Soccer and ADD

[Anonymous]

Great idea about the SSL hours volunteer and other advice!
Statistically speaking, every single soccer team is likely to have at least 1 kid with ADHD or ADHD-like lack of focus or impulsivity.
DC's had 3-4 such kids. Only one mom stayed. The rest dropped off. The coach was not punitive but more positive in managing issues. It was chaos but the kids enjoyed it.

[Anonymous]

Sports that force extreme focus to succeed may be useful as well. Rock climbing, surfing, skiing, maybe gymnastics - if you lose focus you fall over so it would have the effect of helping learn to focus.

[Anonymous]

OP - it sounds like you are doing a great job and have gotten good advice from PPs.

I have a friend with a kid like this. She is a single mom with an extremely challenging son who my husband has coached in the past. Keeping all of the kids active and involved is essential during a soccer practice at younger ages, but for an extreme outlier like you describe, giving him a special role might also help. The role could be anything from being part of demonstrations, helping you set up, being a team leader (always the first), keeping track of something, whatever, might help to keep him on track. I remember one year my husband had this boy in charge of retrieving balls that rolled out of bounds. He also liked being goalie (at younger rec. level) so putting him in that position kept him focused.

If that doesn't work, you can always ask another adult to help. Another parent (not the kid's parent) might have an easier time helping the kid to stay focused. Worst case scenario, have the other parent work with the kid one on one to avoid disrupting the rest of the players (or with another player), making it look like a special opportunity.

[Anonymous]

Most important thing to realize, every kid is different, even those with ADD.

So, there may be other issue here not really related to ADD at all.

My daughter has ADD and soccer can be a bit much for these kids with 22 players running around, BUT...

We've had a coach who absolutely could not stand it when she stood behind the circle of kids listening to his directions by doing toe-taps and Cruyffs with the ball.

The next coach dealt with it well. When standing still and getting instructions, she'd sometimes space out. So she'd get in the back of the line and watch what the other kids were doing. Ask the mom to see if the kid can get to the back of the line on drills in order to understand them.

Here's the best part: the coach that had good techniques with her would sometimes take her aside and repeat his instructions briefly one-on-one. He later came to me and complimented her by saying, "Once she listens, she gets it. The info is on lockdown, she knows exactly what I want, whereas the other kids forget and need to be told repeatedly." Some ADD kids are like that. Because they miss a lot, they also tend to retain info and act on it a lot longer than other kids. So it can even be a plus.

My daughter moved on to more tactical coaching as she grew older and she was able to concentrate and understand some pretty complex coaching, and the new guy didn't even know she had attention problems.

Again, this kid might be having a lot more difficulty for other reasons, so you can't generalize.

I would recommend briefly repeating drills when he doesn't get it, and also asking him to get to the back of the line and watching other kids.

As for the distractions, if he's messing with the ball like my daughter used to, I'm not sure what to say about that. Maybe a combo of asking him not to do it and/or asking other kids not to be distracted by it.

[Anonymous]

+1 About having a ball for every player.
EVERY player should have his or own ball. Then you'll have plenty left lying around.
This worked for our team which was filled with ADHD kids and balls were kicked everywhere but there was always one available for the coach to use for a demo and the ADHD kids got a work out retrieving the other ones over and over again.