Our 6 year old daughter has always been involved in extracurricular activities. Most recently she has been in soccer, swimming and ice skating classes. These were all activities that she originally came to us to ask to join.
The problem is she eventually always looks to quit these activities. I think part of the problem is that she is naturally athletic and tends to do very well with little effort in learning. In soccer she has been in leagues with boys and girls-only and she is always one of the top scorers in the league.
In swimming and ice skating she is doing well, but is convinced that she knows everything there is to know already so she wants to quit because she feels she's already learned everything. She talks about quitting soccer because she hates practice and also feels like she has to do all the work for the rest of the team.
We're not sure how to address these things. We also do other things for her like summer camps, cooking classes etc. and there isn't any replacement that she is interested in. Swimming lessons are non-negotiable since it is a safety issue and she goes swimming very frequently and needs to know how to be safe. For soccer and ice skating I feel it would be disappointing to stop since she does have natural talent and enjoys each sport, she just doesn't always have the attention span for the learning parts. She has some sensory issues and is going to OT for that, but over time she has grown out of many of her issues. She's not the best listener at school either because it is "boring" to her.
It's time to sign up for the new soccer season and I would like to sign her up again. It will be a new league and I hope that she will know some people there from school. I think she has more fun when she knows some of the other kids, which usually hasn't been the case. She is still in ice skating at the moment and is having trouble listening in class. I think part of that is there are other kids who do everything much slower and she is waiting around and gets bored then loses focus on the instructor (as well as thinking she knows everything already).
Any thoughts on encouraging her? I don't want her to be someone who always quits something the second something isn't exciting every moment. We always tell her how hard work pays off and that she can be the best ice skater if she sticks with it (we sometimes appeal to her competitive side) but we can't convince her that there is more to learn. I think she would be more interested if she knows there are exciting things to learn in the future. I'm not sure if this is related to her sensory issues or if it is something we can "convince" her (we're not trying to manipulate her).
Unfortunately, if she didn't have these specific activities (which are at different points in time) she wouldn't have an alternative activity to do except play at home, which of course is not bad but isn't her preference either. For the record, we don't overload her with activities and also don't just let her come home and watch TV for 5 hours. We'll turn the TV off and let her play with her younger sister.
Submitted February 01, 2017 at 11:15AM by dewalt288 http://ift.tt/2ksacmR
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