The ADHD brain needs exercise even more than the neurotypical brain. We all understand the value of exercise but finding a way of making it part of our daily lives is really challenging. This is even more true if you haven’t found an exercise you enjoy or were not exposed to a wide variety of possibilities when you were younger. It’s very difficult to convince your child to be “sporty” if you have no interest yourself.
However, one study did find that 30 minutes activity for children is worth one hour of classroom learning for their development. You’re probably already aware that if your child gets to spend some physical energy, it can help him to go to sleep quicker or help your daughter be able to focus more on what she needs to get done.
Australia society puts focus on getting our kids into sports. There are common sports like AFL, soccer, netball, athletics, basketball which are played in primary schools. There are activities which have an exercise component such as dancing, gymnastics, trampolining and martial arts. There are lone sports such as boxing, sailing, tennis, surfing, or canoeing to mention just a few. But as is often the case for children with ADHD, they lose interest quickly and then as a parent, you’re left wondering what’s the best thing to do.
I wanted to share my experience of our trials and experiments with our boys and the various activities they were involved in during school. They are now 19 and 17, so our influence is very small at this stage and I’m happy to say they are still active. This was our experience as a family, told with benefit of hindsight and a deep knowledge of ADHD and it’s impact.
Our starting point as parents was, we do both enjoy being active and my husband had played rugby union in his twenties and had a passion for sailing since a small boy. I never found any one sport but loved trying new activities. This definitely gave us an advantage of being able to push through when it got tough. I firmly believe in the value of exercise to keep us mentally healthy and there are realms of research to back this up.
We started in some traditional sports of T-ball in summer and rugby union in winter when they were in primary school. Both sports lasted for several years (maybe 4/5) throughout primary school. I think it taught them about being part of a team, how to persevere when they didn’t want to go and some basic ball skills. Both boys dropped Rugby when they got to high school. T-ball had been dropped some years before. I think for both of them, the emphasis on being the best put them off. This element makes me sad as I think it puts our children off just taking part. As a parent, I mostly enjoyed watching them learn new skills and make some new friends (not that any friendship lasted past the sport!).
From a private point of view, we introduced them to sailing, cycling, hiking, and had a trampoline in the garden for years. The trampoline was for my sanity. I used to shoo them out there in the mornings to give myself time to think before we headed off to school. We mostly cycled to school as I discovered quickly that once on the bikes, it was calm and a lovely way to travel to school. It worked equally well after school when they are over life and had little capacity at the end of a school day. Cycling home gave them opportunity to expend some energy and possibly helped emotional regulation. In fact when they moved to independently cycling to school, I missed the daily exercise myself and had to find a replacement. I hadn’t realised I was doing HIT (High interval training) trying to keep up with two very fit fast boys!
We always took holidays which involved some form of activity when they were in Primary school. We went camping and hiked and cycled and kayaked in WA. In upper Primary school, we were fortunate to be able to introduce them to snow skiing. They took to it quickly and by the second week, my sons were more proficient than I was which was difficult to accept (I had skied for ten years in my twenties)!!
There were some great opportunities in the small community Primary school also. My oldest discovered in year 3 that he was the fast runner in his year. This skill saved his self-esteem many times when he was grappling with academic challenges due to his dyslexia and ADHD. I was able to use this strength to explain that not everyone is good at everything and that the friend beside him who found reading and writing easy just wasn’t as fast as him running. It gave me opportunities to point out the hard evidence of this fact. He blossomed in athletics and cross country in upper primary school, and it gave him success and self-esteem. This self-esteem translated into trying new sports in year 6 like AFL and soccer and for one term, he enjoyed some success as part of a soccer team which was so lovely to witness.
Obviously, swimming is a core part of the curriculum in Australian Primary schools, so I worked hard to ensure he was keeping up with his peers. This meant doing summer holiday swimming, but the beach swimming was a fantastic life skill for them to learn for their adult lives. I shamelessly used his fear of not being in the same group as his friends to motivate him to go to summer beach swimming lessons. It worked and now I’m very confident about him heading off to the beach with mates as a young adult.
Keeping our children active does become more challenging in high school. The system is not set up to accommodate children who have not found a “team” sport they like or an individual sport they are excelling at. As a society, we value sports but don’t provide sufficient opportunities for children just to take part. Obviously, some schools and communities do this better than others. My boys have found participating in school sports challenging since they went to High School. My son’s running ability wasn’t as prominent when competing with 200 versus 20. He became discouraged quickly and stopped trying. In year 7, he tried one of two new activities but quickly became discouraged.
Our saving grace was the private sports we had been involved in. They were still keen to cycle, hike, ski (although this was limited due to finances & covid!) and loved sailing. The sailing has really stuck with both boys as a passion. They have now both evolved to wind surfing and my youngest is totally addicted to speed on a wind foil. (Picture above) I’m hoping that this is a sport that they will have for life and be able to do around adult life. We are living in Perth, the most amazing places to enjoy water sports.
My 5 top tips for getting your child engaged in an activity.
- Find an activity that you can at least enjoy watching if not participate in. If you can participate by coaching or team managing, do it.
- Tap into variety. Try anything your child might enjoy but do talk about committing to at least one full term before dropping it. Connect going and sticking at it to an instant reward when they are young. You may need to do this until they learn the value of commitment for themselves.
- Don’t listen to society expectations. It’s ok for your child to not play a team sport if they hate it. You are teaching them a life skill about being active, so it doesn’t matter how they learn it.
- Coaches in sport can be wonderful mentors for your child. Follow the coach if you find someone your child connects with.
- It does require enormous time and effort to keep your child engaged so check in to your own values about the importance of activity. If you don’t deeply believe it, you will struggle to persist.
If you would like to chat about how I can support you in raising your child with ADHD, email me email hidden; JavaScript is required.
Recent Comments