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Thanks

You know, this might explain a few things about my DS. I vaguely remember personality types from my Psych 101 class in college nearly 20 years ago. But the ITP web site I just hit fits him to a tee.

Destination Imagination, which sounds similar to OM, was really painful last year. Dottie's remark about choosing the group is critical though. DS was on a team with kids from a completely different school and he had a very hard time breaking into their group. (i.e. they were in classes together, studied homework together, played basketball together...) He was the odd man out, so to speak. I kept thinking, "If DS could just do the project by himself, he would be having a lot more fun." But he did learn many things about how a group functions and how people need to compromise to work together as a team.

Maybe the trick with these kids is to find a project that they are very excited about and requires a tolerable amount of team work. And having your friends on the team can either make it seem less like work... or is a quick way to destroy friendships!

Any other suggestions or ideas for group projects for reluctant ITP kids? All I can think up is Lego League.

Well, as a non-group person, I certainly found that the required group work is school was quite enough. I have always been fine at it, but it wears me out. I need lots of down-time to recover. It just would never occur to me to put a non-group person into an extra-curricular group activity. Let them have and individual activity that gives them some space where they can stretch their wings or just settle into themselves and relax a bit before heading back to another inevitable group.

Yup. What she said!

I always liked sports like softball because they required teamwork, but they were really individually-based, if that makes any sense. I didn't have to rely on someone else. I had my job to do, and I didn't have to carry anyone else. When it was my turn to bat, I batted. Divide and conquer, I guess.

I'd look for the same sort of thing for a non-group person in any group activity, I think, or I would skip the group activity altogether. Division of labor is the only way for an introvert to survive a group.

Yes, I will respect the child!

E-beth, we got all excited about Lego League around here and after much family discussion, realized we were just going to have to buy the darn thing ourselves and let the two girls have at it. Although, it would probably be wise to let them work on it independently rather than a team.