What is the right age for table Tennis

Created by
Updated on Jul 31, 2012
What is a good age to introduce your child to table tennis ?? The school that my son goes to is providing extra classes on table tennis ( ofcourse with a montly extra fees as well ), my son is 5 years old and some of the other kids in the class are actually talking the class... My son wants to go as well but but here i am wondering how are the children able to even reach the table ?? What do i do ?? am actually planing to go and see in the academy what the other kids (5 yr olds) are doing....

| Aug 01, 2012
Hey Swati, i think there is no right age as such - guess should be ideal when the child can reach up to the table or a bit above that... otherwise, maybe there are shorter tables available where they can Horne their skills... before they graduate on to the real ones...

| Aug 01, 2012
Let me take a step back & suggest.... Almost all games have two aspects to the motor skills; Gross Motor skills & fine motor skills. Like other milestones for the child, these two also improve with age in a young one. Gross motor is the movement of the various body parts like the arm, the leg, neck and so on... whereas Fine motor is more about the finer movement, like the fingers while cutting through a paper with a scissor & so on. Given that your son is a 5 year old, TT as a game requires a mix of both, the fine motor as well as gross motor skills apart from the ability to reach out to both the corners of the table. I personally won't advice TT for your child as of now, unless their is a shorter table, both in height & length, especially for 5-year-olds. You could always start with half table/wall practice for a lower height-table to begin with. I would suggest an age of 7 for the next steps.