To Stay or Not to Stay

I'm sitting in the school cafeteria while my son has lacrosse practice in the gym.  For the record there’s still snow on the ground so they can’t practice outside.  Most of the young players' parents are also in the gym watching. "Why?" I have to ask.  Don't they have other things to do?  What's the protocol for when your children play sports?  Are you supposed to go to the practices too?  I thought it was just the games.  The reason why I'm still in the building is because the ride home is 15 minutes and by the time I get home I'd just have to come back.  Plus it's wonderfully quiet in this empty cafeteria.  I have just enough time to write a blog and do some research.  Just not on Facebook because it's blocked which is a good thing for an elementary school I suppose.

So why do I not feel the least bit guilty for not watching his practice?  From a blog post from Sports Girls Play: 

Assuming your child is in a training situation which is healthy, safe and well supervised (which it should be), I don’t see any benefit to staying and watching every one of your child’s practices. Here’s why:

• As a parent, if you watch every practice you are less likely to see the gradual improvements that your child is achieving every day. Stay and watch once a month or so and you will be amazed with your daughter’s progress.
• Your child needs to learn to interact with other adults and her teammates without looking to you for approval/disapproval at every turn. For most children, the lure of looking out into the audience for parental approval after every turn is just too great.
• Certainly you have something more productive to do with your time – take a walk, go work out, do errands, or better yet, carpool so you only have driving duties one way giving you more time to do other tasks.

I totally agree.  I feel completely confident in the coach and the supervision my son is receiving.   My son knows I care or I wouldn't have signed him up in the first place.  And sadly I need some quiet time to write, but a walk would be nice since it's warmed up a little today.  But anyway.  As it is I can hear the yelling from the next room.  I hope that wasn't my son.

So why do parents stay?  Is it part of the helicopter thing?  Do they think it's the right thing to do?  I can see the argument that by sticking around you are showing your support.  And at this young elementary school age the child might still need to see a familiar face.  Also, if the coach needs assistance, someone is there.  And maybe some people just like to watch for the sake of sport.  I suppose we all have our own view.  Meanwhile, I've signed up to substitute teach at my son's school.  Purely professional reasons, but in my son’s mind, that's about 100 times worse than attending a one hour practice!

Runaway Board

Yesterday afternoon, in perfect spring skiing conditions, my 7yo son and I went snowboarding for the first time this season.  I'm okay but not good enough to give him a lesson.  So I had his older half-sister come with us to instruct him.  And help me too in case I forgot anything.  What a blast.  Every step is a process.  Just getting to the lift took awhile.  He wanted to push with his foot in front and kept falling.  We asked to slow down the lift to get on, just in case.  He was pretty confident on the ride up.  We warned him that getting off the lift is the hardest part of snowboarding.  When the time came, he almost made it but fell just past the ramp.  That was okay.  We moved him over and got him ready.

I wasn't much help in his first few turns since I could barely make mine.  It was a long trip down the South Slope of Cranmore but the snow was soft and the sun was hot and I didn't mind a few rests in a snowbank.  It's hard to watch anyone, let alone your son, do a face plant but he made it up each time and kept trying.  I didn't hear any complaints from him and his sister was still smiling when we got to the bottom of the trail, so we dragged him back up again. 

This time he made it off the lift in style.  I didn't bother to wait for them and went on ahead.  I was about halfway down and stopped to see how they were doing.  Lo and behold he was right behind me.  Amazing progress!  We had time for one more run so we did it again but this time decided to shuffle over 2 trails to our destination.  Well, traversing on a flat surface on a board isn't easy.  I gave up and took my board off and walked over.  When I saw my son struggling I told him to do the same. 

And this is why you don't take your board off on a trail:  It got away from him and shot down through the Terrain Park.  That's not good. He was a little panicked but his sister was on it and reunited him with his board about halfway down the trail.  It's never good to lose your board but the terrain park is the worst place for it.  Some guys were filming jumps and were camped out where the board landed.  They were a bit authoritative about safety, as if we didn't know, but no one was hurt.

I should not have been boarding in the Terrain Park myself but as a mother of course I went after my son.  At the top I had to ask two guys to move because I didn't have enough room to navigate a turn.  When I got to the guys filming I told them my plight and they directed me out of harm's way.  How embarrassing.  I don't think I looked too goofy going down.  And how many moms snowboard with their kids anyway?  That's got to count for some little bit of coolness.

We called it a day but of course my son was loving it and wanted to take another run.   That's a good sign.  My little boy is a knuckle dragger!  Hopefully next weekend I'll get my husband out there with us. 

Setting Boundaries

My 7yo son has been hitting everyone lately.  I'm assuming it's lately, but who knows if it's just now he's getting caught.  There are 3 "issues" with this.  First, the phone call from school.  Second is the sleepover, snow day visitor, and computer game influence.  Third is the punishment.

The phone call from his teacher couldn't have come at a better time.  My husband and I were driving back from a nice day in Portland, very relaxed and energized.  I heard the information on voice mail first because my phone didn't actually ring.  Which is good because it gave me time to process.  It takes me a little bit of time to think things through.  In the past I would have reacted in some form of shock, denial, anger, shame, etc, but in keeping with my New Year's Resolutions I remained calm.  I returned the phone call and got the news that he's been sent to Student Support two times in three days for hitting.  The teacher didn't actually see the incidents and was simply relaying information.  Since it happened on the playground, we concluded with a "boys will be boys" summation.  But that's pretty much what I've vowed to never accept in raising my boys to be respectful.

I told my husband all the news.  His quick response was "No more sleepovers.  No more computer."  I didn't agree.  I know that the chaos earlier in the week from playing with 2 wild friends has greatly influenced his latest behavior, but taking away privileges doesn't address the problem.  He's always going to have wild friends in his life so I'd rather he learn from the experience earlier than later.  And I will always have to contend with the computer so that too needs to be addressed rather than taken away.  I want to know why he thinks it's acceptable to hit someone and if he can come up with a better way to handle his frustration.  I'm learning to accept that males will always be in some sort of power struggle but I don't think it's okay to act out when the mood strikes.  When I catch my son "wrestling" with his friends in the house it makes me nuts.  Go outside!  There's a time and a place for everything and the living room is not one of them.  And sneaking a punch at your little brother for whatever reason simply is not acceptable.  So now I just need to figure out how to change this.  I'm pretty sure it's not going to happen in one week.

When my 7yo got home from school I asked the usual "How was your day?" not sure what to expect.  He actually mentioned the Student Support incident but was a little defensive.  "It wasn't my fault," he immediately added.  I replied "Fault, or no fault, you don't hit anyone.  It's about respecting other people's boundaries."  Try explaining that to a 7yo.  He looked at my cross-eyed.  "Honey, it's like this:  When you force your feelings or in your case your fist on someone, you're bulldozing them.  Um, you're plowing them over as it they're dirt and not human."  He seemed to understand.  I continued, "On the other hand, if someone came after you with a fist, I wouldn't expect you to just stand there and take it.  What do you think would be the best thing to do?"  "Hit him back," he replied.  "Try again," I said.  "Tell an adult," he said.  "Well, that's good but isn't there a middle ground?" Oops, I had to explain middle ground.  "Isn't there one more option, like using words?" I asked.  "I would tell him to stop it and walk away," he replied.  Bingo.  Now how do I ingrain this in his brain?

And now the punishment.  When I asked my son what he thought his punishment should be he said to ground him.  I said no way, I want you outside and active as much as possible.  You're not going to hide out in your room.  We decided to add a "Show Respect" button to his chore chart.  It's been up before  but it's time to revisit.

Actually, the onus of the punishment is on me.  I've been lazy.  I need to limit sleepovers, lay out the rules to both boys when friends come over, keep the time structured, and supervise them better.  I also need to enforce computer time rules.  I came up with a good solution that I snuck in the next day, so as to deflect from actually being a punishment.  Upon completion of the chore chart each week the boys get "daddy bucks" which they can redeem at half value for whatever they want or full value if it goes into their savings.  From now on, when they want to play on the computer it costs one daddy buck for a half-hour.  Another way to give them choices.

Snow Days

I tend to wake up on Monday mornings with all sorts of crazy ideas.  This one was to invite my working friend's kids over for the snow day so she wouldn't have to use her valuable time off to stay home with them.  The oldest is really a sweet boy, but when he and my son  are together it's a nightmare.  They can't keep their hands off each other, they run around the house in constant motion, I saw a bottle of water (without the cap - gasp!) making its way upstairs for what ever reason, and just the general chaos.  You know it's going to be a rough day when they come in with their own toys.  You can say good bye to those silly kid!  By 11am I got them outside and watched like a hawk from my perch in the kitchen.  They could see me too.  Every time one of them hit my 4yo he'd look up to see if I was looking.  I figured if the little guy was hurt enough someone would tell me so I ignored it.  After an hour my 4yo was in tears but not because he was hurt; he didn't like the snow in his eyes, a sign he was getting tired.

After lunch the guest boy's little sister showed up so they all had someone to play with.  Within the first 5 minutes the two 4yos ran into each other, bonking heads and a subtle sound of a nose cracking.  They were both okay.  It wasn't a bad afternoon but at 4pm I started to lose it.  There was pee all over the downstairs toilet and the upstairs was clogged.  I noticed that all my toiletries had been rearranged.  My little one informed me that the older boys had the room deodorizer with them.  I didn't want to deal.  In the last hour everything fell apart, toys went everywhere, the kids were running all over the place, and I lost control.  To make matters worse my husband came home and just started yelling, so it got even louder to boot.  I had a headache.  Finally, at 5pm my friend arrived to collect the monsters.

Yesterday I found a coffee mug of something orange in my older son's bottom desk drawer.  That would explain the bottle of water.  Ahh, a science experiment.  I sure hope it was just the vanilla room spray they put in it.