> confidence building

Being picked last for every team ever wasn't great for that. It was humiliating, time after time. But worse was then being bullied in the compulsory showers every time for supposedly wanting to have anal sex with everyone, I guess because I was into music and science, not sport. Although, outside school, I was in weekly soccer, basketball and sailing competitions, and did a lot of kayaking, windsurfing, table tennis, roller skating, swimming, bike riding, tennis, handball etc etc. I can hardly believe how sporty I was compared to now, yet still was considered super-unsporty!

Ah this is another dismissive comment I guess. Maybe people like me are over-represented here! (And who this "HN crowd" I read about? Everyone but you?) I reacted to your language, I think - you presented yourself as just pointing out a fact, when you got dismissive comments from a tough crowd without your level of knowledge and understanding.

PE is not important for child development. Exercise is. PE is a shitty kind of torture, a crappy simulacrum of doing some kind of physical activity you actually enjoy and would do voluntarily. In thought I hated sports, in part because of PE. Exercise is great. PE is an abomination.

Sweet Jesus, this. The only way I got back into exercise was swimming, because the only PE association it had was primary school lessons that were calm and didn't involve shitty peers.

Yeah, the lack of social interaction is a killer for a lot of child development. Kids on the spectrum whose primary problem is interaction skills are really getting screwed by the current situation.