him more and he was performing better on the field. Then a
couple of weeks ago, he had a game where he just seemed dead
on the field, and all the old frustrations came back about his
efforts and his attitudes. I was so upset as the game finished, I
was ready to lay into him with a Vince Lombardi halftime
speech about winners and losers.
However, having read Parenting with Love and Logic
recently, I knew that now that he was eleven, he had to choose
to play the game or else he would soon quit — I couldn’t make
him play harder. So I decided to do the difficult thing — I kept
my mouth shut to let him talk about the game.
As we walked back to the car I was fuming and had to excuse
myself to stop at the restrooms to calm down before we drove
home. The car was silent on the way home, and I refused to let
him turn on the radio to give him time to think. When we
arrived home, we discovered he had left one of the sandals he
wears before and after the game at the field, so we drove back.
That was also a quiet ride until about halfway back when he
asked me, ‘Why did you yell at me to go when that kid fell
down?’ While he was fighting for the ball with another boy, the
kid had fallen to the turf and the whole sideline yelled for him
to take the ball and go toward the goal. I explained to him that I
didn’t see that the other boy was hurt, but that, if he had been
concerned, the correct thing to do was kick the ball out of
bounds so that the official could call time out to allow the
coach to come and check on him. Then I apologized for getting
so excited.
After that, the layers of the onion began to peel as his focus
changed from outside — my yelling on the sideline — to inside
— how he felt about his performance and how badly he had
wanted to play well in front of his mom, whose schedule didn’t
allow her to come to very many of his games. He talked of how
he wanted to show her that he was playing because he liked the
lu
(lu)
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