Unsporty kids playing sport

[Dk20]

Please give me some reassurance.

Ds (7) was as football training tonight. Hes not 'sporty', has asd so has co-ordination difficulties. Hes never going to be the best on the team but I take him for the social side. If he doesnt go, then hes missing out on time playing with his class mates. The coaches have great patience with him and he enjoys going to training and playing and seeing his classmates.

I was standing at the side of the pitch this evening. I overheard another parent say "you have a, b, c & d (naming 4 kids who are good), you might aswell take the rest of them out of it". I'm not usually bothered by this stuff but this has annoyed me and really made me wonder if I'm doing the right/wrong thing by continuing to bring him to training

There are far too many coaches and parents who take children's sport far too seriously.

They don't realise how pathetic they look to other people. It's a game, it's meant to be fun.

@SnuggyBuggy

My own PE lessons where the teachers behaved pretty poorly to anyone who wasn't good at the sport (and that isn't "teacher bashing" I'm just describing my experience) had the effect of turning me off competitive sport for life. I've had playing a sport as an adult suggested as a way to make friends but the thought just makes me anxious.

It's so very different as an adult. You'd lnow about it if you were entering a serious group. No one would stick around with the traditional sadistic type of PE teacher leading. Adults have learned that there are more important things in life. The sport is in its own bubble and not linked to other aspects of life like school sport. There is a lot of "This girl can" and "Back to" sports groups targeting people that drifted away from sport after education. Council leisure centres are a good starting point.

So many adults get back to some kind of sport in adulthood for health reasons and are shocked that it never needed to be full of bullying and stigmatising. For me, it's running. I was the one taunted for being laps behind the next runner.