{"id":10887,"date":"2015-06-18T07:34:12","date_gmt":"2015-06-18T12:34:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/?p=10887"},"modified":"2015-06-18T07:34:12","modified_gmt":"2015-06-18T12:34:12","slug":"in-which-she-fights-the-urge-to-wrap-her-boys-in-bubble-wrap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2015\/06\/18\/in-which-she-fights-the-urge-to-wrap-her-boys-in-bubble-wrap\/","title":{"rendered":"In which she fights the urge to wrap her boys in bubble wrap"},"content":{"rendered":"

H<\/span>elp me navigate this one, oh wise and experienced bloggy peeps. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m trying to be free-range relaxed, but my inner helicopter parent is screeching for control.<\/p>\n

As I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve mentioned, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve signed Lucas up for soccer. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s loving it and to my great surprise, so am I \u00e2\u20ac\u201c so much so that I regret not caving in to Simon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s requests back in the day. Because this is Lucas\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s first year, however, and because he is a child of Beloved and me, well \u00e2\u20ac\u201c let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just say that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no David Beckham. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s getting pretty good at actually paying attention to where the ball and game play are, but there are kids on his team who have two or three years of experience already, and he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no match for them with his extensive three weeks of drills behind him.<\/p>\n

\"Soccer<\/a><\/p>\n

So here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the thing. This is the first year the teams in this league have a goalie, and they take turns rotating playing goal. (Do you call it a goalie in soccer? Or do you play goal? I am so clueless. Can we talk baseball instead, because I can absolutely wax poetic about the infield fly rule and other baseball arcana. Soccer \u00e2\u20ac\u201c not so much. Before I dredged the David Beckham reference out of my subconscious, the only soccer player I could come up with is P\u00c3\u00a9l\u00c3\u00a9.) The coach has asked them if they want to play goal and apparently every kid has said yes, so he made up a schedule and circulated it to the parents, saying \u00e2\u20ac\u0153here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the night your boy will play goal, please let me know if you or he decide that he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to play goal.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Ugh. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t particularly want Lucas to want to be the goalie. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want him to play goal partly because even at seven and eight years old, those kids kick hard, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sure Lucas is ready for that. Every game, there’s at least one kid in tears over an injury of some sort. I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t help myself \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I just don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want him to potentially get hurt.<\/p>\n

Moreso, though, and I feel great shame in having so little faith in him, but I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want him to lose his love for the game if he gets trounced in goal. I absolutely don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care about whether his team wins or loses, and I think losing is an important lesson. They don’t actually keep score at this level, but every kid knows whether they’re winning or losing. I just don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think he has the focus or experience to even see when the play is coming toward him, let alone the game skills to know how to block the goal. You can shake off a ball to the face or a hard but misplaced kick \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but being the kid that let in eleventy goals takes longer to heal.<\/p>\n

And so there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s my struggle. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want him to be hurt, physically or emotionally, and I personally don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ready to take on the responsibility of goal keeping. But I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to be a bubble-wrap mom either. Lessons are learned best when they hurt. A little bit, anyway. I don’t want him to play goal, but I don’t want to be the only mom who says ‘I don’t want him to play goal.’ And I don’t particularly relish either the conversation where I explain to Lucas why I don’t want him to play goal OR the sleepless night before and endless hour of anxiety the day he actually does play goal.<\/p>\n

Ugh. What do you think, bloggy peeps? Any of you with more experiences as soccer moms and dads care to offer any insight?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Help me navigate this one, oh wise and experienced bloggy peeps. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m trying to be free-range relaxed, but my inner helicopter parent is screeching for control. As I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve mentioned, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve signed Lucas up for soccer. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s loving it and to my great surprise, so am I \u00e2\u20ac\u201c so much so that I regret not caving … Continue reading “In which she fights the urge to wrap her boys in bubble wrap”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mothering-without-a-licence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10887"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10891,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10887\/revisions\/10891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}