I have a very sporty, generally confident appearing DS. He is 3y8m. He goes to pre school 3 days per week and attended a nursery 2 days a week from 16m-3y3m. We do lots of activities like softplay, gymnastics stay and plays, trampoline parks etc.
With me and DH he’s great at anything unstructured. Structured classes like football etc are met with complete refusal to join in. He will either cling to my leg or be totally wild and do the opposite of what is asked. He is very capable but just seems unable to ‘follow the crowd’ when it comes to things like this. We have tried multiple approaches to get him to join in. Doing it all alongside and being positive and encouraging, being firm, nothing works. If he doesn’t want to engage he just won’t.
Pre school say he joins in perfectly fine with them and nursery used to say the same. Often one of the first. I wondered if he would do the Xmas performance, he did, beautifully.
Is this normal for a toddler of this age? All I see are his peers joining in nicely by themselves (although often less capably), and my DS missing out of his own choosing. I guess realistically what I see is not representative as the other parents of toddlers like mine just don’t do the structured classes either. But I worry it’s signs of pathological avoidance syndrome or something of the like.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.