The developmental pediatrician that my son saw a couple of years ago recommended The Out of Sync Child Has Fun, but I had a hard time getting him to do any of the suggested activities. We did get a chin up bar for his room and with a lot of work he was able to do chin ups. We also bought a weight machine and he likes to use that. He just doesn't have the coordination the other kids have and I don't know if that can be fixed. He did learn to skip at age 5 (with a lot of practice)and spin around (part of a dance) without falling to the floor but he still looks a little klutzy when he does it. He still looks nervous about going up and down stairs without holding on to something. He is built just like my husband, tall and slender, except my son's legs don't look like they have any muscle. My husband was very good in sports, especially running. He says our son does not have the coordination to be a runner so he thinks he needs to try something else. Some people have recommended martial arts and we might try that.
Several months ago, when a younger kid chased him around the room and my son couldn't get away from him he sat down next to me and told me that all the other kid's bodies come with better "handling" and they were like race cars but he was more like a Model T. It is a problem when he has to learn dances and he has to have extra help to learn them. I think it is hard for other people to understand why he can learn lines faster than most of the other kids, even the teenagers, but he has trouble with the dances. Sometimes kids ask him why he is weak and I know he gets tired of this. I have heard them ask him this even after he was able to do chin ups. So he might be thinking it is a waste of time. He would rather do Wii Sports at home but sometimes he seems so lonely and I wish we could find something better. He doesn't like it when I worry about this and has told me that he wished I would just accept him the way he is.
The PE class is definitely not working so he will quit that after this month. Games like dodge ball might be good for most kids but my son ends up sitting on the bench most of the time and is usually the last kid to be picked to play now that they have seen he can't play very well.
I would really like for him to learn to swim and if he could just do that it would be great. We tried private lessons once and the teacher just kept looking at me like she didn't know what to do with him because he was holding on to her so tight and was reluctant to try anything because he was so worried about getting water splashed in his face and going under water. He has always liked taking baths at home though, so this never made sense to me.
He had hoped that me would meet some kids like him at the PE class and he was kind of disappointed. He made the comment "they just think I'm white and nerdy" like the line from the Weird Al Yankovic song. He just laughs it off but I just feel sad for him. He says all of his friends are in public school and they are, but if he went to school he would not be allowed in their classes. They are three and four years older and gifted. They told him about how much fun band is and the robotics class and I wish he could homeschool and just go to those classes but the school will not allow it and I can't put him in a school that refuses to provide an appropriate education for 2E kids. He says he doesn't want to go back to school anyway. He likes being able to take lots of breaks to play MMORPG games, Runescape, and watch Naruto. He even bought a Naruto game in Japanese. He says he would like to learn to read Japanese. I think some of the video games make it easier for him to pretend he is strong and for that reason I probably let him play them more than I should.
