Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Sports and Social Groups with the Gifted Child

Hi All,

I have searched the archives and have not been able to find any in-depth posts about gifted children and sports. I'm hoping that someone can educate me. This is long and rambling, so I beg your pardon.

My ds is six and though he did almost everything way ahead of schedule, he seems to be behind on physical skills. I don't mind that he's behind, per se, but am rather confused about it all. My husband and I were very, very athletic young people, playing and excelling at any sport we played. Our son shows an interest in physical activities, but he simply cannot 'get' how to do things. He's very (VERY) slow to be able to get his body to do what it needs to do, and he really doesn't seem to care whether he can do it or not. We don't have TV or video games, so it's not that he's parked inside all the time. He's very much an outdoorsy type.

We spent two days per week, for four months, at a university swim club trying to teach him how to swim. We finally gave up because he simply didn't progress...at all. A few months later we tried lessons at the YMCA because our ds loved swimming and we really wanted him to learn to swim. We pretty much got the same result.

The YMCA was also the first time we were able to see him in a gym setting playing games with other children. Honestly, at first I wanted to run away and hide. He was SO different and out of sync. It was very obvious that he was just not where the other children were when it came to coordination or understanding how to do these things. He almost seemed at times to be interacting like a child with a mental handicap might act. By that I mean that he was very happy to be there, but in his own little world, not really caring whether or not he was a part of the group. He tried to engage with these kids, but for the most part was ignored (and this has been the case since he was two).

He is also very slow to understand instructions for these games and activities. Other children just seem to know very quickly what's going on, but he isn't like that. It takes him several exposures to even begin to integrate the rules and how-to. He is PG and is NOT like this when it comes to anything else in his life.

We're now encountering the same sort of issues with soccer that we had with swimming. He desperately wanted to play soccer, so we signed up this fall. Now that he's there, he is more interested in talking to the coaches and other adults on the sidelines as he passes them while trotting down the field. He has no desire to compete with others for the ball. He insists that he loves playing the game, but to us it seems that he's more interested in the social aspect of it. And by 'social' I don't mean peers; they don't really talk to him... and he seems okay with that too! He just likes "being there" and talking with the adults who will talk with him.

The available outside activities are very limited due to our rural location. We had to drive over an hour just to do the swimming and YMCA. Locally, we only have sports available. So, joining a chess club, book club, Lego team, etc. is simply not an option, unless we try to find others with those interests --which hasn't been successful thus far.

I guess what I would like to know is if it is common for gifted children on the higher end of the scale to be uncoordinated and unable to focus when it comes to sports. My son just seems SO out of sync with his peers, though again, he doesn't seem to care. He isn't aggressive or driven at all in this area. Do we let him play until he requests to stop (or they no longer allow him to be on the team! )? Do we try to push him and give him extra help to learn these skills? Do we let it go before bullying becomes a bigger issue (we've had a little) and direct him to music and other more solitary activities? He has no siblings, no regular playmates, and is home educated; yet, *he* seems to be as happy as can be and never asks for friends or comments on his situation at all. *I suppose I'm concerned about how this might impact him in the future, and if this is common in these children.* I was much like this myself, though not as gifted, and I did have two younger siblings. I would simply like input from those who have been in a similar place. What worked and what didn't? What were the outcomes when they were older?

Thanks for reading,
Mom2MrQ

I don't have any answers for you, but I'm in the same boat. My son isn't PG (at least that I know of), but he's the same way with sports.

He has amazing fine motor skills, can build anything in the world with K'Nex, Legos, etc. But the kid can't grasp gross motor skills for anything. He's ok in swim class, but pretty much messes around the entire class instead of paying attention. As for throwing or catching a ball, nope. We have he and his sister signed up for baseball and golf right now. Every other kid "gets" it, but it doesn't seem like he does...

I'm looking forward to hearing everyone's replies as well. Thank you for posting this!

I have a son who is very coordinated and athletic. As a new mom I kind of thought it was in part because of his giftedness and that he is just ahead in everything. But I have heard of children running the gamut, and now I think the two areas are just not correlated very well, if at all.

D is not the most coordinated kid, but she is not the least coordinated. She is very awkward at running and throwing, but she always liked tennis, so we played quite a bit of that with her when she was younger. Soccer and dance at age 6 were complete failures, not too different from your story above (except that she was shy and wouldn't even talk to the adults). She did go out for the tennis team in middle school, but quit after one season (although I think she could have done okay, not great, if she had stuck with it). However, she is now reasonably good in gym (9th grade) in racquet sports, and also likes volleyball. She has learned to avoid the sports she is not good at (no way could you get her to go out for softball, but she is on the volleyball team). She actually managed to get an A- in gym this year, which is amazing to all of us. Good thing part of the grade is for tests on sports rules - not that she EVER watches sports, but she can memorize as needed

Sounds like options are limited in your area, but are martial arts available? That is an individual sport where he could progress at his own pace. Also, can you put up a basketball hoop at home? Even if he never plays on a team, shooting games like HORSE are fun.

Our goal has always been just to make sure our Ds live an active life and get enough exercise to be healthy. We bike and hike as a family.

Swimming is an important life skill (I sometimes tell my kids that there are only 2 things they HAVE to learn before they leave the house for college, and those are how to swim and how to drive a car!). If you S is frustrated, you might shelve it for a year or two, then try again. If he is enjoying it even if he has to repeat class levels, then maybe you should continue. And maybe it is really sinking in and he just can't execute yet... I took golf lessons at age 11 and was really awful; put the clubs down, picked them up again at age 21 and found I had a perfect swing. I credit those early lessons, even if I couldn't make my body do what I wanted to at the time.

Just a thought, have you had your son evaluated for Asperger's?

re: the swimming
Try daily lessons for two weeks instead of the 2x/week deal. I have found that my kids make almost no progress with weekly or bi-weekly lessons.

My kids have average coordination. I was like your son. In elementary school I was ALWAYS picked last and the team that got stuck with me would groan. I also have trouble remembering which light switch works what light, operating machines, parking in a tight spot, still can't throw a ball....BUT I am an above-average athlete now (IOW, I'm a better athlete than the average middle-aged mom). I am still slow when it comes to acquiring physical skills, but the funny thing is that I CAN acquire them, it just takes me longer. By pursuing a sport that emphasizes endurance I was able to be a good athlete by HS (recruited by colleges) and compete through college. I am still slow but I have a lot of stamina. Physical activity brings me a tremendous amount of pleasure and I am glad that I was able to (mostly) overcome my innate lack of coordination. If the swimming is palatable to you, I would recommend pursuing that. But I think any sport whre they can learn at their own pace (i.e. not a team sport with a ball) would be a decent choice. Tennis, martial arts, running, rowing...

This summer will be our son's third tour of duty in the beginning swim classes, while his younger sibling has been swimming like a fish since day one.

It's been a great object lesson for him as he has really come to understand that people have different skill sets.

My dh and I were both somewhat ahead coordination-wise as kids; he had more opportunities for team sports than I did and he did excel, but this was more in his teen years. I remember little things like being moved over to the boys basketball games in elementary school and getting the best high jump numbers one year (I was probably one of the few actually trying, but that's another issue).
Ds9 is sort of back and forth.
Some physical things he has been right on with, but we've had to find those things. Soccer was definitely 'meh' at age 3 and again when he was 5, and swimming, well he's 9 and he still doesn't like his face in the water much, or know how to breath and swim at the same time...but he loves the water.
I am a lousy swimmer, but did take lessons as an adult so can do the basics. My dad never swam; my mom was a fish. My dd3 is a fish.
We are signing up for daily lessons for ds most of the summer this year, as we saw little progress with lessons spread out too much, as Jane mentioned. Swimming is more than just a sport, I think as a life skill (life preserving ability) it is too important to miss out on completely, but we are trying to give him his own time to move into it.

Biking is another area that just may be too fraught with obvious risk for ds to enjoy/learn well yet, so the bike is waiting for him.
He is doing well with dance however, and has always enjoyed martial arts and running, and kept up just fine. In fact, sparring is an area where he really seemed to be ahead of the pack and is beginning to move in that direction in dance as well.

6 years is young for understanding whether a child will or won't be athletic/interested in sports, but if you are worried that he is very behind in coordination, I suppose I would speak with a pediatrician, but also I would recommend thinking outside the box when it comes to things to try: hiking, rock climbing, tap, martial arts, etc. (pretty much what Jane, others said!) Good luck to your ds

Oh, I forgot until now how we motivated D to learn to swim. She REALLY wanted to take dance lessons (ill-fated, as I mentioned above, but we didn't know that then). I told her that once she learned to swim, she could then switch over to dance if she wanted to, but we didn't have budget or time for two different sports at the same time. And that learning to swim was very important for her safety. The carrot of dance classes definitely motivated her, and she passed the next couple of swim levels the first session she tried them

We've had DS5 in group swimming lessons since January and have seen so little progress that I finally decided to fork over the extra money to get him private lessons. In our case, the biggest problem is that DS is a very cautious kid who tends to overthink things. When the instructor tells him to jump in the pool, he immediately starts worrying about sinking, getting water up his nose, etc. To combat this, the private instructor is using lots of tricks to distract him/keep his mind off of swimming. She's even resorted to giving him math problems (her idea) to work in his head while he's doing laps across the pool with a noodle!

As far as soccer goes, DS wants to sign up every chance he gets, for the social aspects of it, but he's got absolutely no interest in actually playing the game or scoring goals. On the field, he hangs back from the rest of the team and mainly just pretends to be going after the ball. He's clearly mortified any time it comes near him. I've wondered how much of that is due to perfectionism and fear of failure, which we've had to combat on other fronts.

He has also loved gymnastics classes (and still begs to go) for the social aspects but is generally unwilling to go out of his very narrow physical comfort zone. There again, I could see he was overthinking things that other kids seemed to do without any thought at all.

I'm still hoping that maybe with enough exposure and practice, he will become more confident physically, but he's definitely no natural athlete so far.

Sports may be about the only area a PG kid will connect with others their age. And with most ND people when they grow up. Scouting is another good area for this. The individual sports have less interaction than team sports.

Football requires less coordination than soccer. Baseball just bores the snot out of me but requires less coordination than soccer or basketball.


This is so Mr W.

This is very much like my DS7--he has what I have always described as a lack of kinesthesia. He does not seem to have a connection in his brain that tells his body how to imitate a pose that is right in front of his eyes. You can hold your hand in a certain way, tell him "do this", and his muscles will work so hard at doing something completely different that you can't even move his hand into the right position to show him! It was only this year that he learned to tie his shoes, and he still cannot ride a bicycle, yet he is DYS, grade-skipped, accelerated to 3 years higher math and bored out of his skull.

I don't know if the lack of kinesthesia is related to DS7's Asperger's or a totally different issue, but from some of your description I would say it wouldn't hurt to look into that in your search for an answer.

Really, this isn't just an issue with gifted kids. D20, who has many talents but is only slightly above average in intelligence, also meandered all over the soccer field at age 6. She and a friend were on the team together, and the coach had to move them to different shifts on the field because they wouldn't stop holding hands while running down the field. I don't think her foot actually touched the ball for the whole two seasons she was on the soccer team. But she went on to be captain of the high school volleyball team (small school, not very sports focused, but still...). So there is hope, you just might need to try different sports. It helped that D20 was quite tall, so your son's body type may give you some ideas regarding what sports you might want to encourage.

My two cents.

I was very athletic -- Olympic level. DH was the opposite. Quit little league because he was so bad at it. We tried tennis but he is really bad.

I am VS gifted, he is literal thinking. Brilliant.

DD is athletic. DD is VS and literal. Wonder if literal and VS have some correlation on the athletic thing.....

Ren

DS6 is a lot like your son. As a baby he met all of his physical milestones later but he learned to do the brain things faster. He's on the 5th session of level one swimming. Now they do expect a lot for level one but most get through in a couple times. He has a lot of water fear, it took most of the first session just to get him under. He loves it and has progressed each session, it's just progress is slow. He doesn't care one whit about what level he's in.

He's just now learning to ride a bike. He likes soccer and tee ball but he likes going more than playing. He ducks when a ball or frisbee comes his way . He's not athletic at all. Of course we're not either so that didn't help.

I want to thank all who offered input. It helps so much just to hear from others who have experienced some of the same issues.

Karate has been on my radar for a few months. There are one or two places that offer it that aren't too far from us. He hasn't been exposed to it at all, so I don't know if he will care to take lessons. If it might help him with focusing and disciplining his mind, then we may just give it a try.

When two of you mentioned Asperger Syndrome, I opted to look at the symptoms list just to refresh my memory. I was really surprised at how much of the list did describe him. But at the same time, many of those same things seem to overlap with what we've thought were his OE issues.

I did take him to his pediatrician last year and I described all of the issues we were having. The ped. told me that he was atypical for his age in how he interacted with people. ("People" being the staff at his office.) He felt that IQ testing was in order. I had just reached the place a few months earlier where I was allowing myself to consider this as an option, so hearing that was a relief.

So, my ds was evaluated by someone who deals exclusively with children and has done so for over two decades. He did screen him for ADD, but quickly dismissed it after speaking with him and getting a history from me. He assured us that he was just fine, that there were no disorders, and that what we were experiencing was attributed to his high intelligence. Unless they both missed the AS, I'm going to assume right now that this is an OE issue.

Do children with Asperger Syndrome have communication issues with ALL people, or just certain groups? Mine only has trouble with children his age. One symptom that did jump out at me was the tendency of those with AS to take words and phrases literally. I find that I am always explaining to others that "he takes things literally." Do highly gifted children do this too?

I'll stop for now, but do know that I appreciate ALL of the input. I have been reassured that we are not alone, and I now have ideas of how this might play out in the future.

Hi, I hear you.

My DS is much like yours and has played soccer for the past 3 years (he can't swim either).

As the coach of his team since they started (and very sporty myself) it was an interesting and big learning curve for me to watch him count clouds, walk around the field and 'forget' what he was supposed to do with the ball when it came his way; all while declaring just how much he loved the game.

I definitely swallowed a lot of pride during those years but he was just so happy to be part of the team I just couldn't not let him play.

Eventually the natural order of things won out.

The other kids got faster, more skillful and more competitive each year. They also started losing patience. As the coach I could manage that quite effectively for a while but really the writing was on the wall.

In the end, after some very gentle discussion with me, he decided he was happy to stop at the end of the last season. (He still talks about going back.)

I guess my point is to let it run its course.

If he's happy, having fun and staying safe - why not?

A quiet word to (any decent)coach will help if the other kids are not playing fair.

After all, they all have a right to have fun.

My DS was in the same boat, especially with the swimming. Swimming is a real important skill so I would certainly keep pursuing it. The first summer when DS was 5 we took a 30 minute small group lesson Monday through Friday for 8 weeks. At the end of the 8 weeks, he would finally put his head under water. The next summer we repeated for 6 weeks and he could actually paddle a wee bit. The 3rd summer we only needed 4 weeks and he could finally swim. After that we switched to once per week until he really mastered all the strokes of swimming and built up great endurance for it.

Other sports are obviously not as important as the life saving skill of learning to swim. My DS is not very coordinated with most sports either, can't hit the balls well, catch well, etc. Even though we practiced, he just really seems to be lacking in hand/eye coordination. He enjoyed it while he was little but as he got older and the leagues got more competitive he quickly realized he wasn't as good as the other kids and to avoid being picked on didn't continue on witht those sports. The older he gets though the more he seems to be able to search up a good match for his physical ability.

My 11 year old son was never much of a kinesthetic learner. I remember someone telling me that all kids are kinesthetic learners in kindergarten even though I had just told her that my son was not because my son and I had done an online learning style quiz and if I remember correctly, his learning style was 48% auditory, 48% visual and only 4% kinesthetic. He never did things the way the books said he was supposed to do it. He read at 2, preferred talking to adults and older kids and his friends were 3 and 4 years older,

He was slow to get his body to do what he wanted it to do. He once told me that it seemed like all the other kids' bodies were like race cars and his was more like a Model T. He had low muscle tone and got tired faster than other kids but he had to dance to be part of his musical theater group, so since age 4 he has had to dance even though it was much harder to learn the dances than lines or lyrics.

I am so glad he stayed with this group because he is the only child at home, is homeschooled, and there are no kids living close to us. We had a musical theater rehearsal at our house a few days ago and we had 15 kids here. I just love these kids. They are all smart and funny and just great kids. These are the kids I want my son to be around, not the football players in our small town that I have seen and listened to. Bullying is common at our school. Teachers look the other way, especially when the bully is a good football player.

The musical theater kids talk to each other daily online on facebook. My son is okay with only online friends during most of the week. We do allow video games. The new musical theater director and her boyfriend play some of the same games he likes. We also have Wii Sports, Dance, Dance Revolusion and Guitar Hero that have helped a lot with his coordination and timing. I don't think coordination issues are noticeable anymore. I watched videos of his last performances and I don't think anyone seeing him for the first time would notice any coordination difficulties. He always learned the dances in time for performances, it just wasn't as easy for him as most of the other kids.

My son still can't swim. He was very close to being able to swim last year but it is hard to find private lessons even at the YMCA in the city about 30 miles away.

Children with AS typically have it with all people, but there is a large range on the spectrum. Some do get along better and communicate better with adults, but then one has to wonder whether that has to do with the gifted part as they often relate better. My DS5 is PG and he relates much better with adults and children older or younger. He is immature with younger kids usually but still gets along with them and likes to run around with them...with older kids he likes to talk about stuff and play games. About the literal aspect, some gifted people are quite literal. My DS is very literal (example: DS asked DH about what 'single file' meant. DH responded "how long have you been in school now?" and DS replied "116 days...why?"). He does things like that a lot, but he loves word play, and jokes, and he often gets all that and thinks it's hilarious. Anyhow, there is a lot of room for interpretation.

About the sports and coordination, DS5 just started Tee ball this year. He has only had 2 practices and seems pretty in the middle of the other kids in terms of ability. DS seems to enjoy tee ball so far but the last lesson was goofing off a lot with some of the other kids and playing around. I am hopeful that as he learns the games this will get better. We will see. He would love stuff like golf and more independent sports, but I really do think it is good to have him try things that may be more challenging and that he won't automatically excel at. This is new territory for him and he can learn some great skills with teamwork and working at things together. He needs to learn some of those skills. But swimming has never worked for him. Way to anxious about going under. He LOVES going in the pool, but holds onto the side or walks out when we are at the lake. We have a pool so we still try lessons each year, but they are often quite unsuccessful. We will keep trying.