Push for academic vs push for sports

[Anonymous]

DC will be 4th grader in the fall. I am 200 percent certain that he will not be an athlete. For the last few years, I sign him up for different types of sports for social/fitness reasons, and he is still average skills. He just does it for fun, and I am fine with it. He is above average in academic without me doing anything about it. He gets in CES and compacted math. Since he is getting older and I assume there may be more school work/project, in the fall, should I do something about his academic, like signing him for math/language enrichment or do the same just pushing for sports till he starts middle school?

People tell me that elementary school is not that important, and middle school is not important and busier.

[Anonymous]

My family highly values academics but I push all three of my boys to do sports as much as possible. Sports are so good for mental health and you would be surprised how many teens and tweens have mental health issues.

Sports don't have to be competitive. For example, we all do Tae Kwon Do for fun. We also train for triathlons just for fun.

Physical activity is so important for human health, I would push it as much as possible.

[Anonymous]

I think it's important to build a base of athletic activity that can transition into adulthood. Pick things he likes, but if he's ambivalent lean towards things adults do for exercise too, e.g., tennis, cross country, swim, etc. Or team sports that build up social skills.

[Anonymous]

What does your son want to do?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What does your son want to do?

Op here. His top choice is staying home doing screentime and video games. He says that he does not mind doing a bit math enrichment, but he is the type that he needs to be reminded and pushed even though it is something that he says he loves it. He does not have much passion for anything specific yet. He does not mind doing sports but he sometimes does not want to go to practice or skip games to stay home watching screentime. Especially on super hot or rainy or pollen day, he would want to skip them. Once he is at the game/practice, he is fine. He does not know what he exactly wants to do.

[Anonymous]

Are you unhappy with the education he is receiving? Do you think there are gaps that need to be addressed? Does he want to pursue an academic subject further than he can at school? These are reasons to do academic enrichment.

On the other hand, at least in FCPS, school PE isn't really going to teach kids any actual fitness, so sports can be useful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What does your son want to do?

Op here. His top choice is staying home doing screentime and video games. He says that he does not mind doing a bit math enrichment, but he is the type that he needs to be reminded and pushed even though it is something that he says he loves it. He does not have much passion for anything specific yet. He does not mind doing sports but he sometimes does not want to go to practice or skip games to stay home watching screentime. Especially on super hot or rainy or pollen day, he would want to skip them. Once he is at the game/practice, he is fine. He does not know what he exactly wants to do.

All of us, left to our own devices, would skip things when they get hard. That's one of the benefits of sports (or academic enrichment, or playing an instrument, or doing drama, or so many other things) - learning to stick with something to achieve a goal or because it's a responsibility you committed to.

[Anonymous]

Put him in gymnastics, parkour, ninja or martial arts for general exercise and body movement. Looking back, if there had been a class called “obstacle course” when my kids were little, it would have been perfect. They just need to move their bodies, climb over things, use lower and upper body, etc when they are young.

[Anonymous]

I would definitely keep him in some of kind of sport or similar activity (such as dance or drama) with physical activity. My oldest is in HS, and while we always put academics above sports, our kids have never done outside academic enrichment (not counting stuff we do with them at home). They play sports and do well in school. Focusing on academics doesn’t need to mean extra academics outside of school (especially for an 8/9 yo) unless the kid just really wants to do it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What does your son want to do?

Op here. His top choice is staying home doing screentime and video games. He says that he does not mind doing a bit math enrichment, but he is the type that he needs to be reminded and pushed even though it is something that he says he loves it. He does not have much passion for anything specific yet. He does not mind doing sports but he sometimes does not want to go to practice or skip games to stay home watching screentime. Especially on super hot or rainy or pollen day, he would want to skip them. Once he is at the game/practice, he is fine. He does not know what he exactly wants to do.

Based on this OP, your priorities should be in the following order:
1. play dates and getting outside for unstructured time so he can develop social skills (he's in 3rd grade, don't tell me he doesn't need to develop social skills) and learn how to relax without a screen
2. sports (doesn't matter what kind)
3. music, language, or academic enrichment - as long as he buys in

[Anonymous]

I wouldn’t make a kid do competitive sports, but our family rule is that you have to move your body most days. Much easier to do that with some kind of organized activity once they get to upper ES and beyond.

[Anonymous]

have your son pick a sport to move...at least one
helps with physical activity, social, getting out of the house etc.

[Anonymous]

Sports is not the answer for most kids. It’s easy to sign up elementary school kids for sports because they are used to doing what adults tell them to do. But if you can tell the child doesn’t like it there is no point in continuing it. They will quit in middle school and have nothing to fall back on.

At this age you might want to introduce him to other types of activities. You might be surprised at what he enjoys.

[Anonymous]

Op here. Yes, he thinks screentime is relaxing because he just sits there. I am not obsessed with sports, but he needs to do some exercises for physical activity for healthy and social reason. Sign up sports without tryouts at ES age is the easiest and the cheapest way to achieve my goals. As PP say, he may give up sports in MS because he is not good enough or more self conscious. If it happens, I hope that he has other things to be replaced with. What do MS do for physical activity?

For academic, there is a group of people has asked me if DC wants to join them to practice and train for math competition route. I think they want him to enroll into something like AMC8 because they say his math level is good. It is a group of MS/HS kids that love academic and they do many competitions like debate/math/stem and take many AP classes. DC loves math but I am not sure he has enough passions to do math competition.
I want him to have happy childhood, so I still hesitate to push for academic. I feel like push for academic is equivalent to unhappy childhood from my experience.

[Anonymous]

What’s the question? One of my kids is very gifted, and in elementary school, we don’t need to do anything extra. They read on their own, are adequately challenged in the gifted program, and take art classes. I don’t have to intervene much. However, I do push sports because I want them to be fit for life. They have gravitated towards sports that require less running, like golf and tennis, which is fine.