Baseball? Karate? Which sports best suit an ADD child?
Coordinated, speedy and energetic, eight-year-old Jamie seemed to have all the right stuff for a stellar Little League career. But three weeks into his first season, Jamie came home in tears. "The coach is always yelling at me," he would tell his parents. "All the kids are teasing me." Which wasn't far from the truth.
Even on his prescribed dose of a psychostimulant that keeps his symptoms well under control at school, Jamie couldn't sustain the attention, focus or self-control required to be part of the team. Unable to sit still while waiting his turn at batting practice, Jamie sometimes ended up in scuffles with the other boys. Distracted by teammates and street noise, he could neither comprehend nor follow most instructions or rules. Banished to the outfield, he appeared to forget where he was as hits went flying by.
His coach used phrases such as "Wake up!" and "Earth to Jamie" to try and keep him on track. It didn't work.
"I don't know whether to force him to stay with it or give in when he wants to quit," laments Jamie's father, Keith. "In second grade, he already feels like a failure."
ADHD children like Jamie benefit from sports in many ways: For one thing, vigorous activity releases endorphins, brain chemicals that reduce stress and enhance well-being, particularly important for kids with ADHD. Sports also can help teach social skills crucial to healthy emotional development. But some sports prove so challenging for children with ADHD that these benefits get canceled out. "Little League became a huge source of stress for Jamie,"says Keith. "Not to mention a huge strain on the rest of the family."
ADDitude magazine interviewed parents, children, gym teachers, counselors and coaches to determine which of twelve summer sports are best for ADHD kids. While our list (at right) is by no means exhaustive, it provides important guidelines for matching a sport with your child.
For many children with ADHD, the most formidable opponents on the playing field are themselves. Because structure, order and lack of distraction are the keys to sports success, the very issues that plague them in the classroom may get magnified on the playing field.
"Children with ADHD have the same difficulty with sports that they have in the classroom," says Jan Seaman, Ph.D., executive director of the American Association of Active Lifestyle and Fitness, a division of the National Association of Sports and Physical Education. "They become distracted by what is around them and they will often miss instructions." Or even wander off mentally from the game.
ADHD frequently co-occurs with learning disabilities that affect organization, spatial awareness, and game concepts and strategies. So besides distractibility, other factors often hampering sports success for many ADHD kids are:
"If the dose of medication is working well, the child should be significantly less hyperactive, distractible, and impulsive," says Larry Silver, M.D., and national leader in ADD research and treatment. "Many kids on medication do so well that they do not need additional consideration."
But most experts we consulted, including Dr. Silver, agree that individual sports have it all over team sports for kids whose ADHD is less well controlled. Team contact sports are the worst.
"They have a hard time grasping the 'play system,'" explains Robert Giabardo, athletic director at Summit Camp for Youth with Attention Deficit Disorders in Honesdale, Pennsylvania. "In order to participate in a game such as football, the player must always be focused not only on his or her role in the game, but must also be aware ofthe actions and physical placement of other players at all times."
Maintaining keen focus and acute awareness is challenging for any child. For kids with ADHD, it's almost impossible. "Often they do not look around at other players and get hit or hurt during plays," Giabardo says.
"Basketball may be even worse," says Patricia Quinn, M.D., a developmental pediatrician specializing in ADHD at the Pediatric Development Center in Washington DC. "They have to learn the plays, anticipate moves, and strategize. These are exactly the things people with ADHD don't do well."
Giabardo agrees. "They have trouble understanding zones and how defense works. ADHD children just want to get the ball and dribble it. And they get frustrated because basketball requires the player to exercise several skills at one time, such as jumping, passing, dribbling and running."
"So they keep the ball and do all the shooting, or they're in the wrong place at the wrong time," says Quinn, who has watched many a painful scene from the sidelines. "People are yelling at them. The other parents start telling teammates to keep the ball away from the ADHD kid. It's terribly deflating, exactly the opposite experience you'd want your ADHD child to have."
As a general rule, children with ADHD do better when they get plenty of individual attention from coaches. That's why they're more likely to succeed with individual sports such as swimming and diving, wrestling, martial arts,and tennis - or even more rarified endeavors such as fencing and horseback riding. "It's easier for ADHD children to focus when they have that one-on-one with their coach," says Giabardo.
Even though these sports themselves may be "individual," ADHD children still derive many of the social benefits of being on a team because they're frequently taught in groups with other kids. "In the case of swimming, wrestling and tennis they often are on teams," says Quinn. "It's just that the effort and instruction are individual."
Even so, individual sports are not for every ADHD child. The volatile youngster who is prone to outbursts and fits when under pressure may be better off on a team, as long as the coach can monitor strictly sportsmanship and behavior. "In individual sports all the pressure is on the individual," says Giabardo. "In team sports, they can get lost in the group."
The team situation also enables such a child to spread the guilt for a loss over the group, not just on him or herself - which is acceptable as long the child understands his or her role in the loss, and doesn't verbally blame or abuse teammates. Which means parents need to be closely involved.
In fact, parents are the key to sports success for most ADHD kids, particularly when they're young and selecting activities to pursue. "You have to work at seeking out what your kids are good at, what they're interested in, and what fits their personality," says Quinn. "There's no one formula because no two ADHD kids are alike."
One group of activities that Quinn promotes for nearly all ADHD kids, though, are martial arts such as taekwondo. "Martial arts are all about control. You learn to control your body. The movements are smooth. There is an element of meditation (internal self control) in taekwondo." In addition, she says, teachers instruct rather than coach; when the child is shown step by step how to do something, there's little opportunity for distraction.
A lasting benefit of martial arts comes from its use of rituals such as bowing to the instructor, Quinn believes. "Rituals are good for ADHD kids because they make behavior automatic," she says. "For most of us, daily actions such as remembering to take your medicine are automatic. But without rituals such as 'every time I brush my teeth I take my medicine,' people with ADHD don't remember." Martial arts rituals can help teach kids with ADHD to accept, develop and use rituals in other areas of their lives.
Despite the pitfalls of team sports, many kids with ADHD are strongly motivated to join them for social reasons as well as athletic interest. Indeed, learning to be a part of a team is a thrilling and therapeutic experience for kids who are up to the task.
But whether they choose to pursue team or individual sports, an understanding professional coach or gym teacher who is trained to make adjustments and modifications for ADHD kids can make or break a sports experience for your child.
Modifications in team sports should be designed to keep your child active and engaged in the sport with strategies that minimize downtime and boredom. Using baseball as an example, such measures might include:
Even individual sports may require modification by coaches. Mauro Hamza, a fencing coach in Houston, Texas, employs visual cues to keep ADHD kids engaged. "When I give instructions, I always ask him to look me in the eye to make sure I've got his attention," Hamza says of one eleven-year-old with ADHD. "And if he's not looking at me, I physically take his chin in my hand and point his face at mine."
Because fencing is so intense a sport, Hamza also allows the child frequent breaks in routine. The fencing club rents space from a rec center, which enables the child to break for checkers, tv, snacks, or even an occasional ping pong game during the two hour fencing club practice. "It takes the pressure off," says Hamza. "And that way he doesn't get so frustrated."
Giabardo says individual sports that are taught in groups often require modification too. In tennis, for example, instead of having ADHD children sit around while others drill and practice, give the child a ball to practice serves and rallies while waiting his or her turn.
It's one thing to ask professionals to make these modifications. But to expect the same thing of parents who volunteer as coaches in league sports is perhaps a little unfair. To help their ADHD kids survive the season, parents frequently volunteer themselves as coaches-a plan that can work fairly well unless it leaves the other players feeling short changed. Parents probably would do much better to steer their ADHD kids toward sports thatare more appropriate in the first place.
Finally, keep in mind that ADHD children usually are about a third younger emotionally and socially than they are chronologically, which explains a lot of their troubled interactions with peers. If you can think of your eleven-year-old child as really being eight, it makes it more easy to accept and understand his or her behavior on the playing field and elsewhere.
The difference between the playing field and elsewhere, though, is that you can use the sports arena to your child's advantage by placing him or her with a younger age group, something you can't do realistically at school.
Quinn advocates holding your child back in sports by two or more years whenever possible. "Make the way smoother for them by putting them with younger children," Quinn suggests. "They'll have a chance tohang around with peers they can relate to, and to be in a position wherethey can shine."
Let the smiles begin.
Some names have been changed.