Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Sports?

How are your kids at team sports? If they are older, how did they do when they were 5?

HAHAHAH! My kid sucks at team sports ;-) Can I have a more un-braggish statement than that!

Okay, at 5 he played t-ball. The league had a no scorekeeping rule and a no outs rule. Everyone plays, everyone hits. So my smart alek would walk backwards to base. Why? Because he could! It drove me nuts and totally embarrassed me!

The following year he played baseball. He thought that scorekeeping and actual outs would help. Nope. He was totally disinterested in the competition part after taking a ball in the hand in batting practice the first week. He just refused to get in the box at all. He loved practice, hanging out with the team and being in the dugout. He finished the season but never hit a ball or caught a ball or made a play. He just wasn't interested.

He's in gymnastics now at almost 8 and is starting track in a few weeks. He did well in swimming when he was younger but isn't interested in the time commitment for a swim team.

DS7 enjoys games at school, but his report came home saying "Colin tries hard at hockey. He doesn't find it easy, but he really tries hard. He has made good progress at [some practice skill] but now needs to employ this in games. He's always polite and cheerful and he always tries his best." IOW, he's just as bad at it as I was and DH was :-) Which is interesting, because we had always assumed that our badness at team games was because of a combination of shortsightedness and unfitness, and so have taken care to check/ensure that C doesn't suffer from either. And it doesn't help. Ah well, we tried, and at least so far he doesn't seem to mind, and he does have other sports to enjoy (fencing, especially).

Funny thing about sports. From 4-8 DS was in Karate and did really well and had fun until he started working on his second degree black belt. Then it became work and he wanted to try something else. Next he played tennis for about a year. He found that too repetitive and boring. Thinking that a team sport would keep him interested, we tried soccer next. The first year it was fun. After that, he just wanted to hang out with his friends and didn't work on the skills at all. So after alot of conversation, we figured out that Ds is not interested in team sports. He does not want to compete against his friends for position and in game time. Now DS has been doing Figure Skating for almost a year and really, really loves it. We'll see where it goes.
Overall, my impression of sports and my son is that he is able to get the concepts quickly. His ability to execute them depends on his level of interest in the activity. I think at a younger age, he was able to seem more proficient than some of his age-mates because he got the concepts so quickly.

Ds7 has played soccer since he was 4, and is pretty good at it - he has played in a program for U9/U10's since last fall (he turns 8 in June). He is also small for his age - so some of his team mates are huge next to him - and when they plays U11 teams, it's a sight to behold He just loves the game, and won't play anything else !

DS9 played soccer at 5 and it was REALLY hard to watch. He'd run after the other kids swinging his arms like windmills. Neither soccer nor basketball the following year were much better. He now plays baseball and wrestles and is pretty good at one and very good at the other. He is actually good at pieces of basketball and soccer, too -- like stealing the ball, but overall, he has difficulty playing them competitively. To me, it seems like he has sensory overload in those sports, and he does better with the others.

What makes you ask, Lukemac?

Well, lets just say that team sports have been quite interesting. T Ball last year was a total bomb, he had to be forced to the plate (though he is left handed, they kept trying to have him bat right, we didn't know which hand he should use to throw and neither did he)....
Now he is playing basketball. He loves the practice, and says he loves to play, but the games~ OH MY. He skips back and forth with his team, and when the ball is not in play, he is doing multiplication on his fingers. He can't seem to play defense - he just stands there smiling at his opponent with his arms up. He just simply does not care - and to be honest - he is just NOT an athelete.
I wondered if this was typical among the gifted population.
I will say this, it got easier to watch after his IQ was tested and my husband and I can laugh now, instead of cringe!!!

DS7 started out not doing so well... not because of the team issue, but because his athletic ability was no where near par. We purposely made him play because he is a perfectionist, and we knew he'd get a chance to see he couldn't be great at everything. And it's ok not to be the best. AND it forces him to finish (or we force him to complete a season) instead of quitting when he thinks it might be hard.

Low and behold, he's still not the greatest athletically, but he understands the bigger picture, even now at 7, than any of the other kids on his team. He was also chosen this past summer for the "B" team for All Stars. Again, mostly because of his understanding of the game, and his versatility - ability to play each position, understanding its role.

He gets frustrated with the immaturity of the other kids on his team, but he's also learning how to let loose and have a little fun - no be so intense ALL the time - balancing with the seriousness of the "game".

He's played baseball since he was 4. This past year he started soccer, which I think he loves (he is playing on more season of baseball this spring - mainly because he moves up a league with kids who know the game better). He also, though not a "sport", plays chess. In his class/league, they have "team" competitions.

I am going to continue to require him to play a team sport, so that he can learn to work WITH other kids and not just take over, which he does (hmmm... I wonder where he got that from? ha). He wants to play football, but I am trying to prevent that. And it's not because I think it's dangerous. 1. it's expensive here, and 2. I don't think he realizes the real "pain" in tackling and whatnot.

Bingo!! DS7 has had athletic ability challenges, but excelled due to that understanding!

Interesting. Seems very similar to what we saw with our DYS DS9 at that age. Frankly, that first year, DH and didn't know whether to chuckle or hide. It was bizarre to us, because DS was VERY coordinated when we played with him in our yard, but it just didn't translate onto the field/court.

Like your DS, ours also did much better at practice than at actual games for both basketball and soccer at that age. We have seen, in MANY situations, including the classroom in K, that DS has trouble tuning out new stimuli. He used to spell words in the air with his fingers as he was running down the court -- I actually heard people once asking quietly if DS was impaired *lol*. But that seemed to be his way of coping with what was going on around him. FWIW, it's MUCH better now, although it's still somewhat difficult for him to adjust to new high-stimulation surroundings.

Not sure if it's the same thing for yours, but food for thought.