I wanted my son to get into sport – but now I’ve created a monster

The child, so they say, is the father of the man. But the man rarely has as much energy as he once did.

I was a livewire as a youngster, full of anxious bounce. All I wanted to do was race about, kick a ball, dig a hole, throw a ball, play soldiers, catch a ball and fight my brother. I don’t recall ever being tired.

If ever I thought about it at all, I suppose I assumed most children were like that. Certainly, I imagined that my own children would be, and indeed my daughter was incredibly active in her early years, endlessly demanding to be out and about. Even when she couldn’t yet walk, we spent hours pounding the streets to keep her on the move, hoping she might fall asleep but resigning ourselves to the reality that she just wanted to see what was going on in the world.

Even now, at the age of 12, she seems unable to keep still for long – unless absorbed in a book. The constant movement can be distracting, but I recognise the symptom only too well. I remain an incessant wriggler; so much so that I have at least twice worn through the seat of my trousers while sitting at my desk in an office. It is not an edifying experience.

My son, to my surprise, was a much more settled baby and toddler. His idea of a perfect day was a slow walk to a cafe, where he would take his time over a “ginnerminnerbread man”, then home for a game or two of Thomas the Tank Engine matching pairs, before a cartoon, a foamy bath and finally bed (and straight to sleep). There was a soothing rhythm to his toddler life.

I should have encouraged his calm outlook, but by the time he was five, it became clear that he was feeling a degree of peer pressure from his football-mad mates. Irked though I was to give in to the desire for conformity, I could see that it was hard for him to keep up with boys who had been kicking a ball since they could walk. After an attempt to join a local football club ended in tears, I took the matter in hand and started to play one-on-one games with him in his bedroom: a three-metre long pitch and a foam ball can offer genuine entertainment. I took care to offer lots of encouragement, and never to win.

Slowly but surely, my son’s skill level improved. Then, just over a year ago, with his sporting interest now well and truly piqued, he discovered cricket – something I was only too happy to encourage. His room became a miniature Lord’s.

Now, having just turned seven, the child is a sports machine. During the Easter holidays, I booked him in for a four-day cricket camp: five hours of batting, bowling and fielding each day under blue skies. For a boy unused to such things surely, I thought, he’d be exhausted by the time I came to collect him.

Not a bit of it.

Instead, each day I was met with demands for more sport. Could we go swimming? Or book a badminton court at the local sports centre? Or just kick a football around the nearby car park. Every day I gave in: one day we followed his five hours of cricket with a 45 minutes kickabout, then an hour’s swimming. And then we came home and played a tabletop sports game, Test Match. And still he didn’t sleep.

He has become, like so many small boys, a human dynamo: the more he moves, the more energy he has. And truly, I am delighted, because his love of endless sport reminds me of some of the happiest times of my own childhood. The trouble, however, is that I know I can’t keep up. Even putting aside my dodgy knee, his ability to keep going far exceeds mine these days. He is perpetually on the go; I am perennially knackered.

That is why I have taken the opportunity provided by the current World Championship to get my son into snooker: a sedate sport, which we can enjoy together on the telly, with no running involved.