Dr. Edith Bracho-Sanchez is a primary care pediatrician at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City. She hosts the American Academy of Pediatrics Healthy Children podcast for parents.
Soon after our oldest son turned 4, he was invited to play in an exclusive basketball league with 5- and 6-year-olds. We were all so excited.
Our little guy was good at basketball, and we weren’t the only ones who saw it. He had been having fun playing with other 3- and 4-year-olds on a local team, and he was always the best one in the group. If we wanted to challenge him, shouldn’t we put him in an environment where he had to push himself? Playing with older kids who were also talented seemed like a great idea.
My husband, a former college basketball player, and I, a pediatrician, paid the fees and rearranged our schedules to bring him to practice every week.
What happened next was, sadly, predictable in retrospect: At first, he was excited. He put on a team jersey that almost reached his knees and ran onto the court. He wowed everyone with his dribbling, and he could make shots the older kids were missing. But as the drills got more complex, his 4-year-old brain couldn’t keep up. And when it was time to race, he was almost always last.
