When is your child old enough for sports?

[BWill]

Some say three or four years old, but I think that's too young. Maybe it depends on the child. I didn't play any organized sports until school, but that was a while ago.
What do you say?

3-4 too young for most sport, where sport = competitive structured physical activity.
Not too young to enjoy very ball games, running races, learning to swim.

Try gym tots at 3-4 yrs old - builds flexibility and agility - my daughter started out at gym once a week at 3 yrs old then took up gym more seriously at 5 (3 times a week) and has now aged 7 almost eight taken up diving and has her first proper structured dive training session this Thursday - with the bonus of training at the same time in the same dive pool as Tom Daley - she is in tweenie heaven!

should have said - if they are bouncing around your living room doing forward rolls and hand springs on your sofa, lifting themselves up on bars etc aged 18mths-3 yrs - def get them into gym class - its an early sign.

My ds started training with a team at 5, although they don't play in games until they turn 6 in that sport. I think he quite quickly got into the training mindset, the coaches are used to dealing with young boys and I loved the structure/discipline side of it all. He's 9 now and 'coach' is still much better than me respected and listened to.

DS was doing swimming classes at that age as a progression from having done mums & toddlers class.

He nagged like a child possessed to try tennis at 4. Who knows why. None of our friends or family played but he had seen a leaflet from school - not that he could read. I tried to put him off saying the leaflet said age 5, he would know no-one, it wasn't in our village etc (pretty bad mum I know). In the end he went for a trial in the school hols and came out saying he was going back. Four years on... it's still his thing.

My son has been doing Tae Kwon Do since he was 5 and rugby since he was 7 (would have been 6 if realised he could have joined then). My daughter has done gymnastics and hockey since she was 5. They do athletics and PE in their primary school from P1 (aged four or five). It keeps them both fit and healthy and they look forward to going. They enjoy both the individual and team sports.

DS started football at 4, but it was just fun games to build skill, ball control and good sportsmanship. He started to swim at the same time.

Depends on the sport and the child. My eldest joined gymnastics at 3, because I wanted something to tire her out / calm her down. She was picked for development squad when she was 5, and she now competes regularly.

DD2 was only 18 months. I was taking DD1 to her class and dd2 was always trying to join in. So I let her do a class. She went through preschool gymnastics like DD1 and was put into the development squad at 4. When she's old enough she'll compete too. For now it is mostly fun.

Gymnastics is a young persons sport though.