When to Butt In

Longtime readers of this blog know that when my stepdaughters were younger, we lived, ate, slept and breathed soccer. Both girls played recreational soccer, junior high and high school soccer, 3 v. 3 soccer, and winter indoor soccer, and Dennis coached nearly all of their teams.

We started Punky in soccer when she turned three, but it soon became clear that soccer really wasn’t her thing. She was done with the sport by the age of five. (We have a difference in opinion, apparently, as to how that happened!) Bruiser also started at three and clearly wasn’t ready to commit to the sport, either. We decided to pull him and let him tell us if and when he was ready to try again.

This past year, Bruiser started kindergarten, discovered that all his new buddies were playing soccer, and asked to play again. We signed him up for a small team of five and six-year-olds. The other boys on his team weren’t future Olympic athletes, but they had been playing for a few seasons and had a basic understanding of what they were doing on the field. Bruiser did not. He was completely clueless about soccer, and at the first few practices and games, that was very, very obvious.

It was also obvious that he was having the time of his life.

That smile never left his face, from the time he got on the field until the time he got off. He may have been running in the wrong direction at times. He may have gotten nowhere near the ball. But he was having so much fun!

And I had been on the sidelines of the soccer fields long enough to know that in recreational soccer, among five-year-olds, that was what really mattered.

I quickly learned, though, that not every parent agreed with me.

I had heard over the years that we had it relatively easy on the girls’ soccer sidelines. According to the moms I knew, boys’ soccer took parental competitiveness to a whole new level. I learned this past season that they were right– At Bruiser’s soccer games, most of the boys’ dads were in attendance acting more like personal trainers than fathers. They shouted directives at the boys from the sidelines and whispered strategies in their ears during the breaks. Some teams showed up with not one but several coaches, dads who stood on the players’ side of the field dressed in matching tracksuits and sunglasses, coolly assessing the boys’ skills as if they were staff members on an NFL football team.

Our own coach quickly grew agitated if our boys weren’t doing well during their games, and began shouting at them with a sense of urgency and frustration. He seemed to be shouting my son’s name more than anyone else’s, and that wasn’t much of a surprise, I guess- Bruiser was obviously new to the sport. What really bothered me was that the coach’s son constantly ridiculed Bruiser on the field. The coach would tell him to stop when it happened, but it happened a lot and I could tell it bothered my son. I also suspected that the son was just repeating what he heard his dad say in private.

Things came to a head at a practice a few weeks ago. Bruiser was on the field with the other boys and the coach was shouting directions at them, many of which contained soccer terms that  I’m sure my son didn’t understand. At one point, the coach yelled at Bruiser to pass the ball to his older son, who was practicing with the boys. Bruiser paused, his foot on the ball, grinning.

“PASS THE BALL TO JEREMY!” the coach shouted again. Bruiser still stood there, his smile wavering. He didn’t know who Jeremy was. I could see the gears turning in his brain. What to do? What to do?

“BRUISER! LISTEN! TO! ME! PASS THE BALL! TO! JEREMY!!”

“Wow, he’s a little…. intense today, isn’t he?” a mom murmured beside me. I nodded.

Bruiser finally kicked the ball, but it wasn’t to Jeremy. The coach quickly strode over to Bruiser. “BRUISER, LOOK AT ME,” he shouted. He grabbed Bruiser’s shoulders and turned him to face him. “LOOK! AT! ME! YOU NEED TO PAY ATTENTION! WHEN I TELL YOU TO DO SOMETHING, YOU DO IT! WHEN I TELL YOU TO PASS THE BALL TO JEREMY, YOU PASS THE BALL! PAY! ATTENTION! DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?!”

The mom beside me exhaled loudly, muttered something, stood up from the picnic table where we were sitting and walked away. I sat there, my fists clenched. This was it. This was one of those do-or-die parenting moments. No one had ever shouted at my son like that. Not my husband. Not me. No one. And obviously, the problem wasn’t that my son wasn’t paying attention- It was that he didn’t know the game, and he sure as hell didn’t know who Jeremy was.

So what should I do? I wanted to stride onto the field, take my son by the hand, and walk away. And yet- I didn’t want to be one of those hovery, helicoptery parents.

I looked closely at my son out on the field. Miraculously, he seemed unfazed. He nodded at the coach and continued fumbling his way through practice. Once it was over, I smiled at him as if nothing was wrong and we went home.

But I knew I had to do something.

And this is where ten years spent raising my older stepdaughters comes into play. As parents, most of us walk a fine line when it comes to our children’s battles. We want to raise our children to be self-sufficient, to face adversity with confidence, to realize that some people are just mean, and that life does not revolve around them or their comfort or their happiness. Those are the noble reasons why we stay out of their struggles. The not-so-noble reasons are that intervening is awkward. Uncomfortable. No one likes the mom who’s always showing up to complain. We don’t want to be That Mom, and so often we say nothing. We stay out of it. We let it go.

Looking back, though, there were too many times when I didn’t intervene and now think I should have. Why didn’t I call the mother of that horrible bully and politely tell her what was going on? Who cares what she would have thought of me, or what she would have told her friends? And why didn’t I complain about the high school teacher who started texting his female students the day they turned eighteen? At the time, I didn’t want to betray my stepdaughters’ confidence, but WHAT WAS I THINKING? The school should have known about that!

As I thought about Bruiser’s practice, I realized that this was a defining moment for me as his mother. Was I going to let it go? Or was I going to do the awkward thing and speak out? I slept on it, and in the morning, I sent this e-mail:

Dear Coach,

As you might have guessed, I wasn’t very happy about how practice went yesterday. You seemed to spend a lot of time yelling at Bruiser and complaining that he wasn’t listening—to the point that other parents around me were commenting on your behavior. I’d hope you’ll think about a few things:

1. Bruiser is in kindergarten. Like most other kids his age, he doesn’t respond well to a man yelling at him in his face to pay attention. You wouldn’t talk to a friend or even a stranger on the street that way. Why would you talk that way to a six-year-old boy?

2. Bruiser has never played soccer before. Yesterday was his third practice. Ever. He definitely still looks a little clueless out there, and clearly doesn’t always know what you’re talking about when you yell directives at him. He also doesn’t know all the boys’ names yet, particularly those who sometimes practice with his team but aren’t actually ON his team. So when you yell at him to pass the ball to Jeremy and he doesn’t do it, I don’t think that warrants a shouted lecture on his failure to listen. He didn’t know who Jeremy was. Jeremy is not on his team.

3. I’ve been a soccer coach’s wife for ten years now and I can tell you unequivocally that recreational soccer, particularly at the kindergarten level, is not all about WINNING and SCORING– despite what certain parents would have you believe.  It’s about learning to play the game, developing physical confidence, getting exercise, becoming a team player, and fostering an appreciation for the sport. Most importantly, it’s about having fun.  If kids decide they want to be more competitive, they can try out for a travel team. In rec soccer, you will probably always have kids on your team who are really good. You will also have kids on your team who have never played and aren’t very good at all. I know that can be frustrating for a coach, but I hope you’ll remember that in recreational soccer, both of these kids are equally important. It’s up to you to make sure both of these types of kids feel good about themselves and comfortable with the fact that they’re all learning at different paces and skill levels.

4. I would like you to make sure that your child stops mocking Bruiser’s lack of soccer expertise at every single game and practice. How you parent your kids is totally your business- but I don’t want your kid to make fun of my kid any more, and you are the only person who can make that happen.

You should know that we are working with Bruiser to get him up to speed on soccer. Dennis has been practicing with him on the fields a few times a week, and we feel like he’s improving, slowly but surely. But you know what? He may never be very good. And on a kindergarten rec soccer team, that should be okay. Right now, Bruiser smiles the whole time he’s on the field, whether he’s practicing or playing. I don’t want that feeling taken away from him when he’s six years old– hence this e-mail, which I really hate to write. I am not someone who enjoys confrontation, although you wouldn’t know that reading this, would you? Hello, Mother Bear.

I want to move forward and have a great season, truly I do, but I believe in clearing the air when there’s a problem. Dennis and I are happy to discuss this with you in person and then put it behind us. I hope we can sort this out and all have a better soccer experience.

Thanks,

Lindsay Ferrier

To his credit, the coach responded immediately and apologized. More importantly, he laid off Bruiser after that. My son ended the season excited about playing again in the fall. And he just might suck. And I hope everyone is okay with that. And if they’re not, well, I’ll deal with that when it happens.

But I’m sharing this with you now to give you encouragement to stand up for your child when you see something happening that shouldn’t be happening. I want to let you know that while it may seem unbearably awkward now, there’s a very good chance you won’t regret it five or ten years down the road, and there’s a very good chance you WILL regret a decision NOT to speak out.

Of course, there will be times when I won’t intervene and will let Bruiser fight his own battles- but not when he’s six years old, facing off against an adult.

And not when this smile is at stake.