Dear Dr. Debbie,
We signed up our four-year-old for soccer. After the first week he wants to quit. He complained that the practice and the game were too long. (From my perspective on the bleachers, the first practice looked disorganized.)
Do we stick it out and hope for an improved attitude?
Maybe a Soccer Mom
Dear MSM,
Four-years-old is a bit young for commitment as well as other skills and motivations that would make this a solidly enjoyable activity.
Child Development
A typical four-year-old is learning how to interact with up to four playmates at a time. One is the accepted “leader” who directs the others along the theme of their pretend play (or block building) and the parts in the cooperative venture that each child is to play. If a child finds these compatible playmates, they could happily play together for an hour or more. Ask any preschool teacher how long they can expect to hold the attention of the entire group for an adult-led activity and it’s definitely not an hour. Activities for preschoolers are broken up into short segments, varying whole group, small group, and individual (one-on-one with an adult) activities.
Around age five, children widen their social awareness to the whole class. A five-year-old will learn every child’s name, and be able to name children who are absent that day. At this age they accept the importance of class rules that help everyone be safe and happy.
Moving past age six, a child gains the ability to be okay that someone else is the line leader, better speller, better artist, or winner of a race across the playground. Competition is not well handled younger than age seven which is when a child is able to take the perspective of another person, and for a moment, value this perspective more than his own. ‘He must be so proud of himself for winning.”
Commitment to the Team
The first “team” a child is a member of is his family. The best way to help a child acquire a sense of commitment to this team is to prove to him that he is valuable to it. This can be achieved with housework, gardening, grocery shopping, family decision-making, and other tasks that match his ability levels. For example, as an infant, his “job” can be to turn light switches on and off as you enter and leave a room with him in your arms.
A toddler can toss clothes into laundry baskets (an adult has to control the parameters of whether it’s dirty clothes or clean clothes). A preschooler can help with putting groceries away – again, sticking to his ability levels for being able to determine where each item goes, or just placing the can of soup you hand him onto the soup shelf in the pantry.
A beginning reader can help to read you the items on the shopping list as you shop together. A beginning writer can use their creative spelling to help you write the list.
As mentioned above, being able to feel a commitment to team members and coaches will come around age seven when a child is able to imagine, and act upon, the needs and feelings of others. Prior to this milestone of social-emotional development, your child pleases you because it pleases him to see you pleased.
By the way, he’s far too young to appreciate the commitment of your having paid for his ssoccer team membership. Budgetary decisions need to take into consideration the nature of children which includes changing their minds after the realities of an activity they’ve agreed to sinks in.
Social
A strong motivation for parents to sign a child up for sports is the social experiences it provides. Developmentally, however, at age four, a child is really only up to socializing well within a group of four playmates. You can easily arrange some playdates with individual children your child knows from school or the neighborhood, perhaps moving up to multiple children for meet-ups at a park, playground, age-appropriate library program, or the children’s museum.
Sports leagues also give parents opportunities for making friends. In lieu of committing to a sport for a season, develop your parent peer network through your child’s school, your faith-based organization, or a community network of parents. There are plenty of parents with four-year-olds out there that could benefit your family with long lasting friendships.
Exercise
Instead of a twice weekly commitment to a practice and a game, look for other ways to assure your child’s growing body of regular exercise. You could even take a soccer ball out to your yard or a park and kick it back and forth, work on passing, and set up cones or other markers to practice dribbling around obstacles on the field.
Other forms of exercise include: playground time, walking through a zoo or the National Aquarium or just your neighborhood, getting practice on his balance bike at a high school track (when the student athletes aren’t using it), putting on music to dance to, family time at an indoor pool, or registering him for a four-year-old class for dance, tumbling or gymnastics that is, at most, 45 minutes long.
Understand your reasons for putting a soccer team in your child’s life. Use those same reasons to replace team soccer with more age-appropriate activities.
Dr. Debbie
Deborah Wood, Ph.D. is a child development specialist www.drdebbiewood.com and founding director of Chesapeake Children’s Museum www.theccm.org.
The museum is open daily from 10 am to 4 pm. Online reservations are available https://www.theccm.org/event-details/purchase-tickets-in-advance or call: 410-990-1993. Each Thursday there is a guided nature walk at 10:30 am. Art and Story Times with Mrs. Spears and Puppy the Puppet are on Monday mornings at 10:30 am.
On Saturday, September 28, the museum is hosting a FREE event for the Worldwide Day of Play with activities from Native America, west Africa, and Latin America.
Read more of Dr. Wood’s Good Parenting columns by clicking here.
