<p>There are several female muslim athletes who compete in the Olympics in non-revealing uniforms. I am sure you can find detailed information on it with a little research, whenthe time comes.</p>
<p>Horseback riding LESSONS aren’t expensive. Horse shows and show clothing cost a fortune. Riding would be a really fun sport and generally isn’t cost prohibitive for most people, but once you begin competing it’s extremely expensive.</p>
<p>Little kids tend to love soccer. Lots of running around, and the game ends when the timer goes off - no one makes the last out (like in softball). Can also lead to fun with field hockey, lacrosse (HUGE here) etc.</p>
<p>I think almost any uniform can be adjusted to meet religious needs. A long sleeved t-shirt and perhaps leggings can go under almost anything - including basketball, soccer, lacrosse, field hockey, etc. Heck, we live in New England, and a lot of girls who don’t have religious restrictions wear those things to keep warm. Many of our younger softball teams also wear softball pants with elastic on the calf instead of shorts, they work better for sliding. We had a pitcher in my daughter’s league who wore a headscarf and long-sleeved t-shirt under her uniform top. </p>
<p>The only sports I think you may really need to avoid would be dance and possibly swimming, unless the swimming bodysuits are ok with your family’s religious restrictions.</p>
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<p>2-3 hours week of an organized sports activity / lesson for a four-year-old is PLENTY. She’s a four-year-old. I’m sorry, I really think your desire for her to start “learning” a sport in earnest is over the top. I say this with all due respect!</p>
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<p>Please, there are a lot of sports-pushy parents out there. You do NOT want to become one of them. There is simply no need to keep up with them or play their game (no pun intended). There is absolutely nothing wrong with a little girl just playing / doing a sport for fun and recreation, without it having to be about competing or becoming highly skilled. Just take gymnastics for fun, go swimming for fun, play a little tennis at the rec league for fun. If she expresses further interest and / or aptitude, then take it as it comes. It seems as though you are letting some of your own past resentment as to how you were raised color your expectations for your daughter.</p>
<p>I think all kids should learn to swim regardless if they pursue it as an " EC" or not.
Now is a good time to start.
Its a skill that could save her life.</p>
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<p>Are you allowing for the possibility that she may not be athletic, may not ever get in to a particular sport, or develops other interests (music, art, acting, whatever) that might occupy her time more than playing a sport? Would you be ok if she “just” becomes a healthy young woman who works out and does something recreationally for exercise (say, jogs a mile every day or does yoga or hits the tennis ball around with friends) but doesn’t ever really spark to becoming highly skilled in a given sport? I think you might want to consider that possibility and how you feel about that possibility as you think through your motives and approach. Because it seems you are very invested in her becoming good in a sport.</p>
<p>How about joining girls scouts? She can try tons of different activities there and do some volunteer work. It’s not a sport specifically but it is something she can continue with throughout her life.</p>
<p>For a 4 year old, I’d say sign her up for stuff that sounds fun. Find a YMCA. Their youth sports stuff for kids that age rung 6-8 weeks. You can try a whole bunch of stuff for only minor financial and time commitments.</p>
<p>I’ve got 2 girls. For both the main sport was gymnastics. Not sure why a long-sleeved gymnastics leotard, pretty much the standard competition uniform, is more revealing than a swim suit. The male spectators are mostly dads, not unrelated males. It really isn’t a sexualized environment at all. Our oldest stayed in the sport through freshman year, so well past puberty. </p>
<p>We’ve also done dance (tights, again a long sleeved Leo if you want, jazz pants). This one was probably my least favorite. It’s cute for little girls, not so much for teens. In high school, the girls have done diving/swimming, fencing (lots of clothes there), track, and softball. Od2 didn’t start softball until 7th grade, track at 14. Neither started diving before high school, but the gymnastics training helped. Anyway, with the exception of gymnastics, the kids did not have to start the sport at 4 to be competitive.</p>
<p>Sorry, double post.</p>
<p>I think the marshal arts can be fun for kids, and there is a lot of grace and strength acquired in the various arts. My girl did Jiu Jitsu and really enjoyed it. The dress is very modest, but there is a lot of bodily contact, which your husband may not like. Softball is another fun team sport. My kid did T-ball at age 5 and had a blast, and they wore the pants and jerseys just like the boys’ teams. </p>
<pre><code>I think organized sports can be a lot of fun for kids as young as five as long as it’s not taken too seriously. The problem I see in your approach is that if you say you want her to do one sport , start it early and stick with it, you have invested too much emotional energy in her success in that sport. My kid was not a very good softball player, but it didn’t matter to us. It gave her an opportunity to do something fun with her dad (who helped coach) and to be part of a team. She stayed with it for 3 years because she had so much fun with her friends. By third grade, she was finished with it and on to other things. I can’t imagine how sad it would have been if we had insisted she keep doing it beyond that point. It just wouldn’t have been healthy for her-even if she had been very good. Kids grow and change, and it’s very unlikely that the sport you pick for her now, at 4 or 5 will be the one she’ll want to do for the rest of her life. At some point down the line, if she picks a sport from several she has tried, then you might get a child who sticks with it. But even then, there are no guarantees, and to approach it the way you are is a recipe for problems.
In high school my daughter tried running cross-country for the first time- in 9th grade. I would never have thought she’d want to be a runner- just didn’t have the body type or stamina, thought I. Well, she trained, became very good, and moved up from
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<p>one of the slowest runners on the C team as a Freshman to the number 3 spot on a the Varsity team that came in second in the state as a Senior. She still runs for fun and to keep in shape to this day, at 26. Had she started running at even eight or nine, I doubt very much that she would have taken to it like she did when she started in high school.</p>
<p>I realize running is out for you because the girls wear shorts. But the point is that you really can’t predict what the kids will want to do as they grow, and a parent being very directive and invested can create a very unhealthy situation- a probably the abandonment of whatever sport was “chosen.”</p>
<p>I would recommend that you encourage your kids to become passionate about things that intrigue them, then support those passions with your time and resources as far as your kids want to take them - and, let them back off and change when they want. My two Ds have a lifelong love of music and theatre, and we facilitated that as much as we could; they weren’t into sports but they wanted to dance, so they/we did that too. Our 16-year-old S was one of the best baseball players in our county until age ten. As his dad, I enjoyed that. Then he mysteriously forgot about baseball and became passionate about chess. That wasn’t as much fun for me, but I took him to chess competitions all over the state. Once he got into HS it was snare in the marching band, which is also an intensely physical endeavor. It’s not as important to me what the activity is as much as long as it inspires the kids to set high standards for themselves and find that they enjoy pursuing high standards.</p>
<p>I think you’re overthinking this. Let her do something fun. Our only rule was that they be in a sport, but they got to pick. Between the two, they were in baseball, soccer, basketball, football, flag football, and ultimate frisbee. The more important thing is that she have fun and be healthy. There’s no way to know now whether she’ll have any aptitude whatsoever.</p>
<p>Another thing to consider with sports/physical activity:</p>
<p>Some require “body in space/balance” like gymnastics, dance, skating, track, hiking, rock climbing, and skiing.</p>
<p>Some require being able to hit a ball or other object: Tennis, baseball, badminton, soccer, racquetball, lacrosse, etc.</p>
<p>Some sports are individual or relatively individual like tennis or fencing, and others are definitely team oriented like soccer, crew, and hockey. And for some girls, it makes a huge difference what their friends do or don’t do.</p>
<p>Many kids are seriously into a sport until high school or switch in high school, sometimes due to burnout or an injury. I know one who switched from very, very serious soccer to crew. </p>
<p>I encouraged my DD to try soccer in 3rd grade, but she refused since she wanted to play tennis instead, and she didn’t have time for both sports given the demands of other ECs that she was unwilling to give up. Well, she has long regretted not playing soccer, but I remind her that she may have a chance at recreational soccer in college. I believe in movement/sports as a lifelong pursuit, so keeping it enjoyable is a high value. </p>
<p>Developmentally, most four year olds aren’t ready for lessons or organized sports. They like to move their bodies probably more than they like to pay attention to learning rules! If it were my daughter, I would seek out places we could visit so she could observe other little girls engaged in the activity and see if anything sparked her interest. DD got interested in tennis after the local Girl Scout council sponsored a free/low cost tennis clinic that she attended.</p>
<p>I agree with moonchild and several other posters about not pushing a child into a sport and especially about not expecting or demanding that a child will excel in a sport. There are so many elements not within the control of the athlete or the athlete’s parents that go into making someone a “star” and I think it’s vital to accept that as early as possible. Once you’ve accepted that, your child is much more likely to find a sport or other activity that she wants to do because SHE enjoys it. And I’ll bet that you’ll feel get great joy out of watching your child participate in an activity that gives her pleasure.</p>
<p>I agree with others about not pushing a child into a sport, but allowing them to try many different things to see where they perform well and where they have fun. My daughter is completing her 15th year of dance this year. She has given up countless afternoons in a dance studio and we have dealt with health issues with her feet and knee, mostly from dancing. The only thing we “pushed” was swimming. We wanted our children to know how to swim. My daughter knows how to swim but doesn’t swim often. On the other hand my middle school son has been on the swim team since 1st grade and he loves it. It is a huge commitment to swim each and every afternoon for 2 hours or more. He has played soccer, baseball, and many other things. He is timid and team sports just haven’t been for him. On the swim team he does swim against other kids, but ideally he is competing to better his “last time”. I hope that swimming is a lifelong love of his and the exercise will benefit him well into his retirement years if he stays near the water. In hindsight there are only two things I would change if I could. My daughter took three years of ballet and didn’t really care for it. We let her quit and take other forms of dance. Now she asks me why we didn’t pressure her to continue so that she could take pointe now. My son played preschool and elementary school soccer at the local Y (where every kid plays every game and they don’t make a big deal of the score). When he got to middle school and wanted to try out for the school team he didn’t stand a chance. The other boys who had played “club soccer” were very pushy and aggresive on the field. He went to tryouts and made it through three cuts. Ultimately the coach went with those that weren’t afraid to “fight” for the ball and that is not him. Looking back I think I might have mixed Y and club soccer to give him a better chance. About the modesty issue: I see many girls on the swim team (where they are required to wear the team one piece suit) that either walk up to the starting block with a towel or shorts on. They take them off just before they step up to the block and put them back on when they come out.</p>
<p>My younger brother spent most of his childhood thinking he was nonathletic because he could not do a thing with a ball. In high school he discovered crew and cross country running and became a decent if not stellar athlete. Now he’s a really serious Akido guy. Apparently he’s quite good at it.</p>
<p>I really think that the emphasis on “sport” as the way to physical health is misguided and in the long run dangerous. You say she spends up to five hours a day playing in the park. That is fabulous physical activity that is absolutely appropriate for her age and it helps her to understand that physical activity is a part of everyday life, not something that you must create. Organized sports are only good as long as long as there is a structure. Once that goes away the impetus goes as well. My oldest son never played a sport in school; part of it was a lack of interest in the social aspect of team sports, part of it was that he had almost no competitive urges, part of it was that he was always one of the smallest kids in the class. However, he swam in our local farm pond every chance he got, sometimes spending 7-8 hours a day in the water. In the winter he played pick-up pond hockey, sometimes 1 on 1, sometime in groups of twenty kids, they almost never kept score. When he got into high school I heard from teachers, other parents, etc., that he HAD to take part in sports – it was essential for a healthy lifestyle. Four years out of high school and many, many of his friends no longer play football, baseball, or whatever and they don’t know what to do with themselves. Whereas my son swims almost everyday since his dorm is right next door to the school’s pool (one reasons he chose the dorm), and this Christmas he spend almost a everyday of his Christmas break playing hockey. My point is that if you want her to live a healthy life style help her learn to integrate physical activity into her everyday life. Playing in the park five hours a day is a great way to do that.</p>
<p>Ask her what she wants to do…please please please.</p>
<p>My parents let us try pretty much anything we wanted. Off the top of my head, I did karate (went to 2 lessons, hated it, and quit), ballet (did it for a year, then decided I didn’t like it and quit), swimming lessons (that wasn’t as much for sport as for learning how to swim, since we were at the beach quite a bit growing up…but that didn’t last more than about a year and a half), horseback riding (I LOVED it, but there were financial issues and I didn’t quite have the bravery for it; too afraid of falling off once my horse stumbled and almost threw me. Also, I much prefer Western saddle to English, and it’s harder to find Western stuff for young kids.), was in a bowling league through pretty much all of middle school, and finally golf in high school. </p>
<p>I had a good time with all of them because my parents let me choose what I wanted to do. They didn’t care that I kept switching around if it meant I found something I would love to do.</p>
<p>I disagree with some of the posters about soccer or basketball at the age of 4. The most economical and fair sports offered through the YMCA are soccer and basketball. These leagues are really about fun and team spirit. At that age they will not be too skilled with the sports and who cares if they miss a soccer ball because they were too busy looking at butterflies during the game. It happens and even when a kid kicks the ball or shoots a basket in the wrong goal it doesn’t matter yet. They will tell you all about the score they made and with a Y coach they usually will pat them on the back for their efforts and accuracy…later of course in a few years they develop the skills and understand the complexities of the game.</p>
<p>Jusy don’t become obsessed about their mistakes and if they really like the sport they will do all they can to excel. Even if they are not athletic it still does wonders for their confidence. </p>
<p>One last thing the seasons for soccer and basketball are not that long and will give you a break from weekly practices and games. Usually there is a fall and spring season with at most 8 games a season. Considering there might be missed games due to illness and vacations she might only play 6 games a season and if she doesn’t like it then you can move on. At that age I found it to be more about socializing and team building than anything.</p>
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<p>Absolutely agree. From the time my son was about 5, we had him try all sorts of sports…soccer, martial arts, baseball, golf, basketball, track, swim team. He didn’t take to one of them. At age 10, I finally stopped forcing him to try new sports and conceded he just wasn’t athletic. Out of the blue, at age 12, he joined the JV football team at school. Played 6 years until he graduated HS, three of those years as a starter on the Varsity football team, winning the regional championship four years straight. Turns out his ‘thing’ was the one sport I would have never guessed he would be interested in or good at. Go figure.</p>
<p>Today, he’s a college freshman who works out regularly, watches what he eats, loves to ski, hike and camp. Kids often have a mind of their own. Nothing wrong with exposing them to a variety of sports but don’t get overly invested in picking a particular sport for them. Life’s never that simple. :)</p>