I am not ashamed to come forward and say 'mea culpa' when indeed it is mine, which I recognize it is not very often (haha). However, mea culpa alone is not enough. Sometimes, just admitting you are wrong does not necessarily translate into action or correction. Sometimes, you have to be taught a lesson twice so it reminds you not to fall within the same old pattern of bad behaviour. And I had a reminder this past week. This is not about Miss B's behaviour, but my own.
B loves sports and she has chosen to take on 3 sports, while I actually discouraged her to do so. But being the only child she is, having great grades at school and not a lot of homework, I felt it was ok for this season to take on 3. She went on with Swimming team (4x a week), Soccer ( 2x a week) and Gymnastics (1 x a week) and she even wanted to take a fourth: Running, which I didn't let her.
She started the year strong but towards the end of the Summer she started not wanting to go to swimming as often and really not focusing during practice. The coach spoke to her and I spoke to her and asked if she wanted to continue swimming. If indeed she liked swimming herself or was doing only to please me. She said she liked it, but it was a lot of work. Which in fact it is! The team approach seems to discourage those do not want to make swimming their #1 priority. As a result of our conversation, our compromise was to swim twice a week only until the November meet and then rethink whether she still wanted to swim when it was not so cold in February or March.
She started to focus a lot more and swam strong after that. I was thinking to myself that she was going to end her season with a win streak in the U6 category meet at the end of November. When I saw the Swim roster it became even more apparent that she would win it all, after all, she had the best times! What a beautiful ending to her first season of swimming would that be! Only that it did not end up the way I imagined...
Swimmers have good days and bad days and she had never had a bad so far. Well, the last meet was one of these "bad days". She improved her time in only 1 of the 4 styles she swam and, as a result she got second place in 3 styles and was even disqualified in the fly (which all swimmers but one were too, strangely).
You may be thinking, isn't second place good when you're swimming against 10 other swimmers? I'd say generally yes, but in knowing what she could have done and that in certain styles 5 year olds beat her, it was for me upsetting, disappointing and at the same time humbling. I never let it transpire to her I was disappointed. She wanted to know why she was disqualified, not even I knew. But overall, she was not super happy, but was not too upset. After all, she got medals! As for me, I felt ashamed of underestimating other kids so badly that I didn't want to confess my sin till now.
Even after this little lesson, I went on to sort of falling in to the same pattern of bad behaviour this past week. We had practice, we had this kid that got kicked out of practice by the coach while his mom was not at practice. None of the moms really understood and the kid kept crying in the corner. I did not feel like going to talk to him because I did not want to take the authority from the coach. I did see him giving the kid a warning regarding behaviour so I assumed it was deserved. I felt really bad regardless, but yet didn't do anything about it.
After practice I asked B if she knew what had happened to the boy and she said she wasn't sure. She knew he was upset because the other boys were making up rhymes with his name. I felt even worse. He was being bullied and nobody actually did anything.
Saturday comes and we have a tough a game against an opponent that has mostly 7 and 8 year boys against our young team of 6-year old boys and girls. We were already losing 3-0 when the coach sets up the team with this boy that got kicked out, two girls and another average player agains the all boys team. In my mind, it was the weakest team of all, even if my daughter was in it and I told the other mom, that the coach should balance the team better, not having all girls at the same time etc. Right when I was saying that the little boy, the one that got kicked out, started to make his odd moves and I say to the other mom: " you see what I'm saying, look at that!" This was a horrible, horrible comment from a mean mom. And that was me... Just in the heat of competition. Very mean indeed.
Right after realizing what I had said and thought, I immediately felt awful. This kind of behaviour would be something I expected from another mom I so criticize for overpraising her kid and thinking every other kid is a moron. This is not me! Or is it?!
Well, we ended up losing to the big boys team, which was not the lesson in itself. The big lesson came from the little boy who got bullied and got kicked out during practice, who was making the odd moves during the game. He, the little boy, was the only one in our team to score a goal right towards the end of the game. His first goal.That right there, was a slap to my face. Wake and up and smell the coffeee. It's great to compete and to see your kid win, but do not ever understimate other kids or let competition blind you and misguide you from your values. We are all created equal.
