Almost 6YO won’t join in with any classes, at wits end

[Pol771]

My almost 6YO has tried and failed at multiple group activities over the years, with us cancelling many memberships after his complete refusal to get involved.

Lots of people on here recommended to wait until he started school, so we did. Now in Y1, he has improved with getting involved with stuff at school (thank f*ck, yippee!) he now has football at the weekend and swimming lessons…but has refused to join in with both.

swimming- he loves water, he can swim (used to do lessons & got attached to the teacher however he went up a class with a new teacher and now refuses to get in the pool).

football- loves football, plays at home all the time, was excited to join a club but when we got there he got scared and didn’t join in.

I’ve tried;
soft approach (just go and watch, then join in when you feel ready/ I’ll come with you and hold your hand)
hard approach (get involved or I’ll take away ‘X’)
bribery

can someone please help me with deciding HOW I deal with this? I may shelve football but I refuse with swimming as it’s a life skill and he still needs improvement. He won’t tell me what he’s scared of, it’s like he doesn’t know.

is this a sensory thing?

thank you!

Thank you so much everyone for your thoughts and feedback. I’ll sack football off completely and i’ll have a think about swimming as he did used to love it, until after school holidays that is.

sounds like from some of your comments that I’m the one with the issue… I’m pretty sure I’m fine thank you, first child and first time doing all of this, just trying to do my best and didn’t like seeing him ‘miss out’ especially as most of his friends are in these classes and love them (no, that didn’t help either!).

thought processes changed completely now though thanks to your help

Just. Chill. Out.

Let him be!

@Pol771 we aren't being mean. Honestly most of us have been there. When you only have one seeing other parents put their children in class after class and FOMO and thinking they'll be negatively impacted if they don't go.

I massively regret the amount of time we spent at structured activities in the early years. It took COVID to shut down for both DD and I to take stock and reflect on how many nights we wanted to be out the house.

Swimming wise I actually couldn't get her to classes so took her myself until she was about 7, she could doggy paddle and was water confident but no real technique, went straight in at stage 4, quickly moved to stage 5 and was away. i saved 100's if not 1000s by doing it myself. Those who started as a tot were still in the same classes and the lower level stages is mostly standing around anyway.

In the 90s not going to so many structured activities were totally normally and looking back I think we were better for it. A Brownies / Scouts and the age equivalent is all most did other than the more affluent and that was enough. Extra curriculars can suddenly eat up a whole weekend and training can become every night if you aren't careful with the clubs you choose swimming / gymnastics / dance being the main culprits.

DD settled on rugby and recreational tennis in her teens which compared to comp swimming / dance is cheap and barely takes up anytime.

5 is still a very small child, OP - in most of Europe he wouldn't even be in school yet!

I understand about FOMO or worrying he'll get left behind but I assure you he won't. He will learn to swim extremely quickly when he's good and ready. Now is not that time. That's ok, he's not running to a deadline.

Save yourself the money and the aggro @Pol771 . It's easy to think "he should be doing this, we should be doing that," but the Book Of Should is counterproductive.

(For what it's worth, I had one who could swim like a fish at 5 and one who refused to get into the water until 7. By age 9 you couldn't tell who was the early swimmer and who was the late)

You need to do things with him rather than put him in clubs, to get him going. The structure and newness and lack of confidence is too much. You need to show him you are interested in his interests rather than him feeling you have expectations of him to "perform."

Before joining a football club, kick a ball around with him a few times a week, go swimming with him yourself, play swingball, run junior parkrun with him etc.

It'll make these things he associates with joy and engagement rather than obligation.

He's a little child. Take the pressure off and leave him be.

My mum was always sending me to clubs etc to "bring me out of myself". I hated it.

Let it come from him and it will make all the difference. Definitely no punishment and as he gets older he'll figure out what suits him. My 9 5yo has only this year started a 3rd activity, and only had one at 6 which was up and down. Your ds is so young, take the pressure off both of you and let him be v and he may choose to go back later.

I’m just going add - please don’t rely on school to teach your child to swim. It’s not going to happen unless your school has a pool. Swimming is a tiny part of the curriculum, they get 1 terms worth of swimming. Thats it for the whole of primary school.

Why are you forcing the issue? Why is it so important that your son has outside activities after school? Some children love lots of extra activities after school and some really don't. If you keep forcing the issue, you will push him away. He's obviously not comfortable joining in these activities, and by forcing him, all you're going to achieve is having an anxious child, who dreads going. If there's something you think he may enjoy, ask if he can go along to simply watch or have a taster session. He's only 6, there is plenty of time ahead for him to join in activities - but it should be his choice, not you pushing activities onto him.

My main frustration with swimming is that he was great in his lessons before the school holidays, then after 6 weeks off & a teacher change he suddenly doesn’t want to join in anymore. He used to love it. Just frustrating that’s all

Sounds like he might not like the new teacher - perhaps they shout a lot or have made comments. Leave it for a while and try again with a new teacher, perhaps in a smaller class. The most important thing in any group/teaching situation is whether the child has a good relationship with, or at least likes, the teacher. You can also take him swimming yourself for a while so that he continues to enjoy the water and doesn't get a thing about it.

I don't know why parents are so obsessed with their children doing activities all the time. Mine never did any at all at that age. They are at school all day so probably tired.

please don’t rely on school to teach your child to swim.
There was a thread about this the other day. Mine didn't learn at school and I couldn't afford swimming lessons or to take them all 4 can't swim.

This is one of my DG….she’s almost 6 and refuses to do any out of school activity…..she DID do swimming for a year and got to end of stage 5 and then said no more……her sibling does a few activities but not the 5 year old…..that said she has been to a dance class that is put on as part of the after school club…..and she has enjoyed this……my DD takes the view that it’s pointless forcing her if she’s not interested and to wait until she’s older and try again.

My DS was exactly the same at that age. We didn't go to parties for the whole of year 1 because he cried throughout all of them, cried during all his swimming lessons, refused to do any extra curricular activities etc. He only started doing things at 8. Now, at 16 I haven't seen him all weekend as he's spent every day out with his mates and is a competitive fencer and is doing his lifeguards training!

Clubs are optional. I would give you on them up until he's ready. Many kids only want to do activities with friends they already have (eg from school) so might find one to go with along with a friend at some point. It's scary going to new things on your own, he's not alone in feeling that way.

Not everyone is a joiner. I still hate organised fun now, but get to choose to avoid as I am an adult. Let him find his own path and interests. He might even surprise you with what he does instead.

Why the pressure? He is tiny, he has school and needs chill weekend they're all different.

All very true and thanks so much for the reassurance everyone x

Leave him be

He hasn't failed at anything - he just doesn't want to participate

Your language is negative and probably affecting your son

It's glaringly obvious that albeit he likes the things he's participated in, the social structure involved with those things is too much for him. Please try and engage with this emotions.

Don’t feel bad that you’re letting him stop stuff. Don’t get sucked in to thinking that you’re not giving him the same opportunities as the parents of those that have something every night. Comparison is the thief of joy.

Well done for listening to him.

He is so little still, and I bet he will want to do something when he’s older. There’s so much time.

And it doesn’t matter if he never takes up anything extra-curricular as a child. I was a very busy child. So is my daughter. My husband never did any organised activities after-school. He’s an introvert and very much needs time alone to recover from social interaction. Even now, if we meet up with people, he needs to hibernate for a short while to recharge. He says that he needed the downtime to recover from school. He is palpably a very different character to me and my daughter. We draw energy from interaction and learning new skills. We are restless and always bustling around. He is our calm, still centre.

He’s a lovely and well-adjusted adult. He hasn’t had issues developing team-working skills, or resilience or an ability to listen, or any of the host of things that I think my hobbies afforded me. He’s interesting and he is interested. Not having an arm’s-length of addition stuff to put on his UCAS form didn’t harm him when applying to university at all - he had his choice of course, at one of the most traditionally prestigious universities and obtained industry sponsorship for it.

He did no extra-curricular activity until just before COVID. He decided to take up a less-mainstream sport, and this year (at the grand old age of 50), he’s just achieved a county record score, and wasn’t far off the national record.

I mention this because your little boy might find what he wants to do later. It might be very much later. It might be never at all. But it will be OK. Please don’t be stressed that he is not doing things now.

I would also add (perhaps seemingly in contradiction to what I have just written) that I agree that swimming is a non-negotiable life skill.

If he’s really resistant, than maybe just take him yourselves at weekends and try again when he’s older. My daughter’s friend never clicked with a number of different swim schools until they started mandatory swimming at school. She was in the bottom group, and that gave her the motivation to try again with swimming classes as she was used to be top at everything (again, a different sort of character).

However, if he loved swimming beforehand, and it’s the change in swimming group that’s caused him the issue, is it worth seeing if he can switch to a different day (assuming that will be a different group of children and a different teacher)?

My daughter, to my great surprise as she is always game for everything, started refusing to go through when she went up a group. I think she was at a similar age. Her pre-COVID swim school had stopped and she moved to the council pool without any problem. The move up she had issues with was moving up from the first group at the council pool. When I asked her what it was, she kept saying the bigger kids. The children sit poolside for a few minutes before the lesson began, and I think that she might have wandered up to a couple of older children to say hello and got rebuffed in a less kind fashion. I took the same approach that you have already tried of letting her sit with me and then go in later, which she always did. Fortunately for me, it worked. She was moved up again quite soon, and never had a problem since. We never did find out exactly what the problem was, so it could just have been a combination of leaving a familiar safe group and then having one unpleasant experience at the start of the next group.

So maybe there are factors about this swimming class that are the impediment, and a change in day might solve this?

My DS really struggled with extra curricular classes particularly sports when he was little. We switched to a small private pool for swimming lessons and he did really well there. If his little sister was with him, he was generally fine, but didn't want to go without her which I was aware put pressure on her. He loved cubs and scouts and came into his own there. Go gently with him. I know how frustrating it can be, but you don't want him to feel miserable or a failure.

School is maybe enough for him just now. I would do as others have suggested - take him swimming with a family member and same with football. Kick around in the park/garden. He may or may not grow out of this but is clearly not ready.

My children hated swimming lessons and I think that's quite common. It's quite scary and can be cold and boring. I used to take them all the time for fun swimming with me instead and then when they were a bit older they did booster lessons in the holidays. They are both great swimmers and my oldest swims competitively now.