Making children do extra curricular activities

Our 11yo (year 6) sounds similar. He puts his dressing gown on as soon as he gets home from school.

We limit his screen time. He knows he has to do a sport once a week. He chose hockey as it’s on a weekend morning. He doesn’t like going out after coming home from school. We’ve encouraged school clubs too. He does 2 of those.

Mine would stay at home on screens given the choice. We limit screen time but eldest would still just stay at home and play with Lego etc given the option. We insist on trips out and exercise (like 4hr hike up hill today) and they do usually enjoy it once they get out plus in term time they have do an activity and I hope they will appreciate it when older and find some sport and activity that they really love

My eldest does army cadets. They do all sorts there’s a bit of marching and saluting. Fieldcraft. They put them through Duke of Edinburgh awards. Then it’s much like youth club, pizza making. Field trip out to climbing wall. Stargazing. I think he quite likes the discipline, ther kids messing around irritate him.

I have been cutting right down on screens recently We’ve been spending a lot of time at local loch with paddle boards which has been popular then screens at home once car has been emptied.

I wish my mother had forced me to keep going to martial art lessons tbh.

If its a group sport like football and the other kids aren't nice to him then of course I'd let him drop it

If I think about my parenting regrets, the biggest one is making my kids do things they didn’t want to do.

Editing to delete a repeat post 🤦🏼‍♀️

Hence why series like "Adolescence" are being made with everyone going, my gosh how awful! 🙄 You didn't say YouTube kids to be fair (& in the same post you're also saying everyone you know's kid is watching YouTube so hmmm) but even then it's mind-melting stuff and you know it or you wouldn't have posted?

And I did say I have the same issues with mine (the YouTube issue solved itself then the remote broke 🥳) 🤷🏼‍♀️

I was forced to do judo as a kid/teen. I hated it and was absolute shit at it. My technique was ok, but after a few belt colours, it is fighting that counts and I am no fighter. I was still dragged to grading events and competitions and told off for not trying hard enough. The best medal I won was bronze, and that was because there were only 3 of us in my weight group.
My parents tried to sell it as some way of learning self defence. But as a young teen girl, I was really not comfortable with teen boys lying on top of me in a hold. I feel sick now when I think about it.

My sister went on to compete at a national level.

I spent a lot of time playing on my Amiga!

I ENCOURAGED DD to do loads when she was younger - brownies, music, athletics , archery, chess, swimming etc.
She dropped them all (apart from brownies and then guides) and she had to be made to keep going when she did go. She’s ND though, so she does so stuff constantly, but in her room.

I was disappointed as I grew up in the suburbs in the 80s and no one did anything really. Music through school and then maybe orchestra, boys played football, we all did brownies, a girl from school did dancing. I would have loved the chance to do all these things now, it is what it is though,

But I assume you didn’t watch YouTube all day?

I did nothing as a kid. Literally nothing after school or at weekends. A mixture of it being the 90s when there was just a lot fewer options, and me liking ny own company and my own house.

i do loads now and have a full life. It’s nothing to worry about if he doesn’t.

Well you either set some rules now and get him into other sports and activities or it’s a complete lost battle by the time he is a teenager. My DD (same age) does 4 sports a week plus swimming, so I think football and swimming is the bare minimum. Of course he is not interested, he is addicted to youtube already. Read Jonathan Haidt and get some time limits on his ipad.

Fwiw I have similar problems with my 10 and 12 year old and the constant desire to be glued to a device of some sort and resistance to activities (especially organized ones!) but they have with persistence and insistence both found some hobbies they are happy to do, to varying degrees. It's also good to let them choose decent non organised activities like art, craft, reading, cooking?. Of course they will say they don't want to at first but given no other option they'll soon get stuck in, from experience.

They still beg and wheedle for device time but if they've done a decent amount of "extra curricular" I'm more inclined to ok it!

Good luck with it, op, you need to practise your Deaf ears - to the endless "I'm bored" refrain! 😂 - to handle this!

I'm not someone that demonises screen time per se...but it depends what he is watching ..a series or film that has characters, plots, themes, maybe imaginative and fantastical settings are one thing. Hours of short clips of brain numbing nonsense that give frequent dopamine hits, reducing the brain's ability to focus and concentrate for lengths of time is something else. There's a balance to be struck somewhere but as a teacher of 11-18 I can testify that even the brightest kids now, who don't read, don't do much other than doomscroll find it ever harder to maintain focus for a 90 minute lesson, let alone a two hour exam.

So, my advice is to KEEP HIM DOING the activities, ideally in a structured environment.
My DS is 14 and we made the mistake of letting him stop. The result is he sits around at home on screens for hours, and just does the same stuff as before, but dragging it out (so he doesn't study any more than he did before, he just drags it out if you see what I mean). And, more playstation.

I think you need to keep him in CLUBS, where hopefully he makes friends, and there is a structure around it. Eg, if he is good at running, put him in an athletics club, where he can train, and see his parkrun times improve. Just parkrun on its own, the onus will be on you to make him turn up, if it's in a club it's different.

The thing is once he stops, he stops improving, whilst others improve. And then no child or teen wants to join anything where they will be a bit rubbish compared to their peers. Which they will be, if those kids have been doing it for a couple of years and they haven't.

So I wouldn't make him do a million things, but pick a couple, so swimming and running, or running and football, and get him in a club on those so he doesn't 'fall off the train'.

He sounds very similar to my son in terms of interests. I let him stop the swimming, and didn't force the running. Result now is he is less fit and fast than he was, won't go to a running club any more as he can see the others are much faster, and when there are new sports done in school like rowing, he doesn't do so well on the ergs as some of the ones who have been swimming regularly etc, so doesn't make a good boat, and so he is not latching on to the rowing either. It's a vicious circle.

Keep pushing it (obviously if one particular activity is awful then stop that, but generally keep him in things).
I used to swim county standard, training 4 times a week, and i can tell you I didn't always want to go and my parents used to make me. But I am SO glad that I did, as I am proud of my achievements and 30 years later my fitness is still decent, all from what I did back then.

Why can't you do other things with him outside school?.
Take him to the library ( always something going on.. my 10 year old Grandson joined a coding group). Museums are good too.
We have educational museums like Eureka.. Film and photography museum.. coal mining museum.. do you have anything like that?.
Grandson loves the skatepark on his scooter or skate board.. loads of kids there and loads of older ones always showing / teaching him how to do tricks etc.
He also goes to a game board group.
I'm sure you will find something other than sport.
( we take him swimming.. more enjoyable than swimming lessons.. he could swim under water at age 4.. because it was one to one ).

When I was at uni I met a lot of boys/men that had come up through cadets and joined the university OTC.

they had a whale of a time. Built in social circle, weekends away, cheap booze, formal dances where they could do the whole invite girls thing…I had a friend who was very into one of them and used to drag us down to the club house for nights out. Always good fun and made a change from dingy nightclubs and the su bar.

I think at least a few went on to sandhurst and got cracking careers out of it. One I googled/stalked recently and he has a big city job and is still training cadets in his spare time.

Are there any clubs at his school? If he went straight to one after school, he could come straight home to what he wants to do and not feel like he has to go out again.

Agree with trying to find extra curriculars he likes and limiting screens (assuming he’s just consuming media and not becoming a programming whizz or something). But he may not like any clubs. Lots of people are just homebodies and there isn’t anything wrong with that. If you don’t need him to be in a club for childcare reasons I wouldn’t force him to do things he doesn’t enjoy. As well as helping him look at other ideas for clubs, could you look at helping him develop a passion at home? Lots of kids used to be homebodies before screens came along and developed passions for reading, model building, gardening, lego, etc.

Admittedly haven't rtft but fucking hell just realised he is 9??! You do realise that YouTube is age 13, Op and for good reason?! There's some Awful content on there and if your son is watching unsupervised it's definitely not good!

Even when I thought we were talking about a 14-15 year old I was leaning towards no that's not great but 9 absolutely not. Of course he would rather take the lazy option, I expect if you let him entirely self feed he would "survive" on crisps biscuits and similarly crappy options but there's no way you'd be ok with that I'm guessing..!?

I'd introduce him to baking and cooking. With the aim he cooks and serves tea once a week as well as learns useful skills for the future. Something you can do together to start with too.