6 year old softball player

My daughter loves to play softball. She thinks about it all day. She is reading a story today to the Kinder class that she wrote about softball. She walks around with a softball in her hand. We give her the option of playing or taking a break between seasons. She wants to keep playing. I seen the post about them burning out but what if you are not the one pushing her, she pushes herself. For being 6 she plays hard. Nothing gets past her and she is very aggressive on the field. This season she went and played pitcher a couple of times for the 8 and under when ever they didnt have enough players. When she walks out on the field she is a different person, so I guess my question is do you hold them back, make them take breaks if they are the ones asking to practice, asking to play. I was not an athlete, I wonder sometimes what goes on in a 6 year olds mind when they make a double play or they see the coaches telling their kids to back up when you come up to bat.

I have 2 like that, they also got interested in soccer, basketball, and football at the same time in their lives. We pushed them into swimming because of living on the coast. They dropped the soccer and basketball, and had to give up football at junior high level, but then picked up volleyball, and track. My suggestion is to get her interested in other what I would call supporting sports - basketball, soccer, and football all help develop speed and quickness, which helps softball. While they played the other sports, softball always seemed to be and still does to be their favorite. Also, playing these other sports help to develop other muscle groups which leads to healthier bodies over all.

I think the important thing to do as a parent when you have kids like that is to give them their lead, but nudge them now and then. I keep thinking of the good and the not so good during our times on the field, be very watchful of the coaches that get your daughter, try to focus on those that understand that these are games, and while we want to win, we need to have fun out there. My thing was to stay away from the yellers, and even with those that dont, watch how they treat their own kid. Watch to see that they treat their own kid with respect, not with over indulgence - if they do, they will treat yours the same. Watch out for coaches who are only out there because their own kids arent good enough to play short stop and pitcher and coaching is the only way to guarantee that for their kid.

My husband is one of those yellers. He is the assistant coach but only coaches my daughter. The funny thing is is that he knows it. We took some of the better players from both our league teams and we are going to play a couple of tournaments and my husband told my daughter he wasnt going to coach. He was just going to be a parent to see how she liked it. She got upset the other night wanting my husband to coach. Just because she likes him being out there helping out. He is working on his coaching abilities and now can work with and coach the ones that want to be there. Thank goodness we have a good group of parents and they love my husband for who he is. Right now we are with a good team and the manager puts the girls where they play their best at. My daughter has mentioned basketball so maybe we will look into that. One of her friends told her that basketball is to boyish so now we are having to tell her that you do what you want to do.

Just a suggestion, get the video camera out and pretend you are filming the kids, but film him and then leave it out where he can see how he looks doing the yelling.

Regarding the other sports issue, mention other sports by how much fun they are. My dds like to play basketball at those early ages because they got to play against boys. After the games, I would get my dd an extra treat if she made a boy cry.

I have 1 6 YO student that comes to lessons. Her little hand is too small to grip the 11 inch ball. She talks like this, "In the Spring, my sister is going to be ASA and I am going to be 8 and under." Ha.

Has she tried soccer? Because I would think that there would be some other good athletes there. In softball there aren't many 6 YOs that can actually play. And she is so young, I would be scared of her getting hurt, playing up.

Make sure that she is wearing a face mask.

We let her play one 8 and U game and she did really good, the next one my husband pulled her because the team were sluggers and we didnt want her to get hurt. We just got back from her practice with her tournament team and it was so much fun to see all of the girls playing. They were all so good and they had so much fun.

If she's advanced keep her in 8U and don't waste her time with the rest of the six year olds.

Our daughter was in 8U at 6 and was one of the better kids on her team. She didn't make all-stars, but she held her own (even hit a legit home run) and got so much more from the experience. She'll play 10U travel on a 9U team next year as an 8 year old. Some kids just have the tools to play.

We have started working with our dd on the proper way of catching. We thought she was doing good, one of the best on the team. My husbands friend worked with her one day and she is catching like a 6 yr old should but we have already started working with her with a tennis ball on the proper way. Never thought about the technique just happy at 6 she could catch a ball. But we thought it cant hurt now to start working on technique. haha I hope she continues to love the game, and I am asking some of the same questions yall have when iour DD is 12, 16, etc.

The discussion has changed from the original question. So, I moved the discussion to a new topic called, "Nature v. Nurture".