Sportsmanship and Toeing the Parental Line

So, i know some of you are waiting for pictures from the costume party, but it is just gonna have to wait. I have a little something to get off my chest. It's called, "What the fuck is wrong with you, you sack of shit parents?"

I guess I should start at the beginning. I should mention first that I was not present for the event in question, Rollie's soccer game. It took place Saturday afternoon. His father took him to the game, while I readied our home for being descended upon by eleven costumed children on Sunday.

Rollie is my oldest, so this is my first experience with parenting a child in organized sports leagues. I played sports growing up, and really credit the experiences for giving me much of my self-confidence, and my sense of sportsmanship. I played tee ball, baseball, softball, soccer, swimming, and tennis, and even recreational basketball, at which i was pretty terrible. I am competitive and love to win, but I have never been a sore loser, and am always a gracious winner, except in drinking games, or games played while drinking (beer pong, pool, darts) where "talking shit" is acceptable, and even encouraged, and where it would never set a poor example in front of a child. I have looked forward to my kids playing sports and learning about teamwork, good sportsmanship, doing one's best, and self-confidence.

So, Rollie is playing soccer for the first time this year. He is in a co-ed, under six league. The kids range in age from 3-6 (a huge age difference actually), and they don't keep score. There are no referees, just the two coaches out on the field with the kids, giving them pointers and running the game. It is all about learning the skills, the rules of the game, and sportsmanship. Or so i thought.

Rollie definitely got a competitive streak from me. he likes to win, and we have been working with him on things like, "it is okay if you lose, as long as you give it your best" and "you can't win them all," and teamwork. One problem we have had so far this year is that not only does he want to take the ball away from the opponent, he also will go after the ball if his own teammate has it, and we are trying to teach him that he needs to work with his team, not against them.

Other than that though, we had so far had no real problems. So, Todd takes him to his game on Saturday. None of the kids on Rollie's team have played before, and there is a kid on the other team that is playing circles around the others. He also played pretty rough, throwing elbows, pulling on shirts and pants, etc. I have never seen any unsportsmanlike behavior called at these games. Either the coaches did not see this stuff, or they just let it go. So, Rollie is pretty competitive and started getting mad, and from what I can tell from what Todd said, he kind of did the same stuff, and told the kid to "stop it." Well, this kid said to Rollie, loud enough for Todd to hear, although it seems that other parents and the coaches did not hear it, "Y'all suck."

Now, as I said, Rollie is my oldest, and it doesn't take long after sending your eldest child to school to realize that they are in for quite an education. While they are learning the ABCs and 123s (or not, but that is a whole 'nother post), they are also learning a ton of really neat sayings and behaviors from the kids in their class who are not the oldest; these kids have older brothers and sisters and just aren't as innocent as the eldest siblings. They use words and phrases like, "You suck." "I'm going to kill you." And lots of stuff about shooting and guns. It is frightening the way that influences on your child are suddenly out of your control.

Back the game: This kid says this stuff, plus the other team is scoring a bunch of goals, and Rollie's team, not so much. And the team is getting pretty discouraged. Which is fine. In my opinion, it is just as important to learn how to lose gracefully as it is to win. But then Todd takes Rollie to school this morning, and one of the kids in his class was on the other team. He is a nice kid, and Rollie and he are friends. Well, his mom asks if Rollie had recovered from the drama of the game and it seems that Rollie was snarky with his friend on Saturday. (I guess out of frustration at losing, not that frustration is in any way an excuse for bad behavior.) She then proceeds to tell Todd some further stuff about the "Y'all suck" kid's behavior on Saturday. Seems as he was substituted out of the game, he came out and loudly proclaimed, either to the parents or in front of the parents, that he was "going to kick that kid's ass." We assume he was referring to Rollie. Apparently, no one said anything. At least this one parent heard the comment. Todd did not. We do not know if any one else heard it, but according to this mother, it was loud enough to hear.

I know what I would do in this situation. What would you do? Would you have said something? As a parent, do you rely on a coach to deal with these things? Is it really best to ignore it? What reason would his parents have for not reprimanding him for this behavior? Would you reprimand someone else's child for saying something like this? And what kind of a household is this child living in that he remotely thinks it is acceptable to say something like that, much less in front of a group of adults?

Am I being over-protective and raising a complete wuss of a child? Is it really so wrong to want my child to learn about respect for others, respect for adults, etc?

Most of all, what kind of a child talks like this at age six or under?

I am fuming and just mad I wasn't there to say something to the sorry excuse for parents that poor kid must have. And if I had, would i be labeled a troublemaker or a rabble rouser? And if I was, would i give a shit?

Morose: Marked by or expressive of gloom

One of those days where everything just seems so hard. Even using complete sentences. Getting out of bed. Going for a run. Getting house cleaned for showing, even though no one is ever going to fucking buy it anyway. Taking kids to sister's, where Rollie craps in his pants, and we have to put women's shorts on him for lunch at Fellini's. Fall asleep on couch thinking husband is sick in bed upstairs and miss out on opportunity for nap time sex. Go to dinner with kids and husband and baby throws food everywhere. (Silver lining: Both of my kids are pieces of gold compared to brats in restaurant at same time, and whose parents seem immune to their screams. Take the cotton out of your ears, y'all, your kids are a fucking nuisance. Please remove them from the establishment.) Get home and realize no time to get in run before dark, so get bike out for a 30-minute ride and find tires need inflating and will not have time for ride either. Wonder why physically incapable of getting out of bed before seven. Water garden (illegally? Too morose to check watering restrictions) while thinking that for being this tired, you should have accomplished something. Anything.

Go drink beer and watch t.v. Not even energy to write or blog. Okay. Always energy to blog.

I like the word gloom. Feeling gloom? Not so much.

Field Day

Yep. You heard me.

"Field Day."

Conjures up some memories, doesn't it? Hot May days, red clay on your tube socks, popsicles, tug-of-war, relays, and ice cream. My friend Vanessa, a schoolteacher, gleefully tells me come every May about what they call Field Day at her school. I think she enjoys watching me roll my eyes. I kid you not, they call it "Personal Record Day." Because God forbid that we might have kids who are actually winners over other kids, because . . . well, then there would be losers. We wouldn't want to teach our little ones that sometimes people win, sometimes they lose. Even worse, what if they were to learn that classic lesson about being a gracious loser? Nope, much better to let them run around a field like chickens with their heads cut off, achieving nothing, learning nothing, but with their precious self-esteem intact.

Oops. Totally got off the subject. This was about Rollie, and about his first field day. In his own words.

Still Another Sign That I am a Better Than Average Parent

I was in the grocery store this morning, pushing the cart out the sliding doors to the parking lot. One of the guys in charge of retrieving the carts from the cart corral walked out to the car with me. He asked me if I liked the car kind of buggy. (I call it a "race cart;" It is the buggy with a car on the front of it for the kids to sit in, and it is a fucking bitch to navigate a grocery store with one of them, but it beats having them throwing your groceries out of the cart while you are not looking.)

I said, "Yeah, I guess so. Why?"

He told me that, on weekends when the store is crowded, most parents will wait until a race cart becomes available before doing their grocery shopping.

I just stared at him, then "Are you kidding?"

"Nope." We both laughed, then shook our heads in dismay.

Really, people. Don't you have something better to do with your time on Saturdays than hang out in the cart area of your local Kroger, just to appease your fucking spoiled brat of a child? That's ridiculous.

When I get to the store, if there are no racecar buggies available, I tell my kids to suck it up and ride the old-fashioned way. They bitch and moan, but there is a lesson here for them. They learn that they are not the goddamn center of the universe, that there are times in life when you just have to deal with a little disappointment. Not a bad lesson to learn on a Saturday at Kroger.

Raising Precious

Okay, I know that I said here that American Idol is indicative of everything that is wrong with our world, but I think that I was too quick to pin the blame on one source. After receiving it in the mail yesterday, and then flipping through it in the bathroom this morning while taking a shit, it became quite apparent that the same can be said for the Pottery Barn Kids catalog.

Page four is all about "The Creative Backyard" or something like that. As if my kid can't learn creativity without a teak sandbox, lime and seafoam-striped sun umbrella, and monogrammed sand pail. (Metal, of course, because plastic is just tacky.) Creativity comes from within, Pottery Barn - Just see the idea my kid came up with while helping me garden. And, no we didn't have a monogrammed trowel and sunhat for him.

There is a section just on shit you can buy for a kid's party: Themes include pirates, surfers, and luaus. Who the fuck would buy a real teak kids' outdoor dining set, with little precious' name monogrammed onto a surfboard for a birthday party? To look at the catalog, you would think that not only are you supposed to have the director's chair that your kid will sit in while eating his cake monogrammed, but you are supposed to have the names of all the other little kids monogrammed on their items (chairs, towels, plates) presumably to take home as party favors?

So, not only are we training our kids up to think they might be the next American Idol, or the next movie or sports star, rather than teaching them tools to succeed in the real world, but now some parents are creating this fucking dreamworld that is so magnificent that nothing in the real world will ever hold a candle to it, and they will continue to be disappointed by life.

Not to mention that if I pay those kinds of prices for a fucking surfboard, I'm damn well gonna monogram my name on it.