Reply to Inattentive ADHD and Team Sports

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]I'm starting to feel like we're wasting our time and money on DC's sport, because no matter how fast and technically competent they are, slow processing speed plus inattentiveness seem like insurmountable obstacles in team sports. DC is already medicated and playing at a high level but puts in a ton of extra time with private skills lessons to keep up. Does anyone have a success story in a sport like soccer, hockey, lacrosse or basketball? For example, an athletic kid who struggled with inattentive ADHD but still managed to play a team sport in college? Would a sports psychologist with experience in this area help?[/quote]

Whose interest is this sport?   It sounds like my son is younger (he is 14), but he has combined type ADHD, and is fairly successful in travel soccer - because he's highly interested in it.  If he weren't, he would definitely not be able to be successful.[/quote]

DC is the one interested in the sport, and is younger than your son.  I unsuccessfully tried to push DC toward individual sports like tennis and swimming because they seemed better suited.  We spend a lot of time and money supporting DC's sport - things like regular private lessons (because learning in a group is a challenge), and driving all over the place for training, camps and tournaments, and to what end?  Some days I think DC's best hope is a successful high school career, or maybe playing at the club level in college, both of which are great, but if that's the case, I think I could pull way back on all the extra stuff that we're doing to keep up with DC's current level of play.  All this said, DC really likes all the extra training - I'm the one that is burning out.  [/quote]

I think that investing in sports at any age on the off chance that it will pay off in college is a mistake.

At the same time, if I had a kid, particularly a kid with a disability, who was busy with a healthy activity they loved, then I'd think hard about giving that up.  It's really common for kids with this diagnosis to struggle in high school, and stopping something he loves because he's not in the top 2% seems like it could be really hurtful.

Could you rethink your goals.  Maybe your goal is for him to be happy, and active, and busy, and have a strong body, and strong self esteem, and social connections?  Then, provide whatever level of support you think those goals warrant?  [/quote]

OP again. Of course I agree and we would never take away the sport.   I do think that redefining our goals would lead me to discourage DC from playing on a travel team that requires a lot of travel time to get to practices and costs us so many weekends to tournaments, and we could cut back on the amount of extra lessons we're doing and get our evenings evenings back.  If inattentive ADHD is a barrier we can't work around and no matter what we do and DC is unlikely to [b]play this sport at least through college[/b], then it feels like the sacrifices to play at the current level are futile and we should try to shift our and DC's approach to the sport going forward.  [/quote]

Lacrosse parent - keep in mind most travel sport athletes won’t make it through college sport in general, unless you mean just at college club level. Like PP said, that really shouldn’t be your goal.

I wonder if you are seriously underestimating how hard it is to be a recruited college athlete much less to play all four years.

I’ll add that ADHD has definitely made the travel component harder for us.  We work through it because my son loves his sport, but the sleep and schedule disruption is harder for him, absolutely.

[/quote]

OP here. Yes, thanks, we have direct experience with college sports.  I also appreciate the benefit of playing a sport for the values it provides to kids like healthy lifestyle, social outlet, learning to be a team player, etc.  DC could get all of those benefits playing on a lower division travel team and cutting back on all the private lessons.  [/quote]

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