The Youth Sports Dilemma

As a parent, I am always trying to figure out what's the right thing to do at any age. I'm afraid of pushing something on my child when he's too young and afraid of waiting too long to introduce him to things that at least some other kids his age already know.

Take sports, for example. I've seen three and three and a half year old kids play T-ball. It's a great way to learn a sport if only because it helps young children with eye-hand coordination. The youth baseball league in my area offered just baseball of sorts. It was non-competitive. All the kids hit the ball. All the kids hit a home run. All the kids got trophies. Purists were horrified, but I thought it was a nice introduction and they deserved credit for trying. My son was four when we enrolled him. Although he loves to run and he loves to wear the uniform, he just isn't a natural at hitting the ball and he doesn't really like baseball. We understood. There's a lot of idle time and he got bored. It's a laid-back game. We tried soccer this fall, assuming he would enjoy it more because there is almost always activity. He likes kicking the ball to us, but not with the team. Sadly, he has a tendency to run in the opposite direction of the other players. He doesn't understand the rules of the game. Maybe we introduced him to sports when he was too young. What can we do? We'll just try again in the spring.