to swing resulted in reaction swings. Some early, some late, some right on time. But reaction swings all the same. Great swings are fine on a tee, or on a machine, or on controlled front toss where there is a high expectation of a strike. But getting those swings....THEIR SWINGS, as I like to call it, were fewer between in games. Approach every pitch as if you know for SURE it is a strike coming, until you see it's a ball, and the swing will be better....in my experience, anyway. A good cue for when they get this is that every ball they don't swing at, you'll get that pit in your stomach that says "oh my...she almost swung at that pitch"....