My older son, who is almost five, is playing soccer for the very first time this spring. He was a little reluctant when we first registered, despite the fact that he has always loved kicking around the soccer ball in the backyard. But by the time practices started a few weeks ago, he had embraced the idea.
His team is mostly soccer rookies. There’s one boy who I jokingly refer to as “the ringer” because this is his third season, and he’s quite good. But the rest of them are still novices. Enthusiastic novices, but novices nonetheless. Which is fine. You have to start somewhere, I’ve always said.
Also, this particular league is a low-pressure league where there are actual rules spelled out to govern good sportsmanship on the part of coaches and other involved parties. Which means that it’s less likely to be full of Those Parents. You know. The dads (and moms) who are hard core about the sport. The ones who yell constantly at their kids to work harder, play harder, run harder, do better, beat up the other kids and win at all costs. Okay, so the last two things are (mostly) implied. But you get my drift. Low pressure situation. People there to learn. People there to have fun. Emphasis on having fun and learning to play, not on winning games. Check, check, check, and check.
So it was a little disheartening to hear a little boy on the team that mopped the floor with my son’s team on Saturday (hey, I said they were novices, right?) crowing loudly about how many goals he’d scored. He and a couple of the girls on his team were scoring over and over again, and our little bunch was starting to droop a little bit.
Now, I’m realistic about kids. Five- and six-year-old kids don’t always do the right thing every single time. Heck, adults don’t always do the right thing, so why would we expect children to? Children do have one excuse, though: they have to learn how to do the right thing. And that means someone has to teach them. From what my husband and my friends said, no one from the boy’s team was gently advising him that it wasn’t about all the goals that he’d scored, that it was about playing the game the right away.
It wasn’t all the boy’s fault that he wasn’t behaving in the most sportsmanlike way. But someone should have said something to him, so that he’d recognize that what he was doing wasn’t very nice. No one begrudged him the right to be proud of his skill. But we didn’t want the other kids to get discouraged. We didn’t want our rookie soccer players to start feeling so low that they just gave up. And with a bunch of newbies, that’s always a possibility. All the parents and fans tried to cheer things like, “Good try!” and “Good hustle!” to keep the kids’ spirits up, to let them know that we appreciated their effort more than anything else.
Luckily, the kids on my son’s team didn’t seem to suffer any long-term ill effects from the experience. Kids are pretty resilient. Thankfully. Also, there were plenty of other kids on the other team–and parents, too–who weren’t acting like that. Of course, they were will demolishing our team, but well, that was pretty inevitable.
As my friend said after the game, “Were our kids having fun? Were they playing by the rules?” Yes and yes. So we were all good. That’s what we are trying to emphasize, and as long as we continue doing that, we’re succeeding. Maybe they’ll also gain a few soccer skills and score a few goals, too.
The point of this long anecdote, as you can probably guess, is that it’s another example of how important is it to both 1) lead by example, and to 2) make the effort teach our children what we value as important. Colossians 3: 12–“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience”–has always been one of my favorite Bible verses. If I value compassion and kindness, which I do, then it’s up to me to try to instill those qualities in my child. And to show him what compassion and kindness look like. That’s my goal as a parent. (C’mon. You knew I was going to make a soccer pun at some point.)
Even–especially?–on the soccer field.
The House on the Rock 