It's just my own limited, personal experience, but I'd played catch with 4-5yos who were just as likely to throw the ball behind them as towards me, as likely to bounce at their feet or sail over my head. Compared to them, her ability certainly looked unusual to me.
As for kicking a ball... she was doing better than I, a full-grown, semi-athletic adult. That was clearly unusual. If I missed her by more than a couple of steps, she'd look at me like I was doing it on purpose. It wasn't hard to diagnose how she did it, either. If you factored out the height differences in her kicking arc, and plotted the various points on an X-Y graph representing the plane of the floor, you'd see that all of these points are on the same line:
- The ball
- The target
- The furthest point her foot is drawn back
- The furthest point her foot advances on follow-through
Not that she was thinking about any of this consciously... she'd just automatically turn her body square to me, pull her foot straight back, and kick straight through the ball.
Fast forward to age 7, her soccer coach is frequently praising her passing ability (she's far and away the best on the team), while simultaneously trying to get her to use the side of her foot. She tries it his way, gets frustrated with the results, then goes right back to using her toes. He and I both know it shouldn't work that way with any kind of reliable consistency, but it's working anyway.
