Mixed Messages

Caleb is playing soccer for the first time this fall. He could have played with four-year-olds last year, but the two attempts we made at enrolling him in structured activities deterred us from making another effort at that point. This fall, however, he's ready to listen and is VERY excited about being a "soccer teamer." He's been anxiously awaiting his first practice since we purchased his gear mid-August.

Last Tuesday was his first practice. I had to go run several errands for the house, so I was a little late getting there. When I got there, he was beaming as he passed the ball back and forth to his partner for the drill, and kept giving me the thumbs-up sign. Clearly, he was thrilled. Of course, he had no idea what he was doing (we registered him late and he missed a couple practices), so most of the time he sort of stumbled his way through. This was aggravated by the fact that he didn't have his hearing aids (Scott was worried about the sweat and took them off. We have now agreed that hearing is more important, and that's why Caleb has Ear Gear.) Even so, HE was eating it up!

Then the coach decided they should scrimmage, so she called the boys in and gave them different colored jerseys to put on over their clothes. ALSO VERY EXCITING! Then she gave them a ball and let them play. Caleb happily ran down the field toward the ball, got it, and then immediately started crying when another boy took it away. He came running back to us sobbing, "They mean to me! They take the ball away! That not sharing!!"

For five years, we have had to work HARD with Caleb to get him to share. We spent an ENTIRE WEEK this summer talking about how we take turns when we go bowling. And then we turned him loose in a game where the whole point is stealing the ball from somebody else, your friends even, and sort of forgot to mention that. Such hypocrisy!

This week, our conversations went like this:

Me: Caleb, what do we do when someone takes the ball away?
Caleb: We get it back!
Me: That's right. In soccer, we don't share during the game.
Caleb: Yeah!

Of course, none of this prevented another crying episode during this week's scrimmage.

Oh man. What are we doing here???