13-year-old suddenly anxious about matches but still enjoys training, advice?

[YorkshireTea12]

Son (13) used to be a bit of an anxious kid when he was younger, I often thought there was maybe a touch of ADHD and autism from some traits he showed, low concentration, difficulty with changes, worry and anxiety in the lead up to certain situations even if we gave him plenty of warning and reassurance.
He has played a sport since he was about 3 and is in two amazing teams where both coaches and team mates support and reassure him knowing the character he is, he’s always loved training and playing to the point he would be upset if we ever had to miss them for other plans.
Recently he’s become extremely anxious about playing, to the point he will no longer go to matches and gets angry at me or my husband for even asking if he’d like to go watch/play/sub. I’m at a loss whether to just leave it completely or whether to be more firm about him going. He still enjoys training but if I talk about going to support his friends or to try and just play for part of a game he becomes really angry. He completely shuts down and won’t talk about his feelings, I know hard at this age, but I feel so sad that he’s missing out but more so he seems down when he hears from his team mates what a great game they’ve had.
Any advice on supporting him through this? Do I get tougher and effectively make him go to matches? Or just accept that he’ll probably never go back to the sport he’s loved for most of his life so far? Could it be hormones/age? We read so much about supporting anxious children and I try to open up opportunities for us to talk but he’s very dismissive whenever I try to talk even in general.

Thanks

Can you identify what he’s anxious about? Is it about making mistakes/ conceding goals or more about the behaviour of the other team or he doesn’t really know?

Has something happened which has made him loose his confidence in matches? Can you ask the coach to encourage him?

Have his coaches spoken to him? Perhaps they should lead a discussion with him about why he no longer wants to play in matches? Could you and your husband inadvertently be putting pressure on him? Do you attend the matches he plays in?

He literally won’t tell us anything which makes it really hard to work out what we can do to help. One of us is always at a game so he’s never alone in terms of being left without supervision. We never put pressure on him to win and only cheer like any other parent. His coaches are being amazing and encourage him during training and often say how much they miss him at the games, biased as he’s mine but he’s genuinely very skilled and always been a great team player.
I ask him if someone has said something to upset him, if there’s part of the match that worries him or if he feels like there’s pressure on him but he will start to get angry, often tells me to leave him alone or tells me to shut up, we never have a generally nice conversation when I try to bring it up.

When my son was this age and played football since aged 5, the dynamics changed in his team, new player came that were friends of other players and they were really nice.Some long standing team members started what I would call "getting too big for their boots". They were very vocal when someone missed a shot for example and were " giving banter" also known as being mean. It was difficult to be honest at times. Boys can be awful but I think it's really sad that they don't talk to each other like girls do so bottle it up.
I hope your son is OK, just reassure him you are always there for him as I am sure you do.

Is it rugby?

Football

Thanks for this, I just wish we could pinpoint the problem then I’d know how to help. No new players that I can think of and we never noted any arguments or even pushing from other players at the last match so it’s hard to say!
Part of me wants to just make him go and suck it up in the hope he’ll face his fear and realise it’s all ok, but then I don’t want to make it worse for him if he really doesn’t want to go. We give him so much reassurance and try not to make a big fuss about it but it’s getting to the point now we notice his mood can be worse on match days making me wonder if he wants to be there but something is stopping him.

I think I’d not make much of a thing of it. Keep taking him to training if he enjoys it, and wait for him to ask to play a match. I would also offer for you not to watch him in matches to see if that helps. I’d have hated my parents coming to every single game of sport I ever played when I was his age.

Thanks. We’re trying to follow his lead with all of it but hard when we cant work out what he really wants/needs out of it all. We often offer for him to go to matches without us but he always wants one of us there.