{"id":1122,"date":"2014-02-11T07:30:43","date_gmt":"2014-02-11T07:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brainyacademyny.com\/parkslope\/?p=1122"},"modified":"2015-02-11T07:32:32","modified_gmt":"2015-02-11T07:32:32","slug":"son-lost-soccer-ball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brainyacademyny.com\/parkslope\/son-lost-soccer-ball\/","title":{"rendered":"On how my son lost a soccer ball"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Both my boys love soccer.\u00a0 My almost 8 year old has been playing since weeks before turning 4, hardly ever missing a game or practice.\u00a0 Given the choice to do anything in the world there is no question what he would pick \u2013 soccer with his teammates.\u00a0 When hiring a babysitter I always have an unusual first question:\u00a0 do you play soccer and if so how well? Any woman who babysits my children is required to act as a goalie and a passer.\u00a0 So last summer as both my boys heading out to the local park with the sitter, soccer ball in hand, I was heading off to work.<\/p>\n

A few hours later I received a hysterical call from my older son.\u00a0 At first I couldn\u2019t make out what was going on.\u00a0 He is a tough boy, rarely prone to crying over physical injuries.\u00a0 He was whaling into the phone.\u00a0 I asked him to put the sitter on the phone.\u00a0 \u201cWhat happened?\u201d\u00a0 \u201cThere are boys at the park and they stole his ball.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cSo he is this upset over a ball?\u201d was my bewildered response.\u00a0 This hardly seemed a tragedy.\u00a0 \u201cPut him back on\u201d I said.\u00a0 \u201cWhat happened?\u201d\u00a0 I asked again.\u00a0 This time he was able to calm down.\u00a0 \u201cI was playing with the boys, and I was winning and they got mad and told me I hurt one of them, but I didn\u2019t so they took my ball and stole it and I don\u2019t know where it is.\u201d\u00a0 Now I got the full picture.\u00a0 My sweet boy who only wanted to find some friends with whom to play soccer had a prized possession stolen as revenge for winning.\u00a0 I confirmed the story with the sitter who volunteered that the boys were \u201cmean, nasty and jealous and older than E (who is so tall he normally passes for a 10 year old).\u201d She told my son it was not a good idea to play with them, but of course he chose to do so anyway.<\/p>\n

My inner mama bear wanted to leave work, drive over to the park and take those boys on.\u00a0 I was going to go visit their parents.\u00a0 I was going to yell at the boys. I was going to make them feel awful about what they done and I was going to revenge my little boy.<\/p>\n

I did none of that of course.\u00a0 In spite of my blood boiling, my heart racing and my breath shallow I closed my eyes and counted to 10.\u00a0 And then I told my son this simple truth \u201cSometimes life sucks.\u00a0 Sometimes bad things happen to good people.\u00a0 You didn\u2019t deserve that to happen to you.\u00a0 But guess what.\u00a0 Those boys, they are mean for a reason.\u00a0 They are probably not from nice families, their life is probably not nice.\u00a0 They don\u2019t have a nice mommy and daddy and grandparents who love them and teach them to do the right thing and take them to soccer practice.\u00a0 So they are angry because of everything you have and they don\u2019t.\u00a0 So they took it out on you.\u201d<\/p>\n

I want my kids to know:\u00a0 even if life isn\u2019t fair, it can almost always be fixed, if you only look for a solution you will find one.\u00a0 \u201cWill get you a new ball\u201d I said.\u00a0 \u201cDon\u2019t play with those boys because when people are mean, and rude you are best cutting them off from your life.\u201d\u00a0 To the best of my knowledge he has never again played soccer with those boys.\u00a0 He told me once:\u00a0 \u201cI saw those boys in the park again. You know the ones.\u00a0 The ones who\u2019s parents don\u2019t love them. They wanted to play with my ball but I told them \u2018no.\u2019\u201d I opened my mouth to correct him and then closed it again.\u00a0 Perhaps their parents did love them.\u00a0 But what a great way for him to look at a person who does you wrong:\u00a0 with pity, and with lack of contact.<\/p>\n

Have you had a similar situation?\u00a0 Let me know how you\u2019ve handled it in the comments below.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Both my boys love soccer.\u00a0 My almost 8 year old has been playing since weeks before turning 4, hardly ever missing a game or practice.\u00a0 Given the choice to do anything in the world there is no question what he would pick \u2013 soccer with his teammates.\u00a0 When hiring a babysitter I always have an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1123,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[20,21,22],"class_list":["post-1122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-brainy-academy","tag-overprotective-parents","tag-success"],"yoast_head":"\nOn how my son lost a soccer ball -<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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