Anonymous wrote:My 14 year old son has one one-hour after school activity and that's it. There's no activity he shows any interest in. He's not into sports (has tried quite a few but hasn't had the aptitude), he's tried various musical instruments but gave up after a couple years. He's a good student, reads a lot, is on his phone a lot and that's about it. I know he's bored quite a bit of the time. Anyone else in this situation? Or have ideas on how I can encourage him to do more/ how to find something he might actually like?

I have an 11 yo who is like that and I am giving him and myself a break - it was torture driving him somewhere he didn't want to be.
I am just waiting for a good opportunity. In the summer he will take some swim lessons that are cheap and logistically convenient and will do a sort of summer enrichment school. I am letting him be for right now.

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Anonymous wrote:This is not acceptable in our house. Each kid must do at least one weekly activity for their brain and one for their body. Either they choose or we choose for them.

What activity are you having them do for their body if they're not good at sports? And do you get endless complaining? I guess I need to get better at ignoring that.

DP. Okay. Let's turn that around, then. What activities do you and your husband do each week? How are you modeling what you want your son to do? How are you showing him what you expect from him?

This is hard. I hear you. .

What do his friends do? My kids are far more likely to join a sport or activity with a friend.

How about cross country/track & field? Would he have any interest in those? At many schools those teams are no-cut.

Martial arts? Golf?

Anonymous wrote:My nephew was like your son, OP, and his Mom kept having him participate in sports, even though he hated them. Eventually they put him in fencing and he loved it. I think it's less athletic and more of a mental game. My nephew found his people there and really exceled at it. Maybe try that out?

My DS fenced for 5-6 yrs. I also thought it wasn't as athletic as other sports until I tried it. I was wrong! I run marathons but fencing left me breathless and dripping in sweat from head to toe. What a workout!

I get what it's like to have the activity-resistant teen. And, with some kids it is counter productive to "require" a team sport or other group activity since it's unfair to the rest of the group to foist an uncooperative/angry kid on them.

However, we do require physical activity which can include going to the gym after school or running or biking on your own. I also +1 the earlier suggestion of fencing if he's open to it. My DD absolutely refused to do sports when she was little but then asked to try something in the 4th grade. Her requirements were not a team sport and not something everyone else has been doing for years. The fencing class was ages 9+ and she was 9 so she tried that and ended up really liking it and stuck with it for several years until the time demands on HS+a time consuming school activity meant she couldn't do both.

DS is my activity-resistant one. Beyond the gym activity, I told DS he had to do one at-school thing in HS. He tried a couple clubs that he didn't like and then settled on stage crew with theater. It's seems to have some good camaraderie.

We also had a family volunteer activity we did together starting when he was in 6th grade so he kept that up once a month until it was cancelled by COVID. Despite his never talking about it, it turned out to be pretty important to him and he drew from it in his college application essays.

He's generally a happy kid, good friends, did well in school but not a joiner. His activities list for college included the stints of stage crew, his volunteer work, summer jobs, pick-up sports with friends. He got into the colleges he wanted to get into. And, so far, he's continuing his non-joiner ways there. But, still has friends and is doing well. He is who he is.

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Anonymous wrote:Also when did activities become some sort of childhood necessity? I didn't grow up with many kids who did activities.

It was a thing even when I was a child in the 80s. My sister was a cheerleader, I played softball, we both played musical instruments.

Same. I was a child in the 70s. My siblings and I all had music lessons, I briefly played soccer but my brother and sister did it longer + softball/baseball and brother did flag football briefly before really getting into martial arts. We did clubs at school. Played instruments in middle-high school band. Our friends all did the same. But there was not the option to do things at such an intense level as now. You did soccer in the Fall and then softball/baseball in the Spring. No year-round training in one sport with travel clubs.

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Anonymous wrote:This is not acceptable in our house. Each kid must do at least one weekly activity for their brain and one for their body. Either they choose or we choose for them.

What activity are you having them do for their body if they're not good at sports? And do you get endless complaining? I guess I need to get better at ignoring that.

Not PP but my children are required to be in a sport every season regardless of their skill.

Yuck.

Works for us. You don’t have to be “good at sports” to enjoy them.

+1

And to be healthy.

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Anonymous wrote:Also when did activities become some sort of childhood necessity? I didn't grow up with many kids who did activities.

Me too. There was zero activities after school, but I grew up in Eastern Europe. We just played with neighboorhood kids. We all grew up pretty smart and successful.

I would love my kids to have a pack of neighborhood kids readily available to play at all times, like I had as a kid. But that’s just not the reality of suburban life anymore. Every so often enough boys are around for pick up basketball at the park, for example, but it’s not something we can count on doing every day. Times are different whether we like it or not.

Agree. This is true in the summer too. I SAH and pictured this type of childhood for my children but have been forced enroll them in camps and activities due to the fact that neighborhood children are hardly ever home. It’s sad but I have no control over it.

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Anonymous wrote:Also when did activities become some sort of childhood necessity? I didn't grow up with many kids who did activities.

Me too. There was zero activities after school, but I grew up in Eastern Europe. We just played with neighboorhood kids. We all grew up pretty smart and successful.

I would love my kids to have a pack of neighborhood kids readily available to play at all times, like I had as a kid. But that’s just not the reality of suburban life anymore. Every so often enough boys are around for pick up basketball at the park, for example, but it’s not something we can count on doing every day. Times are different whether we like it or not.

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is not acceptable in our house. Each kid must do at least one weekly activity for their brain and one for their body. Either they choose or we choose for them.

What activity are you having them do for their body if they're not good at sports? And do you get endless complaining? I guess I need to get better at ignoring that.

Not PP but my children are required to be in a sport every season regardless of their skill.

Yuck.

Works for us. You don’t have to be “good at sports” to enjoy them.

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is not acceptable in our house. Each kid must do at least one weekly activity for their brain and one for their body. Either they choose or we choose for them.

What activity are you having them do for their body if they're not good at sports? And do you get endless complaining? I guess I need to get better at ignoring that.

Not PP but my children are required to be in a sport every season regardless of their skill.

In high school? I think high school rec sports are harder to find.

OP, what is the one activity? Could you build off that? What about a job?

Most suburban rec league go through high school and are popular because it is so hard to make a sport for a high school team.

Some parents push their kids hard and some don't. When do you stop pushing? Are those kids going to blame you in the future for pushing more or were too lenient.

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Anonymous wrote:Also when did activities become some sort of childhood necessity? I didn't grow up with many kids who did activities.

1. When fewer kids were available for playing after school
2. When college admissions changed and then again when the volume was cranked up

3. When people wished their parents had done better.

I agree with this, actually. My parents never pushed me to stick with any activities and I regret that I didn't participate in any sports as a child. I'll continue to encourage my kids to try new things.

I have one kid that said No to everything so we keep her going in a couple things at all time.

And the other kid wants to do everything, every sport. Both are girls.

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Also when did activities become some sort of childhood necessity? I didn't grow up with many kids who did activities.

1. When fewer kids were available for playing after school
2. When college admissions changed and then again when the volume was cranked up

3. When people wished their parents had done better.

What do you mean by that?

NP. My mother had anxiety and didn’t want to drive us anywhere for practices. So even tho my gym teacher told her I was better or faster than the boys at sports or activities, and I played soccer daily at recess w the boys and one girl, and Red Cross swim stoke lesson instructor said I was a natural and to look into club swim team, she did nothing.

I started sports in late middle school but basketball was only offered and the team was comprised of kids who played elsewhere, at least in a ymca team. And High school I could walk on to some fall and spring sports but I was shocked that some kids had had tennis lessons before 9th grade and were quite good.

Oh well. I do triathlons now and martial arts, but I would have loved to play a team sport with running. Or been pushed more by my parents. My brother played a ton of baseball and travel. And swam and ran (as did I in Hs because less technical skills to learn), and his best friend was the soccer captain and gave him private lessons for free and he came up that curve.

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Anonymous wrote:Also when did activities become some sort of childhood necessity? I didn't grow up with many kids who did activities.

Me too. There was zero activities after school, but I grew up in Eastern Europe. We just played with neighboorhood kids. We all grew up pretty smart and successful.

And you spend your evenings here...

I'm not the same poster, but that seems really offensive. You do realize that there are kids who can't do activities regardless if they want to or not.

DP. True, but 20:36’s tone was dismissive.

If your talking about me saying that some kids can't do activities at all, I don't understand how that's dismissive? I wasn't trying to be.

You’re not 20:36.