I think to thrive with adhd he needs to do a sport he enjoys. The focus and attention are like night and day watching my now 13yo on the basketball court or soccer field vs doing something she doesn’t enjoy.
Then you also need something for his gross motor delays which is a separate need.
I’d keep up with the swimming and take him to playgrounds a lot too, free play on structures with other kids will help him without feeling like work. Bike riding and kicking a ball around in the back yard are good too.
For the other organized sports I would try different things at his age and see what he enjoys. What he enjoys he will stick with.

There’s no one size fits all approach. What does he want to do? My son has a motor planning disorder. He was very clumsy and I was anxious about letting him play team sports. To my surprise, he enjoyed it greatly and put in a ton of work to improve. I didn’t think he’d be capable of much improvement but he was. He played soccer and baseball on rec teams. Later, he went all in on soccer and enjoyed many years of travel soccer (I never would have dreamed it!). I’m so glad that DH convinced me to let him try. There were many kids with ADHD on his teams over the years. Some kids with ADHD can hyperfocus on activities of interest and it actually is a plus (my DD has ADHD). We were encouraged to try swim lessons when he was young but even with a private instructor with lots of experience with SN, he never made much progress except to reduce the risk he’d drown. So you just never know what kids will find challenging or excel at. I’d ask him what interests him and let him at least try. It’s one short rec season if he tries a team sport.

Anonymous wrote:Our DS with significant ADHD was quite similar to yours at that age. The two sports that were gamechangers for him were swimming and Tae Kwon Do. He now does multiple sports and his coordination has come such a long way with medication and lots of practice.

It's great that your son has started swimming. If you belong to a pool, summer swim is a particularly fun way to get introduced competitive swimming and low pressure. My son is never better regulated and more peaceful than after a good swim practice!

TKD emphasizes many of the things you're worried about including coordination and self esteem. It helped my DS to gain some impulse control and body awareness. He loved that he had a clear goal of working toward the next belt and was only competing with himself. He has had to move on because baseball and swimming take up most of his time now but the foundation from several years of TKD is still apparent and I hope he will go back someday. Highly recommend Flying Kick in Bethesda. Master A is wonderful with kids like ours!

I was going to recommend TKD as well. Our 8yo son with speech and social/emotional delays and ADHD has thrived in TKD and it has given him so much confidence. I credit much of our experience to the studio we go to, InCourage Martial Arts in Fairfax. All of the masters there are wonderful and meet the kids where they are.

One ADHD kid (combined type) played soccer PK- college club team. He needed an activity that was go go go (ie. flag football/t ball was too slow for him (too much downtime setting up the plays.) He also swam 7y-college club. Martial arts was a disaster for my hyper kid.

Other ADHD kid (inattentive type) hated soccer but swims competitively. I prefers the solo sport that is part of a team.

Martial arts

Our DS with significant ADHD was quite similar to yours at that age. The two sports that were gamechangers for him were swimming and Tae Kwon Do. He now does multiple sports and his coordination has come such a long way with medication and lots of practice.

It's great that your son has started swimming. If you belong to a pool, summer swim is a particularly fun way to get introduced competitive swimming and low pressure. My son is never better regulated and more peaceful than after a good swim practice!

TKD emphasizes many of the things you're worried about including coordination and self esteem. It helped my DS to gain some impulse control and body awareness. He loved that he had a clear goal of working toward the next belt and was only competing with himself. He has had to move on because baseball and swimming take up most of his time now but the foundation from several years of TKD is still apparent and I hope he will go back someday. Highly recommend Flying Kick in Bethesda. Master A is wonderful with kids like ours!

Echoing some other comments here, the team sports can be hard for an ADHD kid, especially if they miss a play and the teammates are vocal in their disappointment, which can be difficult socially and emotionally. Our developmental pediatrician advised us to go for individual sports, of which there are many. Swimming, tennis, horseback, biking, running, fencing, martial arts, dance, etc. etc. Anything that boosts the confidence!!

wrestling is an amazing sport for adhd kids. if in moco a few of the local high schools have wrestling clubs for the elementary and middle school kids.

Mine tried a lot of sports and ended up doing the ones he liked, not necessarily the ones that he showed natural talent, but if I were to go back in time, knowing what I know now, I would focus on sports that don't require strong spatial awareness or multitasking, so for us it would have been swimming, tennis, gymnastics, martial arts, ski racing or any other skiing discipline.

Tumbling is a good option. If you are local, Silver Stars in Silver Spring has classes and a team.

My son with AuDHD do soccer and basketball. He is not good, but he has fun on the team. There are mild conflicts at a few occasion, but all parents try to promote team spirit/sportsmanship and cheer for every little success. I don't know if he drives the coach nuts but he is still playing team sports. He sucks, so he sits on bench or standby sometimes. He does not seem to mind as long as he feels that he has fun. My another kid with AuDHD does not listen and probably drives coach or instructor nut on any team sport or group lessons. She just wanders around and does her own things.

Can he ride a bike? I have a 6 yo with mild cp but he is a great bike rider and does cyclocross races in the fall. They are untimed/just for fun and cyclists have a great and inclusive community. He is now starting rec climbing for the spring which seems to have a similar community.

My adhd/social anxiety 8th grade dd does NICA mountain bike racing. You can start that in 6th grade (it is a national league). So you have a ways to go, but that has connected us to a whole network of bike people, which we are not (or I guess, were not). But they plan trail clean ups and fun rides and charity rides and all sorts of things -once we got plugged into that community there were have been lots of ways for my kids to participate in things and find community. The coaches are also amazing- they worked one on one with my dd in 7th grade (when she started), since she was the worst on the team. It was a sport totally new to our family, and she is pretty timid by nature. But then this past year, she made a podium finish in one of her races and won a team award and she can do basic bike repairs. It has also made for a great friend network.

Can he run?

My kid with severe ADHD had a really tough time with team sports or even sports where anyone had to count on him. Individual sports like gymnastics kind of worked but he drove the coaches nuts even though he was really good.

I am looking for suggestions for a sport for my DS, who is 7. He has severe ADHD and a social skills delay. He is medicated and does great all day in school (we are incredibly lucky the medication works well for him) but he is definitely behind in the way he engages with peers. He had a language delay, whcih explains some of this. He doesn't quite meet the criteria for an autism diagnosis but it is reasonable to think that is part of the picture, at least for thinking about how he presents.

I would really like to get him into some kind of physical activity. He is on the small side and has some gross motor coordination issues so we have avoided team sports. He is in swim lessons and I hope he can eventually do swim team, but he is not quite there yet. Any suggestions for another sport that might be good for a kid with this profile? The big struggle is, in our neighborhood at least, kids his age are getting serious about sports (already..) so something like soccer or baseball could go really poorly and harm his confidence. Thanks in advance.