8 year old PDD-NOS/ADD on soccer team and not making friends

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Hi there,
My bright, beautiful boy is now playing on a soccer team, and while he enjoys the games he struggles during practice. During practices, the boys need to pair up with one another to do certain drills. My son feels bad and says "I have no friends" because he is so shy and uncertain about how to approach the other boys during the times when they need to pair up that he just stands on the sidelines.
Has anyone else dealt with this? How did you help you kids?

Have you tried talking to his coach? Maybe he can look out for your son and help him approach a partner.

My son was younger when this worked for him, but I used to script stuff like that out for him, with a couple of possibilities, and then try to get him to role-play the scripts.

So I'd say "when you want a soccer partner, you go up to the other kid and say: 'Hi, do you wanna practice with me?' and he might say yes or no. If he says no, try again with someone else. If he says yes, say 'Cool!' and then either start the drill or ask which drill he wants to do.

It helps if you go to the soccer practice and hover a bit so you can learn the actual language his teammates use for this - one of the problems with scripting is that our kids don't generalize well, so using an approximate script might make things worse (the more he sounds like one of his peers and the less he sounds like an adult, the better.)

It also might help if you can try to find times to socialize with these kids one-on-one outside of soccer practice, so they are used to him - are any of them friendly enough to invite on a playdate? If you can build it around a common interest, like a visit to a museum, or something, that might make it easier.

When he's older, have him observe other kids and try to copy them, but I'd save that step for later because you need to help him learn to generalize first so he doesn't parrot the other kids exactly.

Good luck! I think the above advice is good as well.

Hi, thanks for the advice. The coach really doesn't want us on the soccer pitch, but during practice it might be okay if we explain things a little more to him about why we want to be there. I'll try the role-playing, but it hasn't worked well in the past. I wish I could protect my boy forever

If I may ask, why didn't it work well? Is it because he refuses to try it, or is it because it doesn't work well when he tries to do it on his own?

If the former is true, you could always use a comic strip creator like this one and just write out the entire interaction a couple of different ways http://www.readwritethink.org/files/res ... index.html

If he doesn't do well copying your scripting, that's something that I'd for outside help with - is he in speech therapy for pragmatic speech? Is he in a social skills class? Explain the situation there and see if they can work with him; he might need practice with other kids.

Been there, done this.

In my humble opinion, I would consider participating in sports that can be accomplished more in an individual way, while still being on a team. Examples:

swimming
martial arts

Hi,
Thanks for the advice. I agree - we are going to try Judo after the summer break. I don't want to force him to do things that give him no pleasure and cause him anxiety, but I do want to keep him active and provide opportunities to make friends.

Sounds like you've gotten sound advice, though I would like to hear more about why scripting did not help. Scripting has been a life saver in this house and it often works, so maybe if you can tell us more about what happened when you tried it, we can help you troubleshoot.

Saw this post way back in the line and thought I would tack up a message now that my son has started soccer. He seems to enjoy it. He likes the practice part but the game play (he's the youngest one there at barely 4) is just him trying to keep up with the pack. He seems to be trying but he has either no clue what to do or is scared of doing it wrong or intimidated in the moment. When he gets in the group of kids flocking around the ball he's only tried it kick it a couple times. In reality he isn't doing the worst out there for sure, and he listens to the coaches 100%, but he doesn't seem to have a clue when left to his own devices.

My son had a great experience with soccer. While it is a team sport, the team element is not such a strong hurdle the boys can't get past it.

The coach is EVERYTHING. We always noted our son's special needs on the application, and then asked for a specific coach from among those we already knew. The one time they gave us someone else we gave it a try but had to request a transfer; the dad was just not prepared for what he was dealing with. Raising kids really does take a village, and I am forever grateful to all the amazing dads that took my son under their wing and gave him a happy soccer experience.

It is a shame my son can't play anymore. There did come a point where his lack of skill simply became a safety issue. But we rode it out longer than we had first anticipated, and he had a great time. I can't say he really made friends in the way we think of making friends, but he was usually on teams with at least one friend he already had, was accepted by his teammates and encouraged in his efforts by them, and recognized when he did well. The coaches and his existing friends would not have allowed it to be otherwise.

I coach kids sport so I simply can't understand why he's not being partnered up. If this were my team, I just say you and you and you go here. If I have an odd number of kids for partner drills (which we don't do much) I'll just make up a trio at my decision. We have the problem mostly the opposite way with kids wanting to be together that we want to keep apart (too much chatter, my son and his best friend are two of those kids).

We also have kids of wildly varying ability and temperament including one kid who I'd say has moderate-ish autism. In the first year of play I barely noticed it because all the kids had some focus issues, but it's becoming more apparent now and other kids are starting to notice. Next year when it becomes more competitive I don't know what we'll do. Our club is committed to open membership - so the only reason we ever kick kids out is because of bad behaviour of parents and it has to be pretty bad.

Yeah, I don't understand a coach that sees a kid with no partner and just lets them stand there.

This does indeed seem off to me... it seems either the coach isn't interested in making sure everyone has a partner, or something like that. I volunteered at Boys and Girls club in my local area for six months, and most activities we did involving partners had everybody with a partner. I can't remember a single activity where a student was left out unless it was explicitly their choice not to participate (very rare).

I'd suggest talking to the coach about the situation and seeing if he's interested in helping. The swimming and martial arts suggestions are also good ideas too in my opinion.

How long do you keep doing something if A) that something is only sort of working and B) interest is low.

Soccer went from fun to I want to go home for my four year old last night. He was participating all this spring but last night when A) I think he became aware that the other kids could take the ball from him at will, and B) he realized that we were watching him play he became very disappointed in his performance. I also think one of the coaches (very nicely) told him to not give up! and he took that the wrong way. We will go again to see if he gets back to being excited about it. Usually he participates, he does ok in the single drills but is aware that he is usually bringing up the rear, and essentially chases the mob of 4 year olds who are packed around the ball during the "game." But last night he tried to really join the game and dribble the ball out etc, but he lost it asap to other kids. He hid in the net as the goalie or just walked along sadly after he lost the ball 3 or 4 times. He was so sad. He kept it together but he actually apologized to me afterwards when we got home because as he said he couldn't do soccer very well. But anything I said to help him feel better he wasn't buying. He agreed to go again after remembering he had fun the other weeks. His interest was really high starting out and till last night.

I remember as a kid being forced to play baseball for example even though I couldn't hit for damn and hated it. But there I was every year. I don't want to do the same thing. But my assumption is as long as a good time is being had and nobody is causing a major distraction you just keep going?

We quit when we realized that DS was getting yelled at by the coach and by both us parents during every game (and should have quit sooner.) He simply couldn't maintain the attention, and we had no other tools to help, plus we'd switched to a soccer team that was far too competitive. He wasn't learning anything but that grownups get frustrated with kids who process information slowly, which is not a lesson I wanted him to learn, ever.

We did keep him in it for a number of years prior to the year where it all fell apart, because although he had a lot of the same frustrations you're seeing, ultimately, he seemed to enjoy himself DURING the game - and all the running in soccer was really good for him. DS, oddly, refused to ever try to make a goal but could set up a goal kick for a teammate amazingly well - one of his odd quirks. It's hard to balance the anticipation (and the crash afterwards) with the actual performance - but when the performance went, we stopped.

We have explained to DS that he needs to choose a physical activity, but that it can be one of his choosing, and we laid out a bunch of possibilities. Swimming worked for a while after soccer, except he had no interest in competitive swimming and they won't let you stay in swim classes once you've learned all the strokes. We've done some martial arts, which he liked until things got hard for him. This year in school, DS expressed an interest in ultimate frisbee and we're going to try that.

Dadenstein, since he is only four, this is a tough call. In part it may depend on who choose the activity, and in part how strong the barriers are. You DO want to teach your kids that once they've committed to something, they run the course.

I never let my kids quit midstream, but they certainly were free to never sign up again. It is a life skill, to complete your commitments. AND, that reduces the number of times they let something silly get in the way of their enjoyment; sometimes they need to dig in and figure a few things out so that they can enjoy an activity. Plus, my kids got versions of "stage fright" a lot and one of the skills they needed to learn was how to overcome that (I never pushed on that, I just didn't take them home; if that meant watching from the sidelines, so be it).

But four is really young ... We weren't facing these questions with my son in sports until he was 6.

Maybe the compromise is to take him to practice and let him watch; he decides when he wants to play?