April 28, 2006

hustle up

For two years after college, I taught in a girls’ boarding school. I lived in a dorm, taught five classes a day, and coached three sports (tennis, soccer, and badminton–and yes, badminton really IS a sport, and no, I don’t know anything about it except that my tennis skills did NOT translate and I sucked at it). I like to think that I was a kind and approachable teacher, that I was understanding and sympathetic, but really, those girls drove me batty with their whining and their excuses and their why-can’t-I-have-ONE-more extension?

My pedagogy could be described in three words: SUCK. IT. UP.

I was 22, and I believed that if you didn’t pay attention in class you deserved to fail the test and if you didn’t pay attention at practice you deserved to run wind sprints. I’m 38 now, and I still believe those things although until recently I had forgotten just how much.

I’m helping to coach Henry’s pee wee soccer team this year. I agreed not because I have any great confidence in my coaching skills but because watching Henry play soccer last year nearly gave me a stroke, what with all the not paying attention and hugging the other players and doing pretend karate on the field. If I coached, I figured, I could AT LEAST keep my kid in line.

For the most part, this soccer season has been a terrific experience. The other coach and I are good friends, primarily because we share the same sense of humor and buck-up approach to parenting. The kids themselves are very sweet and funny and nice to each other, and the parents are a great group. Our kids have learned a lot about teamwork and good sportsmanship, and have even picked up some soccer skills along the way.

But. But! I’m about to start telling people to suck it up and run some sprints, which maybe isn’t a good coaching approach with five-year-olds.

The club where we’re playing in is a feeder for a competitive league, and even in the under-six division, you can see who the really good kids and teams are. Wade has been fascinated by the team that practices next to us on Thursday nights; it is coached by four dads, who yell at the kids and make them run and say things like, “That was pathetic! PATHETIC!” Our practices, on the other hand, are very encouraging! and positive! and enthusiastic! Because our team is coached by moms, see.

But even moms have their breaking point.

We’ve been working on specific skills–dribbling, shooting, tackling, trapping–and the kids have mastered those (okay, sort of–our standards are pretty low here). This week we decided we would take on goal kicks and throw-ins, since we have about 400 of each in every game and it takes a good three minutes to set our kids up EVERY SINGLE TIME. So we planned two drills, split the kids into two groups of three, and went to work.

It was hellish.

Half of the kids were engaging with the drills, challenging themselves to throw and kick farther and stronger. Half of the team was running and listening and asking questions. Half of the team was learning something. The other half of the team was lying down in the grass, hold hands, asking me what I ate for lunch, telling me where they are going on vacation this summer, practicing ballet and cheerleading and karate (guess who!) and generally NOT PAYING ATTENTION. And when they were paying attention, they were saying things like, “This is boring!” and “I already KNOW how to do this!” and “I don’t really like it when the ball touches me.”

I REALLY wanted to make that half of the team run some sprints.

I like that we’re the nice coaches, that we’re the mom coaches; I like that our kids are having fun and enjoying soccer. I like that we have tried to be fair about playing time and who gets to do throw-ins and goal kicks. But the truth is that the kids who pay attention in practice have improved more than the kids who don’t and they are the kids who play the best in the games. The kids who don’t pay attention–in practice, in the games–are, ironically, the ones who complain the most when they don’t get to play or when the other team scores a goal. And now we’re having to decide if, for these last two games, we will reward the kids who have worked really hard with more playing time or just press on with the fairness policy.

In the end, I wish I had some way to make them understand that if they would just PAY ATTENTION for FIVE MINUTES and learn where to stand during a goal kick, they would have even MORE fun. Or I wish that they were ten years older and I could tell them to suck it up and start running.

April 27, 2006

genetically predistracted

Hello! My name is Susan and I am a Terrible Mother.

One morning recently, Henry got distracted while he was getting dressed for school and just forgot to get dressed! Well, not entirely–he put on his t-shirt and then apparently saw something shiny on the floor, because when we got ready to leave for school (an hour later) I realized that he was still wearing his pajama shorts and the socks he had slept in (which come up to his knees–because he pulls them ALL THE WAY UP he is only allowed to wear ankle socks with shorts. Go ahead, tell me how mean that is–not NEARLY as mean as kids at school making fun of him for his knee socks, trust me). Where was I for that hour, you ask? I was loading the dishwasher and folding some laundry and maybe checking my e-mail. GETTING THINGS DONE, people! Come on, why else is Sesame Street on in the mornings? So parents can GET THINGS DONE.

Okay, so ever since then, I’ve been laughing about the boy forgetting to get dressed, because it really is funny and I am mean that way. But after today, I’m not really laughing.

No, no one left my house in their underwear. Worse! I completely forgot that Henry’s class was going on a FIELD TRIP. To see some Clydesdale horses. Which are REALLY BIG. And horse-like. Have I mentioned Henry’s fear of dogs? And all animals larger than Charlie? Yes! And I sent my kid to school to see the horses without ANY advance warning or preparation or even a LUNCH. I suck.

It went down like this: I left to go meet with our psychologist and my parents took H to school. Halfway through my appointment, my cell phone rang; I looked at the caller ID to be sure it wasn’t one of the boys’ schools calling to say OH MY GOD HE BROKE HIS ARM and instead it was my mother, who was calling to say, “Did you know that Henry’s class was going on a field trip?” And I said, “Ummm, no? Ummm, where did they go? Well, okay! See you soon!”

Ironically, when my phone rang, I was talking to the psychologist about how Henry has a hard time with unexpected transitions. Ha ha ha.

Fortunately, my parents were totally on the ball; rather than just tossing Henry out of the car in front of his school, they stopped to tell the teacher that they would be picking him up for lunch, and when she said, “But we have a field trip! And he needs a lunch!” they went back to my house and MADE HIM A LUNCH and took it back to his school. And then resisted what MUST have been a nearly overwhelming urge to mock me for being such a space case (to my face, at least; I have no idea what they were saying in the hour before I met up with them. If they are anything like Wade and me, they were laughing hysterically about my maternal suckage. As they should have been! Because I suck).

On Monday, we met with the pediatric neurodevelopmental consultant, who told us that he doesn’t believe that ADHD is a chemical imbalance; instead, he says, it is a combination of genetic factors. Charlie got my blue eyes and predisposition for strep throat. Henry got my propensity to be distracted by

Oooh, look, J. Crew has new espadrilles!

April 25, 2006

damn the tornados! at least we had good coffee

Happy day after my birthday! Thanks to everyone for your birthday wishes–I had a great day, thanks! Wade and I went to a lovely French restaurant for dinner and shared a cheese plate and a scallops appetizer that came with a honey fig sauce, and a creme brulee (and wine! lots of wine!) and I wore my fabulous satiny espadrilles with the four-inch heels, which really are good sitting-down-drinking-wine shoes. After dinner, because it was too soon to go home, we went to the mall, which sounds like such a dumb thing to do but is way more fun without the kids; we ended up, as usual, at the Apple store, licking the iMacs.

We got home just in time to tuck the boys in and hear the tornado sirens go off, and spent the rest of the evening drinking and watching the local news* and wondering if we were going to have to cram four adults and two kids into a bathroom the size of a Kleenex box. Charlie decided to pretend that he was scared, so he came out and watched storm footage with us for an hour, including some really amazing pictures of a tornado touching down at an airport in El Reno, Oklahoma (I have NO IDEA how far that is from Oklahoma City, but it’s not in my neighborhood). Henry just hung out in his bed, playing with a light-up dinosaur and talking to himself; eventually, I went to check on him and we opened his blinds and watched the lightening, which was really cool. And then it was over and we all went to bed. Happy birthday!

*If you’re from Oklahoma City, click that link. Really! So very funny!

Today, though, it was back to the usual grind (get it? Grind? I’m going to talk about COFFEE! Get it? GET IT?). The fabulous people at Boca Java have introduced a new line of coffees for bloggers, and because I am such a coffee whore discriminating coffee drinker, they sent me a generous box of samples to road test. There were two dark roasts, two mild roasts, and two flavored coffees. I let my parents pick what we would drink–you know, in exchange for free childcare–and they went for the flavored coffees. For the rundown on the dark roasts, check out the very pretty and very funny Mir’s review, which was also guided by her parents’ coffee preferences. Funny coincidence, no?

We started with the Blogger’s Pajama Passion, which is described as an “exotic flavored coffee featuring vanilla, kahlua and caramel.” It was delicious–my dad was using words like “smooth” and “full-bodied” which made us all giggle (although both were very appropriate). My mother said, “It would be really good with a shot of Kahlua in it.”

I said, “I’m going to write that on the Internet.”

She laughed and said, “No, no, say something like, ‘It would make a wonderful after-dinner coffee.’”

“Nope,” I said. “I’m going to write that my mom said we needed to put Kahlua in the coffee at 11:00 am.”

This morning, we tried the Blogger’s Beach Blend, which is “a tantalizing combination of chocolate kiss and caramel” (apparently they’re big on the caramel, the Boca Java people). It was also delicious, but this time we cut right to the chase and decided that what it really needed was a shot of Bailey’s Irish Cream. At 8:00 am.

Alcoholic tendencies aside, if you like flavored coffees, with or without any additional flavoring, these are worth a try. They were delicious and smooth, but not overly flavory, and they really DID taste like vanilla and chocolate and caramel. Yummy! Order some now! And then tell me how I get someone to send me some wine to review!

(As an aside, the Boca Java folks also sent me a mug and a hat, with their Always blog on a full tank logo on them. And while the coffee gets two thumbs up, the hat will be living in my closet–I can’t really see myself going out in any piece of clothing with the word “blog” on it. But that may just be me.)

Edited to add: Good lord, the spelling errors! All fixed now. So sorry! So pitiful . . .