If your son doesn’t play football, do you feel he misses out on life

[GingerKittenTail]

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The stereotypes around boys and girls are still heavily adhered to, and those that don’t fit the mould (and for boys that definitely includes football!) were teased or left out or had assumptions made about their sexuality.

my two sons have never had that sort if experience with no playing football 8n a team. Dc2 hardly played and was not in the receiving end of such behaviour.

fwiw I dint think it’s an issue with stereotypes. In primary, it’s the game if choice, easy to play by everyone. A ball is always there. Boys and girls were playing. In secondary, they never played so the question wasn’t there. There was no discrimination about nit being in a team outside school.

Boys interests are really varied now so all these saying football is the thing they do and it’ll be a barrier if they don’t, isn’t something I recognise from my sons/friends sons/nephews experience of school.

I’d say the one thing, if anything, that helps at school, as so many kids do it now, is gaming. Having a console or PC, more a console, was definitely more common than playing any sport and was something kids talked about from year 4 a lot, right through all of secondary. My son didn’t play football out of school from age 10 ish but could still play in the playground if he chose to.

As for every boardroom and bar, that’s not playing football so much, that’s just following a team, if it’s talked about. Lots of kids follow a team, without playing football themselves.
My partner has found his colleagues are as likely to talk about rugby and formula 1 as they are football. And also when a couple of big companies he has worked for include US offices, if sport is discussed, English ‘soccer’ isn’t a big topic for them. There’s also a lot of women at work now, including in senior positions, some may like sport but it’s still not as common so it’s not a huge topic of conversation.

My son is a college now, he says gaming, music and TV shows are what is talked about, not so much sport.

Apart from a term or two at Soccer stars in Primary, DS had no interest in football whatsoever. He did pursue his guitar and now, as an adult, is a serious musician.
In my opinion I think as long as children develop some kind of 'interest' it keeps them on the straight and narrow and protects their mental health later on but it doesn't matter what that is.

There will be lots of kids who only play football at lunchtime. Most five year olds aren’t being ferried to football clubs - that is usually older kids (8-9 is peak age I would have thought).

You are right that in some schools that is basically all this kids do at break time - but if your DS wanted to he could have joined in at the time.

DS plays rugby and has no particular interest in football, but will kick a ball around at break time when all his friends do. Like I didn’t have a deep abiding love of skipping aged 8, but did it because that’s the game my friends were playing.

The interest in teams etc has nothing to do with playing in a club - any more than an interest in bands is related to sending them to guitar lessons. My 75 year old mum follows our local team (nobody else in our family does, she just used to listen to the commentary on the radio when she was at home and got hooked). If your son was interested, he’d want to watch games on tv, follow the score etc.

I totally get where the op is coming from,

I feel my 2 ds's have missed out socially growing up by not playing football.
Both tried it and played in the school team at about age 7 but just never took to it.
I think it's pathetic that kids are excluded for not being into football but that has been my experience, the other boys in the team always gravitated to each other, usually the same kids have football birthday parties etc, easier for the parents to just invite the school team.

So what exactly is it you think your kids have missed out on @lilaloves ? Can they not play and socialise with a the kids who don't play football?

No.

My ds is 20. Always hated football, wouldn’t play it, has never had any interest in watching it (or any sport).

He did drama as a child and made friends at those classes instead.

When other boys talk football, he always jokes to leave him out of it because he doesn’t have a clue.

DS best mate was football mad. Now plays semi professionally. They have been best friends since they were 4, now both 20.

The other boy loving football and ds not caring a jot about it and the other lad not understanding why ds would a want spend his saturdays at drama school didn’t hamper their friendship one bit. They had plenty of other things in common.

Nope, he can't stand it, he's a rugby kid

I dunno maybe it’s just where I live (northern, predominantly white, working class area) but the stereotypes are definitely alive and kicking here.. football for boys (both playing and following), and fashion, hair, make up for girls. I think things are gradually changing, but much more slowly than in more cosmopolitan areas.

Absolutely not. I cannot stand football and he has no interest in it at all. He does plenty of other things which he enjoys instead.

DS1 isn't interested in football. He has a lot of other interests, more than the average footy-mad boy.
He had some skills training in the younger years of primary school and I stopped it when he lost interest.

DS2 loves sport. He trains with a football team but doesn't tend to get selected for matches. While this pleases my lazy streak, I do find football has a difficult layer where it can be hard to break in to and train up and keep up. I like the friendly, nuturing culture on his team, unfortunately so do a lot of others and DS has been squeezed out because more talented players dropped out of more cut-throat teams, and I'd rather he stayed there than ended up on a more pressured team. I know it sounds contradictory, but despite having too many players to play regularly, there's a positive team spirit.
He has plenty of other interests too, and I'd rather keep a spread of interests than life ruled by football.

I've tried not to let my utter indifference to team sports hold my sons back because there's a reality that male culture has a heavy interest in football. I have been a positive role model in individual sports though and they're easier to do through life.

Interesting... DH has a big chip on his shoulder about this as he was young in his year when he started school and couldn't keep up with the other kids and was never into football and every now and then bemoans it was a social handicap. But it's just not a thing you can make happen, in my opinion.

DS is an August baby so also young in year, also has ADHD and was a late developer physically and every now and then DH would regret we hadn't 'got him into football' as a 'social enabler', which is something he talked about doing when DS was younger but (probably having ADHD himself we now realised) never got round to.

I always said you could never force it and DS is just not inclined that way, and although DH had talked about maybe taking DS to local tiny-league football, that would never have done the trick. I realised more recently that I think to have 'got him into football' is just not something you can do if you're not interested yourself - it would have taken sitting down and watching Premiership matches week in week out in the season (because socially, it would have to be about the Premiership) and we could never have done that anyway, and there's no guarantee it would have taken.

TBH, like a lot of not-sporty kids, DS is into gaming now, and so that's given him something to talk to peers about as he starts secondary school - I think non-sporty boys can usually gravitate to gaming, maybe Dungeons & Dragons etc (my theory on why geeky kids are into it, and I was mates with many of them at secondary, is that it gives boys something social to do all day when they're too old for 'playing' but not into football!)

I've always found kids who don't like football a bit weird

Missing out on what - a sport they aren't interested in?

This!

I know lots of boys who've had no interest in football (or rugby) and we're lucky to be able to enjoy their other interests!

I hate football and the badly behaved football hooligans!

The stereotypes around boys and girls are still heavily adhered to, and those that don’t fit the mould (and for boys that definitely includes football!) were teased or left out or had assumptions made about their sexuality.

At our school the 'cool' boys are the clever ones, good at gaming and coding!

Interesting. My ds doesn't like football either and I didn't think it would be a problem but all the other boys in his class (year 1) are obsessed and it is the only thing they play at break and lunchtime. They all have football parties and whilst my ds is invited he doesn't really join in so much. He is into cricket, karate, chess, board games etc but it doesn't seem to matter. Maybe it is dependant on where in the country you are. I have sent him to three after school football club so he can play with his friends which he sort of enjoys but the other boys are a lot better than him now.

Ummmm.... nope. DSs are 18 and 15. Never been into football, never missed out. I'm not really sure what they're missing out on?
Well other than the year they decided to collect match attack cards because everyone else was. We spent a small fortune on things they didn't want, but they could join in with 'swapsies ' at play time so it was money well spent I guess.

We actively discouraged football. Our son and his friends had no interest beyond watching World Cup matches with a beer (now they are adults).
It's never been a disadvantage socially as rugger is much more popular in our sets. I think some sporting interest is a good common ground, but think tennis and rugger are probably better than football.

I get what you're asking op, football can occupy a lot of "space" with people playing it plus supporting teams and talking about big matches etc.
My ds loathes football with a passion, I tried when he was younger to spark some interest so he would "fit in" but no.
He's ten now, loves musical theatre, maths and climbing. He has a great group of mates in and out of school and if somebody attempts to tease him about football he just shrugs. He's made his own path and I'm happy for him.

WTF what a stupid and horrible thing to say. in what way are they weird??. There's a boy my son sometimes plays with who lives, breaths, sleeps football he seems totally incapable of doing anything else other than kick a ball or playing football games on his console or watching or talking about football he's never learned to ride a bike or scooter or climb a tree as his whole life has just been football football I think that's a bit weird and he's so bloody boring in my opinion and god help any poor girlfriend he ever gets in with!.

I definitely don’t feel my DS1 is missing out on life, but I do feel like he’s missing out on the easiest way to make friends at (his) school. Had I known what a big thing football was at his primary then I would’ve encouraged him to go to preschool classes, just so he could hold his own on the playground with the other boys.

None of my three sons have ever been into team sports. Football? God, no! They all hated it. It hasn't held any of them back in the slightest.

Depressing.
I live in Yorkshire in a village and it's not like that thankfully.