On a related note, a while back, I saw a very fancy 16x20 certificate in a frame, from the WWI era.
What did that person do?
They passed the Palmer Handwriting course.
That was me when I was growing up – except that ‘the spectrum’ wasn’t well-known back then. Looking back with modern perspectives, both my wife and my sister (who happen to deal with special needs populations) readily tell me I would have been considered to be on the Asperger ↔ Autism spectrum. Back then, though, you were either Autistic or not and, since I wasn’t ‘that bad’ doctors just called me hyperactive, teachers just called me hyperkinetic and peers just called me names.
The school I attended had a recess period and a post-lunch period every day and the kids from fourth, fifth, and sixth grades participated in an organized collection of team sports – kickball, long-ball, team-ball (team-versus-team dodgeball, played on a tennis court), tether-ball, softball, and a couple other games. I sucked; I never understood my position (which was often just standing out in the lesser-used portion of the outfield) or I just played wrong* in every game – except for dodgeball. For some reason I had a phenomenal ability to dodge, duck, spin, and move away from that ball, often misleading our strongest and most accurate guys (often they were pitchers in the little league teams) so they would hurl the ball in the wrong direction.
My brother was the harder one to deal with – harder for me. He was five years older than me and therefore his brain and body were more developed in every way while he still wasn’t mature enough to have compassion or sympathy for me. So because he was great at soccer and baseball and basketball and hockey he tried to teach and coach me in those sports and would get so frustrated at my inability to kick or throw or do a lay-up properly that our recreational sessions would invariably end with me getting injured. Not only did I absolutely learn to hate those sports but I learned to hate my brother and honestly dream of ways to harm him.
I didn’t fare any better in the team sports in the general P.E. curriculum in junior high school, either.
And then a free karate class was advertised in the neighborhood and, for some unknown reason, my mother offered to let me try it out. Not only did I discover I had a knack for it, I also found an imaginary vent for all the frustrations that had built up over years of beatings from my brother; imagining his face just a short distance away gave me a way to hone my accuracy while safely exorcising my rage. The combination of the two had me excelling at the sport and the success in the activity had me diving deeper into the art and its mental and philosophical facets. By the time I got into high school, I realized traditional team sports just weren’t my cup of tea. Instead I got into the bicycling class (originally as a means to build strength in my legs) and later got into weightlifting. And when someone started a fencing club after school, I joined that and discovered I had a general knack for combat sports. I took an archery class in college and excelled at that, too.
Years later, when my brother and I had bridged the rift between us and were conversing about our pastimes, I mentioned that I enjoyed rock climbing. He noted that he realized relatively recently that there was a key difference in our approach to sports: He preferred team sports because he liked the camaraderie and the implicit theme that, if he got into a sticky situation, his team-mates were there and he could think fast and pass the ball (or puck) to someone else and he could reciprocate later for other members of his team. In that way, the team could succeed together. In contrast, he realized I was better at doing things alone and if I was caught in a sticky situation I would either contemplate and calculate my next move or, if lacking time, improvise and innovate. Neither is a wrong approach; everything depended on the context.
Well after high school, I found myself in social situations and being invited to join a casual game of softball or baseball or volleyball. After improving my hand/eye coordination with martial arts I surprised myself by doing well at those sports, too: spiking or serving a volleyball is just a slightly modified hand technique against a ball instead of a skull; a baseball or softball bat is simply an unbalanced short staff and that baseball or softball is similar to a slow-moving, free-floating opponent’s fist.
Unfortunately, you’ve hit the nail right on the head. Even as far back as my school years in the 1970’s I can recall news stories and television news features with people standing up before town councils or school boards and ranting, “You can’t seriously be thinking about taking football (or baseball or basketball, or whatever) away; it’s the epitome of The American Way of Life because it teaches the kids to set goals, collaborate, and achieve together! They learn to strategize and network and follow orders!” #
I had to point out that this is actually an extremely important part of msSmith537’s overall picture: Not everyone can teach or coach, not everyone can teach or coach well, and those who have a natural talent or knack for an activity or sport are often the least able to teach others how to do that activity well$. Even more importantly, those who have tremendous enthusiasm for an activity or sport (hmmm…call them fanatics – or fans, for short), are not necessarily the best teachers or coaches.
My own ability to teach martial arts has its roots in my early interactions with my brother, whose advice was quite frequently, “Stop doing _____” to the point where I’d feel like there was nothing left to whittle away and I should just stop trying at all. That, combined with my 2nd karate teacher’s habit of explaining via analogies and suggestion, made me realize some people have a talent for teaching while others don’t and I resolved to emulate my karate teacher’s methods and avoid my brother’s ‘whittling’ approach. I leveraged my skill and confidence at teaching martial arts and earned a position teaching English in Japan. But when I tried to teach basic guitar techniques I found that my knack and instincts were good but I couldn’t pass those along to my stepdaughter because I had never had to really think about them.
So it could very well be that the coaches msSmith537’s kid is encountering might be super-fans or even former professionals but their ability to inspire and nurture the kids’ skills and talents might not be very good at all. Once again, this might lead the kid to find more fun in a 3-on-3 pick-up game of half-court hoops than in a full team-versus-team game of tournament basketball.
–G!
*Since everyone knew I was just clueless about the various games, nobody was horribly surprised when I would accidentally fall on or flail a wild elbow into my tetherball opponent. Of course that meant I would lose the point and the turn but it was mildly satisfying and not the least bit accidental.
[In case you’re wondering, I’m being completely facetious, here.]
#Yeah, unless they set goals, collaborate, and fail – at which point they pick a scapegoat to blame. My interpretation is that teaching kids to set goals, collaborate, network, follow orders, and achieve together sounds a lot like criminal gang or syndicate behavior, as well. Four years ago I would have said, “Yeah, that seems like the American Way of Life…”
[I wasn’t being sarcastic back then; things do look slightly better lately…]
$Largely because their knack allowed them to skip the need to analyze and understand how things worked; they just hit those home runs or nailed those perfect 3-pointers and didn’t have to think any more about it and, lacking such analysis, couldn’t explain to others how to achieve the same phenomenal results.
For some reason our school made us play an instrument or join chorus in 5th grade. It totally sucked because I had no interest in either and got stuck lugging a freakin trombone back and forth to school every other day.
Clearly my main concerns are expressed in the horror stories people are describing about being last picked and then ridiculed for life after missing that critical shot at the buzzer.
So upon further consideration, I think we are going to continue with trying him in different sports and seeing what sticks. He doesn’t seem like he hates it, it’s good for building strength and coordination, and having a structured environment where he can socialize with other peers seems good for him.
It also seems like a different environment than 30/40 years ago where the coach was whoever’s dad played a bit of ball, they just threw everyone on the field and then yelled until they won. The coaches are all certified and seem very supportive of the kids having a good time and not getting frustrated.
So unless it makes him completely miserable (beyond simply “I don’t feel like going today”) or finds something he wants to do more it probably makes sense to stick with it.
Sounds good.
Hubby’s a bit ambidextrous and never did much team sports. This means he never developed a preferred hand for throwing/catching or preferred foot for kicking. He did do Tae Kwon Do for many years, which suits his character and physical strengths.
Sounds like a good approach. Remember, it’s supposed to be fun. And play.
imho the only significant difference between organized crime, business, and the state is their goals and level of acceptance by others.
He seemed like he was having fun the other day when we were practicing a little lax. Instead of the tedious drills my wife runs we just did some 1v1, taking turns defending and attacking. I mean he was laughing and having a good time wacking at me with the stick and not asking “how much time left” every 10 seconds.
He also seems pretty pleased with himself when he scores in practice.
That’s what I’m trying to instill in him. The more he works at it, the better he will get and the more fun he will have.
Perhaps the topic of another thread, but that’s another thing I’m trying to figure out. How do kids these days make friends and play? When I was my kid’s age, we just went out into the world and came home for dinner when the street lights came on. We made friends by finding other kids in the neighborhood and playing basketball or football or street hockey in someone’s driveway or a cul de sac. Everything now is structured and supervised. My wife was talking to some of the other parents and their kids are in like 8 different sports. Every now and then I get an email from some classmate having a birthday party.
About making friends - think back to your childhood again . Unless your school/church/Little League etc had a very restricted area to draw from , you almost certainly met kids at those places that you wouldn’t have met playing in some neighbor’s driveway and met other kids through those ones and so on . Using myself as an example , I had friends who didn’t live in my immediate neighborhood and didn’t go to school with me . They lived within walking distance and I met them through their classmates who lived close to me but went to a different school. Today’s kids can do the same thing except that with some of those activities, kids may live far enough away from each other that transportation is needed and that means pre-arrangements.
Just recently we were discussing how we don’t often see groups of neighborhood kids out playing games - hide and seek, freeze tag, redlight/greenlight, spud… - like we both did in our childhoods (60s-70s, or our kids did during their childhood 90-oughts. Not sure we made a lot of friends that way, but it was a different sort of activity than we see today.
At some point - hopefully - your boy will find 1 good friend they click with. Hope it happens soon!
Every time I see this thread title, I feel sorry for the son. Having his parent post this on the internet and referring to him as embarrassing. I’m going to mute it.
The title was ill-chosen versus the actual content of the thread and the OP’s very evident loving and caring POV about his son.
You can’t tell a book by the cover.
Tell me about it! My kids have been in so many structured activities including sports and music lessons, and combined with the insane amount of homework they rarely had any free time.
Since moving back the Japan, we’ve had a month off and the kids had a chance to just hang out, go skateboarding or play pool at the community center. This may be the first time ever.
Most kids these days seem to get swallowed up in online video games and do their socialization there.
Yeah, and we’re UNDER structured compared to some of these kids. My wife was almost in tears when she found out some of the kids are in like eight sports since birth.
To @doreen 's point, this may be a function of where we live, but when I was growing up, it felt more like we had a community of adults and parents we used to hang out with through a combination of the neighborhood, school, synagogue, Boy Scouts, and sports. And we had a lot more free time and free reign to do stuff.
@Northern_Piper clearly is dealing with some issues that have nothing to do with this thread.
Maybe I should have titled it “embarrassingly bad at basketball”. He actually seems to be picking up lacrosse very quickly. Go figure.
Now I just need to figure out how to get my wife to chill with this shit.
Congrats on the lacrosse progress.
The merely very difficult you’ve seemed to handle in stride. The impossible just might take you a little longer. Might. Best of luck. Sincerely, not snarkily.
When my kids were young, I remember wondering, “How do I know WHAT my kids will be good at and interested in?” Good luck at exposing your kid to as many things as reasonably possible, cultivating any interests he shows, and realizing a large part of it is likely serendipity.
Of my 3 kids, the youngest (31) is ridiculously fit and a pretty avid rock climber. We lived in a Chicago suburb, and certainly never took her rock climbing as a kid, and I don’t think she ever did any sports in HS other than a semester of badminton. So try your best, and don’t sweat it overmuch.
I don’t think trying a team sport is a bad idea at all. They can teach some sportsmanship, coordination and social skills. I think it is important to include some exercise and staying fit has lifelong benefits. My own team sport experiences over many years were generally positive, I was pretty good at some sports and mediocre at others.
I found this thread eye-opening and think msmith537 was brave to start it. I have no doubt it comes from the right place, the word embarassingly has been misinterpreted by some. I don’t think team sports should ever be strongly forced on children, they should be able to stop if they dislike it, it should not become a source of trauma and it is stupid when people take house leagues seriously. I have played several games and sports where people take things far too seriously and that makes them less fun. Some of you were brave to share negative experiences, so thank you.
The worst might be parents who were either really good at something specific or jocks manqués who wish they were and try to live vicariously through their kids. I am sorry some of you had traumatic experiences, and am sure the spectrum complicates things enormously, and I hope things have improved over the years. The advice for finding something physical a child might enjoy, regardless of what sport or activity that is, seems sound. I love chess, but in addition something that involves movement is a good idea if such a thing can be found.
Most people who start a sport are bad at it. Whether they want to invest the time and improve, or would much rather be doing something else, seems an important point. Let the people with more ability play in more competitive leagues, and don’t give athletic ability outsized importance or be used as a cudgel to belittle others. But recognize movement in some acceptable form is something all children ideally should be doing for all of their lives.
I think it’s the “embarrassingly” that’s the issue. I think I know what you meant by it, but you worded it poorly. It can be taken to mean that you’re embarassed by your kid. Reading you explanation of what you’re bothered by, it seems clear that you’re not embarrassed by your son, but then it’s a shitty title.
Well embarrassed FOR him. I don’t want to put him in a position where he feels ridiculous. The whole point is to have some fun, build fitness, and generally be a positive experience.
I only had one good team experience growing up (soccer) - which had a lot to do with me sticking with that sport for several years - but all the others were horrible, including insults, humiliation, teasing, and sometimes active sabotage of my efforts. Didn’t know it at the time, but I have very poor depth perception. I find it nearly impossible to do something like hit a ball with a bat. Add that to kids who thought it funny to pitch the softball right into the face of the kid with thick glasses who was bad at the game, then laughed at my bloody nose.
So… I’m glad that team sports are a good thing for many, but for those of us who sucked at this or that sport they weren’t a good thing, and kids can be very, very cruel.
I still grew up loving sports, but they were sports that didn’t require really good depth perception and sports that were largely solitary - swimming, bicycling, cross-country skiing, hiking, riding horses, and so on. Learned coordination with those, too. These days I’m down to the bicycle and walking in part due to finances, but I still enjoy doing them. I got a lot out of sports, and I still learned to work as part of a team - by playing in bands, not sports.
There’s nothing taught by team sports that can’t be taught by other means so kids that don’t fit well with team sports shouldn’t be forced into them. Team sports are a good thing for many, but not for all.
I accept that. But I still don’t think trying a team sport is a bad idea. However, sticking with team sports through superlative difficulties might be unwise. I think exercise is very important, and stigmatizing exercise due to rough experiences in team sports causes further harms. Exercise should not usually feel like a punishment.