When to let your kid start playing?

Same boat here with a kindergartner asking about playing. Not letting him put pads on till 5 th grade at the earliest. Just don't think kids are ready mentally or physically before that.

The local flag community is pretty awesome, I think there's plenty to gain from playing flag until at least middle school age.

I agree with Mariner. My kid will play flag football until middle school. Let football be fun, and then learn it from coaches I can trust a little more (not saying their aren't any good youth coaches).

I've coached 5-6 year old full pads, and not just no but hell no. Also did a few years of 11-12 year olds and that seems like a good starting point.

I'm in the same boat. My son is 11 (5th grade) and has been bugging me for 2 years. He and his brother did flag (brother has no interest which is fine).

I think I'm going to let him play next year but not 100% sure. My fear has always been that if I start him too early and he gets hurt he will not want to come back. So I would rather wait. 

On a side note, have a few youth parents that have given me some heat (behind my back of course) bc as the HFC my kids don't play. I find that interesting/ annoying. Has anyone else experienced this? For me personally, nobody but me will decide when my kids play so it has gained no traction in my decision making. Just bc I like football doesn't mean my kids have to. They are very active with basketball and love it.

Just wondering if anyone else has experienced this.

My oldest is in 1st grade. He played Flag Football this year. I thought the team was well run and he loved it. The earliest I think anyone should consider it is 5th grade. Our lower levels begin pads in 7th grade.

I played soccer in the fall until 6th grade. I always loved football but always was into soccer. I did play pickup football since I was 5 though. The peewee coaches kept telling my dad I need to come out for football. I eventually did and started playing when I was 12. I still played indoor soccer in the winter until I was 16 along with badketball. Baseball in the spring.

Just like your kid I'm sure, I was nervous to start something new. New teammates, friends, coaches. After the first day I wasn't nervous anymore

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In Florida soccer is a winter sport so he could do both.

We start at 8 here. So he would start at 8.

Our youth league here is pretty fantastic. A lot of really good coaches and not A lot of slapsticks.. So I will have no problem starting him at 8.

I am not a HS coach, but I can tell you I felt the same as a bunch of you on here - I figured my son should wait until 12 or so to start playing football.  I had the same fear as someone else mentioned - he'd take a big hit, and lacking the maturity to put it into a larger context, he'd be afraid of football and never go back. But he and my wife had a different idea and signed him up at 7 years old. Well, he definitely struggled at first, tried to quit a bunch of times, etc. And he did take a couple of decleaters that first year, but he got back up and eventually got back in there. He's never been a star, but he's been good enough to play for the most part, and had a couple of starts as a senior in HS on a team that won their league.  And he just finished up his first season as a freshman walk-on at a D1 FCS school.  He will likely never see the field at this level, but he loves the atmosphere and being part of the team. 

And I will say this - youth football changed his life. He has some issues (very mild autism and some other stuff), and football gave him an enormous amount of self confidence and social acceptance. And I'm not sure he'd have made it if he started much later than he did. He started young enough where the hitting wasn't all that bad, and by the time the physicality was cranked up a few notches he knew what he was doing.

I started coaching youth football when he was 8, and just finished my 11th year.  Here's what I've seen in my own town - the kids that wait until freshman year are so far behind that many (not all) get discouraged and end up quitting. There were some very good athletes in my son's class whose parents did the wait until HS thing, and all of them were done after one or two years. My son's senior year, I believe all 22 of the starting positions were kids that played youth football. But that might be as much about our local HS staff as anything else.  They don't teach any fundamentals in that program, so the kids coming in with youth experience have a HUGE advantage.

I coached 3 years at 7-8 years old, 7 years at 9-10, and just finished my first year at 11.  My personal feeling is that somewhere in that 9-11 age is probably about right. At that age the hitting isn't too violent, and you still have a lot of kids who are non-athletes and are just out there running around.  Starting around 12 years old, when you have some kids beginning to hit puberty, the hitting really begins to crank up. Personally, knowing what I know now, I would NOT have wanted my kid dropped into it for the first time at 12. 

I will also tell you that flag has been a disaster from a football perspective.  We have had zero luck with kids coming over with only flag experience (in our town it's the NFL play 60 or whatever).  It's not football, it's friggin gym class. We've had kids play flag, think they want to play football from that experience, and drop after about a week in pads.  There is nothing you can do about the fact that football is hard - and nothing about flag is going to prepare them for that. Yeah, it's a pointy ball, and that's about it.

Simple answer: "when they are ready"

Kids all develop mentally and physically at different rates. There's no magic answer to this one. You know and love your son. You know what's best.

Any insight as to why coach?

Little kids are too small, slow, and weak to hurt each other.

My son won't play organized tackle football until 7th grade at the earliest if he so chooses. He loves the game already and wants to always play but pickup and other sports (if he wants) will fill his time. He will be on the sideline with me as a ball boy/water boy if I have a coaching gig and that should keep him chomping at the bit.