Parenting advice with David Coleman

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The Claire Byrne Show 15 min 3 speakers 6 chapters transcribed just now

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How can parents support a neurodivergent teen struggling with school‑sport balance?

Claire Byrne 0:01

The Claire Byrne Show on News Talk. With Aviva Insurance.

Clare Byrne 0:09

Now I'm joined by clinical psychologist and parenting expert Doctor David Coleman. Good morning to you, David.

David Coleman 0:15

Good morning, Claire. How are you doing

Clare Byrne 0:17

I'm very well and David's you're gonna take our parenting questions this morning. Still some time to get them in on WhatsApp, oh eight seven fourteen hundred one oh six. I might start with this one, a listener whose son started secondary school, finding the transition rough. We're doing our best to support him. The problem is he wants to give up sport. He says he doesn't have enough time with the homework and he's very hard on himself to be the best academically that he can be. He's already talking about the leaving cert goodness and his options afterwards. I don't know how I can help him find the balance. I absolutely don't want him to give up sport. I feel it's an important outlet for him socially and physically.

Clare Byrne 0:52

He is neurodivergent. Have you any advice, David?

David Coleman 0:57

Yeah, it's so tricky. I mean, there's so much going on, I think, at the start of first year for any student starting. And um, it sounds like for this young lad that the whole experience has been probably a little bit overwhelming in terms of perhaps the sense of the volume of work, or maybe because there's now eight or ten different teachers all giving homework and again, you know, not every school uh is very coordinated when it comes to homework and so Teachers may not necessarily be aware of who else is giving homework on a given day. So I think that can be overwhelming. And I mean it's interesting that um, you know, his first thought is, well, if I stop sport, then maybe I'll have a bit more time.

David Coleman 1:34

And if he's trying to prioritize his academics, one of the things that um the mum might uh like to um help him with, particularly uh if he's neurodivergent, he may appreciate um rationale and And you know, good reason a little bit more as well. And so perhaps if the mum can look up some of the research that's out there on the benefits of sports for academic performance. And so there's uh not many people may necessarily be aware of it, but there's actually anybody can access what's called Scholar, uh Google Scholar. So you go to scholar.google.com and then you can put in your search term. So you can say, for example, um um, you know, sports and academic performance as just your prompt.

What evidence links sports participation to better academic performance?

David Coleman 2:16

And then what it'll do is it'll pull up all of the research on that issue. And so you can then scroll through. Some of it's um freely accessible depending on the journal. Some of it is some of the journals are behind paywalls. But but what you can do as a parent then is gather your evidence so that um you can show him why holding on to the sports is good for him him and what it will do, not just in terms of his uh his health and his uh exercise, but in terms of academics, that actually there's a an added benefit to him to continue sports. And so that might be the thing that helps him then keep that balance. Because I think the mum's right, it is great for kids to try and keep a bit of balance and and you know too much of anything becomes a bad thing.

David Coleman 2:55

So if he does get, you know, down this rabbit hole of that all he can do is work and study, um, then you know he probably will you know, come to struggle more. He might, you know, you know, miss some things socially as as well. He might. So

Clare Byrne 3:07

I I'm sure, David, there's plenty of parents who have the opposite problem, that they have a child gone into secondary school who has invested so much in the extracurricular and the sports that they're worried about the academics falling down. But I'm sure the advice is the same, right?

David Coleman 3:20

Totally. Although I think y when certainly my view would be, you know, first year is really about that transition and and of course you don't want your son or daughter to fall behind immediately academically. But I think if they can keep up even just with um, you know, the core of their homework, that's plenty for first year. You know, they don't need to be doing any extra studies.