Sports participation of children with or without developmental delay: prediction from child and family factors.
Kids with developmental delays play fewer sports by age 8, but boosting their social skills and cutting problem behaviors erases the gap.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team tracked the kids from . Half had a developmental delay. They counted how many sports each child joined every year. Parents also rated social skills, behavior problems, and family income.
The goal was to see if delay alone predicted lower sports play, or if other child and family factors mattered more.
What they found
By age 6, kids with delays were already playing fewer sports. The gap stayed at age 8.
When the researchers added social skills and behavior scores to the model, delay status no longer mattered. Kids with stronger social skills and fewer problem behaviors played more, whether or not they had a delay.
How this fits with other research
Lee et al. (2022) later asked teens with IDD what drove their moderate-to-vigorous activity. Parent activity level was the top predictor. Boudreau et al. (2015) shows the gap starts earlier, and child skills matter most in the primary years.
Lin et al. (2023) gave teens with IDD a rope-skipping program and saw big fitness gains. Their study proves the gap can be closed if we actually teach sport skills.
Arntzen et al. (2003) showed one five-year-old with DD can learn leader and participant play roles in just a few BST sessions. Together these papers say: kids with delays miss sports because they lack skills, not because they lack ability.
Why it matters
You can’t fix low sports play by simply handing a family a league flyer. Screen for social-skill and behavior deficits first. Then use BST or small-group training to teach turn-taking, rule-following, and peer entry. Once the child can play, help parents pick an inclusive league that expects some coaching.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Sports participation is beneficial to health and socioemotional adjustment in youth across development. While there is some evidence indicating lower sports participation for children with developmental delays (DD) as compared with their typically developing (TD) peers, little is known as to the predictors of this differential participation. Given the increased risk of physical and mental health difficulties for children with DD, understanding more about this disparity is important. We examined sports participation in elementary school-aged children with or without DD and examined child and family predictors of three indices of sports participation: number of sports and highest relational sport at ages 6 and 8, and consistent sports from 6 to 8. Children with TD were significantly higher on all three indicators. Mother and child factors related significantly to sports participation indices. The number of sports related positively to mother education and positive perceptions and negatively to mother employment. Relational sports were higher in boys, children with higher social skills, and lower behavior problems. In regression analyses at child age 8 that included these other variables, delay status (DD or TD) did not have a significant effect. Perspectives on varying influences on sports participation and implications for intervention are discussed.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2015 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2014.10.028