What sports or activities are best learnt at an early age?
September 9, 2013 3:37 PM   Subscribe

My son will be turning two soon. We'd like to take advantage of his spongelike brain to expose him to as many different opportunities to learn new things as possible. I've seen early footage of Justin Bieber and Tiger Woods showing proficiency at this young age already in their respective fields, it seems like there is an advantage to seeing if your child shows talent even at that stage. I have no desire to be a pushy stage mother but if our kid does show interest and ability at something it would be nice to encourage it. So what activities, (violin, guitar, tennis etc) should you be learning very early on to have any chance of really excelling at? And which ones are ok to pick up later? It would be a little sad to find out at 12 that he showed talent at say, gymnastics but started too late to make anything of it.
posted by Jubey to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (31 answers total) 18 users marked this as a favorite
 
I teach strings, and although I have amazing kids who started at 10-11, they very rarely have the kind of grace and natural fluency in their playing that kids who started at 4-5 do. If you look at the leaders of honor groups at the middle/high school level in strings in my area, they are almost always kids who started well before the public schools start students in 6th grade.
posted by charmedimsure at 3:45 PM on September 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


I would teach him to ice skate, to use a lacrosse stick, to play tennis and teach him the most efficient/least stressful way to throw a baseball and football.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 3:47 PM on September 9, 2013 [3 favorites]


At risk of arguing with the premise of a question, I'm not sure that there's something inherently special about starting very early at many skills (e.g. competitive athletics) except that it gives you that much more of a leg up on the competition at any particular age. Certainly there's a neural-plasticity angle at work, but I think that's probably overestimated. But a 6-year-old who started playing golf (or whatever) at age 3 is almost certainly going to be better than a 6-year-old who started playing at age 5, and that headstart can be decisive if the activity in question is one where you retire out due to age before someone who started later could catch up.

So, I think the most general answer to the question is that any sport or activity that has a hard or semi-hard retirement age probably has a big first-mover advantage associated with it.

Personally, I wish that I had done more balance/coordination-based stuff when I was younger, because I was always terrible and uncoordinated as a kid, and that caused me to write off a lot of activities (in the "I'm just bad at XYZ" fashion) that I probably would have enjoyed otherwise.

I've seen toddlers using little scooter-bikes and even tiny bicycles, which seem like a fun way to get a lifetime activity started early.
posted by Kadin2048 at 4:03 PM on September 9, 2013 [2 favorites]


Best answer: So what activities, (violin, guitar, tennis etc) should you be learning very early on to have any chance of really excelling at?

I'm not up on the most current early education theory, but I think it's less a question of learning and more a question of exposing. Early exposure to music, art and foreign languages is a predictor of later skill fluency. I can only assume the same is true for things like tumbling and swimming.
posted by DarlingBri at 4:07 PM on September 9, 2013 [5 favorites]


My husband's friend is a professional musician. He says he wished he started on his violin earlier so he was better at it, like some of his colleagues.

He started at age 2. Some of his peers, age 1.
posted by Seboshin at 4:17 PM on September 9, 2013


Seconding ice skating, here. Take it from this beginner at 59 years old; the trip down can be a bit of a trauma. When little kids fall down, they go down like an overcooked noodle and get right back up again. I so wish I had learned as a wee one.
posted by BostonTerrier at 4:29 PM on September 9, 2013


I'm going to reject the violin theory and side with DarlingBri. I didn't start violin until age eight and performed favorably compared to the kids who started earlier -- but I did start piano at age four and was exposed to music and theory in that way.

I've heard it said that there are some activities that you don't necessarily need to learn as a child, but that are much harder to learn as an adult because of fear. For example, ski jumping -- adults are often simply too anxious to get started.
posted by telegraph at 4:29 PM on September 9, 2013


Best answer: Don't have kids but I was one once, with older brothers and a lot of playtime/space. The things I am glad I learned at a really young age was catching and balance. Catching is hand-eye coordination which comes into play in many many skills your kid may pick up later. Balance is also a basic skill that can be honed when young. Walking on lines, walking on low row of bricks, standing on one foot etc are all great for later specific physical activities.

Oh, and hug-buddy says: rhythm. Teach rhythm as young as you can.
posted by Kerasia at 4:47 PM on September 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


OMG, foreign languages. They will never again be this easy to learn and he can put them on his resume for his whole life.
posted by town of cats at 4:52 PM on September 9, 2013 [12 favorites]


As a former ESL teacher I'll echo town of cats. It was night and day, even between the 4 and 6 year olds, on how fast they picked up complex grammar.
posted by kathrynm at 4:58 PM on September 9, 2013 [2 favorites]


Thirding ice skating, then Hockey. Languages too.

A Chinese language, Mandarin. Spanish. Just hanging out with native speakers will do it.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 5:02 PM on September 9, 2013 [2 favorites]


I watched a video from a golf professional working for titleist, specializing in child development. (Can't find it now sorry) He highly recommended children not specialize in one sport like golf when very young. He theorized that kids learn athletic skills best if they are exposed to multiple skillsets.
posted by meta87 at 5:03 PM on September 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


Nthing languages. At this age, your kid will probably learn as many as he is regularly exposed to. Apparently, he's at the age when his brain's "language organ" is in overdrive and just looking for languages to learn.
posted by Eumachia L F at 5:03 PM on September 9, 2013 [2 favorites]


All of the chess gods were grandmasters before they turned 18.
posted by oceanjesse at 5:27 PM on September 9, 2013


Intro to swimming and the ability to turn over and FLOAT.

People who panic in the water struggle to swim. That dogs many adults for years. Getting a child to love the pool early is a huge win - even if they don't learn to fully swim for a few years. And that turn over and float thing may save his life one day.
posted by 26.2 at 5:53 PM on September 9, 2013 [2 favorites]


My little one started doing puzzles when he was two. By three years old, he was putting together 100-piece puzzles faster than mommy and daddy! It's a cheap, easy activity to try, and I feel that it really develops the "sit on your butt and focus" skillset that is critical to learning in general. Works well as a cool down activity before bed, too.

Also, a small piece of advice re. swimming. I feel that the most important thing for the little ones is simply to feel comfortable with water, and the most important factor for that is how warm the swimming pool is. Find a place with really warm water, and you are three quarters of the way there.
posted by rada at 6:02 PM on September 9, 2013


Swimming and cycling and balancing/gymnastics things, in addition to what everyone else is saying about languages and musical instruments. I think about it a lot in terms of both sort of advancing a "this is normal" worldview (about exercise, and fluency in a language and being able to try out things that are hard) and also seeing if there are things that your child both has an aptitude for but also enjoys. We went camping a lot when I was a kid and even though I haven't been camping in a decade almost I still think of camping (and swimming, and cycling) as "something I can do" which gives me a lot more options as a middle-aged lady than some of my peers.
posted by jessamyn at 6:03 PM on September 9, 2013


Oh, boy. You've received several suggestions about language learning. It's not that easy. People's brains don't "look for languages to learn" at any age; it's actually the opposite - people won't learn languages unless they have to.

There is the critical period hypothesis for first language acquisition, which holds that there is a critical period of childhood for the acquisition of the first language. Most people have heard of this idea. Most people have not heard that it's one of the top two or three most hotly debated issues in linguistics. Despite that debate, the idea of a "critical period" for second language acquisition (what we are talking about here) is far less accepted.

People think it is easy for kids to learn languages because they don't or can't remember acquisition of their own first language. In fact, it's really hard and children spend all their waking hours acquiring their first language and it still takes years. "Just hanging out" is not going to do it. If you want even a chance of seeing if there is actually a critical period, your house needs to become an environment for X language. This will not happen if all of the other people in your household do not speak X language. Mrs. Tanizaki and I are both speakers of English and Japanese who are raising bilingual children. We speak Japanese at home and it is still blood to the end. The world (school, tv, movies, books) is English so we have to fight for those few hours of every day to speak Japanese. They are currently native speakers of both languages and read/write at an age-appropriate level, but it takes a lot of work from them and from us parents. If we were to to stop speaking Japanese at home, I don't doubt for a second that the kids would eventually lose it. That is exactly what happened to me and my siblings with regard to our Spanish. Language is a prime example of "use it or lose it".

And, even with our best efforts, they will end up as native speakers with a smaller vocabulary than their English vocabularies. The reason is that they will have only spoken Japanese in the limited context of the home, where it is rare to encounter words like "nitrogen", "cedar", or "sales tax". That's vocabulary they'd need to pick up from other media. This is typically how it works out for families who speak language X at home while the society at large has Language Y as the common language. I don't say all of this to be a wet blanket, but as someone who knows the research and has the experience of raising bilingual children. It just is not so simple as some previous comments would have you believe. Ask them how many children they have gotten to learn a foreign language.

Thus, I would recommend some sort of physical skill. I see swimming was recommended. I think that is great. I learned how to swim sometime around when I learned how to walk. This was the same with my children. I have no memory of not knowing how to swim and this is apparently a blessing as I have noted from periodic posts from adults who are learning how to swim. In general, think of skills of general application that are traumatic for adults to learn.

Also, to save on future disappointment, you may wish to consider the premise of your question. Children's brains are not so sponge-like as adults like to think.
posted by Tanizaki at 6:06 PM on September 9, 2013 [14 favorites]


I am pretty upset that my parents didn't enroll me in a foreign language course as a child and that my school didn't offer/require it. I'd definitely try to make your child fluent in Spanish, if not some other language, because that will literally open the world up for them. You simply cannot learn a language as an adult the way you can as a child. The pathways in our brain to learn new language start to die and we will always have an accent and it will always be difficult. He will pick up languages easily now and over the next few years. I would urge that.

I'd also recommend a musical instrument, whether it's piano or guitar. Two years old may be a bit early, but I think these are great skills to have and will be great outlets for expression. Violin would be another option -- it's a difficult instrument, but it seems a lot of gifted violinists started as children.

As for sports, I would say soccer, although you'd want to teach him real soccer -- dribbling, juggling, how to shoot, crossing, defending, etc. -- and not have him just ran around the way little kids do when they play soccer. I think soccer being less popular in America is good because then he may be able to be a bigger fish in a small pond. That said, if he loves basketball, he should go for it. Football, to me, and even hockey, seem a little dangerous. Soccer is also physical and I would avoid having him head the ball excessively at a young age.

I was a great dancer as a kid and honestly, I still am. I can just tell that I move better than most people do and dance moves a lot of people struggle with are easy for me. But when I was a kid I took dance lessons and I quit because I thought they were boring. What really happened was they weren't challenging enough. They were started at 1 and I was a 5. I wish my parents had made me stick with it a bit more or enrolled me in a better dance school. Oh well.
posted by AppleTurnover at 6:39 PM on September 9, 2013


Response by poster: Thanks so far for all the great answers. With regards to swimming, we own a pool and our house is both directly in front of a harbour and very close to the ocean so swimming is a life saving mandatory, he was in the water (and loving it) at 4 weeks old. His parents aren't bilingual so sadly we won't be able to teach him another language, that might have to wait til school. The balance bikes linked to further up are already on the birthday shopping list, so good call on that.

Catching, throwing, puzzles etc are all good points and ones we do but should do more often. Ice skating and hockey... I wish. We live in Australia. I don't know that I've ever even seen a rink! Keep 'em coming!
posted by Jubey at 6:44 PM on September 9, 2013


An argument for bilingualism again - your child may not be fluent *now*, but as an adult, a couple of years of early exposure as a young child will make relearning that second language so much easier and faster. If you want to be seriously bilingual, you need a parent or caregiver who only speaks in that language, but fun Mandarin lessons a couple of times a week are not a waste at all, even if your kid seems like they're only speaking the basics.

Swimming and gymnastics are super fun and easy to find lessons for little kids. They're whole-body sports rather than something focused like golf, so they're more useful. Dance too!

There's a music school near us that does a starter course with several instruments so the children rotate through them and afterwards, the teachers recommend what the child seems better at and enjoys. My nephew went to a sports camp on the same idea, 12 sports over three months, and they steered him towards soccer and baseball at the end.

And reading - if your kid enjoys stories, learning to be a good reader early is a real skill. You can start with simple audiobooks if they're not reading letters, and talk to them about what happened in the story, encourage them to create their own stories, read to them from the newspaper and so on. Fluent reading with good comprehension takes time and effort and is a huge skill. It's not about decoding words but grappling with language and communication that's a big interesting task. Library visits every week, storytime everyday and getting them into drama, journalling, their own baby magazine subscriptions etc.
posted by viggorlijah at 6:46 PM on September 9, 2013


Chess and languages, absolutely.
posted by goo at 7:48 PM on September 9, 2013


I gather that early ballet practice changes the way the skeleton grows, such that you can become a better ballet dancer (that starting after a certain age means you have limitations that can't be overcome.) I don't know too much about it though, and I don't know what age the doors start to close.
posted by spbmp at 7:56 PM on September 9, 2013


Best answer: Gah, editing closed. I would go with chess, French and piano - sports are a given in Australia, but chess, French and piano will provide the building blocks to pretty much everything else
posted by goo at 7:56 PM on September 9, 2013


Best answer: i'd expose him to different forms of music, art, foreign language (get a child's book or mp3 and learn it with him or have him take a class) and sports. i worked at a tennis club and they started a class for 3-5 year olds. it was amazing to see how well the kids did but mostly they made sure the kids just had fun. it really looked like a great thing to expose them to. maybe soccer would be good since it's such an international sport. don't forget reading.
posted by wildflower at 9:25 PM on September 9, 2013


Skiing. I know tons of people that ski (even casually), but few of them learned to ski as an adult. I joined the ski club in high school just because my friends were in it, and I think I was the only person who hadn't skied before.
posted by Room 641-A at 10:48 PM on September 9, 2013


Just so stories:

Skiing: according to those Europeans who grew up in the Alps or went on long skiing holidays every single winter since they were a kid, if you don't start around age 3-7, you will never be able to maintain the "neatness" of more experienced skiers. Supposedly, my boyfriend claims he can tell who started as kids, thus lots of experience and more advanced, by watching people ski down a slope.

Swimming: I grew up in the middle of an ocean, and with a bunch of my other friends I'd say a good handful of us are NOT comfortable with swimming. I mean, we can float and move a bit and feel comfortable bobbing in the waves and spend an entire day at the beach, but holding our breath and actually swimming with our head under the water is horrifying. Some formal swimming lessons in a YMCA with a bunch of other kids would have probably helped. I remember by the age of 8 I wanted no part in that and was already freaking out about swimming with my head under the water.

Foreign Languages: without any structure or interaction/feedback, the kid will probably pick up the some of the language but not to the point of speaking. I knew a 2-4 year old who live for 9 months in the United States, then 7 months in Thailand, then 7 months in Korea, and after 8 months in China, and is now living in Europe speaking the kid's native language. Up until the age of 4.5 the kid wasn't speaking cause presumably it was just REALLY confusing cause in each country you had a native-speaking nanny, and that was just about it. The kid was probably absorbing it all, and maybe one day some day all those languages will be an un-lockable treasure. But the kid never spoke Korean, Chinese, or Thai. The only reason the kid is now speaking English is cause of British school which started from age 5+, and speaking a European language spoken by the relative the kid is living with.
posted by peachtree at 12:11 AM on September 10, 2013 [2 favorites]


...if our kid does show interest and ability at something it would be nice to encourage it.

My 2 cents: wait until they show this interest and ability. Kids will flit from one thing to another (i.e., interests, hobbies, etc.). The moment you start pushing is the moment you become that "stage mother" you mentioned. Kids can push back very quickly if they sense that they are being groomed for something. Be supportive of what they enjoy.
posted by kuanes at 5:15 AM on September 10, 2013


Another vote for "stories" - but in the specific context of having them read to him. This is a little different from the TV or an audiobook in that it is more interactive. In addition to, hopefully, instilling a love of books and reading - it is great training for listening. Many of the first books that I remember reading myself where those which had been read to me earlier.
posted by rongorongo at 7:10 AM on September 10, 2013


Roller skating! And piano. And guitar. Nowadays I just wish I was proficient enough at an instrument to play along with friends and family. Learning how to move your fingers and read music as an adult is difficult.
posted by stompadour at 8:07 AM on September 10, 2013


I wish I had learned gymnastics when I was little. I don't think I would have pursued it very far but I am not very flexible, and I was always very timid on the monkey bars, etc.

Echoing dance, music, foreign language, ice skating.

Also: touch typing! I am guessing (based on the face that you're a MeFite) he has or soon will have access to a computer. Make sure he learns to type quickly! As many have pointed out in another thread, it is less important for him to type "properly" than quickly and accurately, but he should learn the basics. I started Mavis Beacon around age 8 and I was light years ahead of my class when they started teaching us to type in middle school.
posted by radioamy at 12:05 PM on September 11, 2013


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