Stop and Smell The Cow Manure

This year, I put my son in a private school for kids with learning disabilities.  One of the greatest decisions I ever made.  Only problem…it is in the exact opposite direction from my house that my job is, so I easily spend 2 hours a day in the car, 3 if he has baseball practice (which is most days!).

Every problem, though, can just be a door to discovery.  In this case, we’ve learned to stop and smell, well, all kinds of things.

We live in the city.  Last year, my son went to school 2 miles from my home, and we passed 4 convenience stores, 4 fast food restaurants, at least 4 regular restaurants, a Coca-Cola call center, a chain drug store, a grocery store, a police station, and numerous other various businesses to get there. 

This year, we go the opposite direction.  We could hop on the interstate and exit at a major industrial park and pass just as many of those things as we used to, and it would take us 20 minutes to get to school, IF there were no accidents on the interstate.  The first week of school there were 2.  The second week 3.  The third week, well, we stopped going that way. 

Taking the back roads takes 22 minutes, EVERY day.  We don’t see a lot of other cars in our travels.  We pass zero fast food restaurants, no regular restaurants, no call centers, no drugs stores, no police stations.  We do pass a couple convenience stores and a grocery store, and lots of cows, horses, fruit stands, and wide open spaces.

Today we had to slam on the breaks for a turtle in the road.  Last week we stopped at one of the fruit stands because we were craving watermelon.  When we’ve passed the horse crossing sign, we’ve got 10 minutes to go.  We turn at the corner where there are 3 cows, one a baby.  We imagine living in the mansion we see being built out in the middle of nowhere.  We know how many speed bumps we go over before we reach school.  The drive in the morning has become pleasant instead of stressful.  We also now take the same way back home.

Sometimes it’s just really nice to take the extra couple of minutes and enjoy what the world has to offer us instead of trying to rush through it.

And that, my friends, is the real reason they have wine.  Sit back and relax.

For The Love of Baseball

A few conversations this weekend got me thinking about how we as parents influence our kids in sports.

I’m a Baseball Mom.  My 12-year old started playing when he was 6. Well, actually, he started playing when he was 3, in the backyard, when I showed him how to hit a ball with the $1 wiffle bat I bought him at Walmart and the 5 gallon Zephyrhills bottle I made into a tee, but he had a REAL coach when I signed him up for Pony Baseball League at the beginning of first grade. That first year, his dad got on to him a lot.  Yelled when he didn’t catch the ball, agonized if he didn’t run fast enough, told him how many things he did wrong sometimes until he was standing there on 1^st base crying so hard he didn’t care anymore.  The thing was, he wasn’t a bad player, he made the All Stars team that year, and a lot of his fellow teammates had been playing in the league since they were 3.  But that seems to be what a lot of Baseball Parents do.

I had a similar experience as a child.  I was a competitive gymnast.  I often won the floor and uneven bars events, though beam and vault were more of a weak point.  The fact that I was on a team at all was actually a huge accomplishment:  not a lot of people know this, even those I’ve known for years, but I have mild cerebral palsy.  I would go home from a gymnastics meet and put my leg brace on.  One of the several leg braces I wore over the years, in addition to surgery.  To this day, I am physically incapable of “pointing” my left foot properly, something you need to do in every event as a gymnast, or points are deducted from your score.  And that was what my mom focused on….

“Well, you probably didn’t get first place there because your foot wasn’t pointed on that tumbling pass.”  “Your feet just didn’t look right.”  “We need to work on that foot.”

Um, do you see all those blue ribbons on my wall in my bedroom?  That was all I could ever think.  Eventually, I just came to hate gymnastic, because I apparently just would never be good enough.

So, I quit.  And joined my high school track team.

I joined as a sprinter, which I actually did pretty good at.  I even did hurdles, though they were almost as high as my 5’0” body, the gymnastics probably helped with that.  That, and the fact that I banned my mom from attending any meets.

At practices, however, I discovered my true calling….distance running.  I ran Cross Country the next year.  And then the following season in track, I did the distance races.  I started running road races, and winning my age group.  I eventually ran Cross Country for my college, the University of South Florida, as well as continuing road races.  If I look over the top of my computer right now, I can see the shelf full of my trophies.

My mother has never seen me race.

While in the past I have actually helped coach and have been on the board for his league, and I have never in over 6 years missed a game, I am hands off when it comes to my son.  He has coaches to tell him what to do, what position to play, and how he can improve.  My son loves baseball.  I want it to stay that way.

After that first year, my son’s dad and I divorced.  I was the one who went to all the practices and games.  It was just me.  I make sure shoes are tied and socks match and that he has enough water in the dugout with him to stay hydrated.  I talk to the other mom’s during the game, often about non-baseball topics.  I have snacks in my bag in case they are needed.  I am on an infinite quest for the method to easiest clean clay and grass stains out of white baseball pants.  I say a little prayer in my head that my child will hit the ball, and I cheer when he does.  I see that awesome catch and smile.  When the ball bounces out of his glove, I pretend I missed it, because I know everyone has an off day. 

I expect him to respect his coaches.  I expect HIM to communicate to his coaches how he feels about things, and I expect him to do what they say, even if he disagrees.  I expect him to give his all and to realize it’s about the team, not him. 

I don’t expect him to be perfect.  I don’t expect him to never miss a ball.  I don’t expect him to never strike out.

I expect him to have fun, and to play the sport because he wants to. 

And he does.

He doesn’t need me to criticize him, he criticizes himself enough already.  He needs me to encourage him and remind him it was just a game, and then to pretend it didn’t happen and take him for ice cream anyways.  And I do.

He is an outstanding player.  He knows what his weaknesses are, and he works on those all by himself, without anyone telling him to.  He’s outside now with his batting stick even though this is the only night this week he does not have practice for one of the two teams he is playing with.  He didn’t need a parent with instructions and drills after every game to make that happen.  He is where he is through his own hard work determination, and that is something he can be proud of, proud of HIMSELF for.

His dad has started coming to his games again, and now he has a stepdad that attends also.  But he doesn’t have anyone criticizing him.  Just two dads who love and encourage him and let him love the sport, and let his coaches coach him.

One day, he may decide he doesn’t like baseball anymore and that’s fine, but if that happens, I don’t want that to be because a parent drove him to that point.  So far he’s not afraid to ride home in the car with anyone after a bad game, so I think we’re on the right track.

And now, I’m off to clean the kitchen and do a few more loads of laundry and do some straightening up because this is the only time this week I don’t have to be at the baseball field. 

That’s why they have wine.

 

My Child Is Not Stupid

My child is not stupid.  In fact, he is quite the opposite.  He has a larger vocabulary and has better spelling and grammar than many adults, and has since he was about 7.  He loves to learn new things, and has a special place in his brain for trivia and sports statistics.  He writes extremely creative stories, with a very intelligent sense of humor.  He can come home from a baseball game and tell you his stats off the top of his head, and after I write the equations out on a piece of paper, I can verify that he is correct.

He’s repeating 6^th grade.  He has taken the FCAT (Florida standard state test) for 4 years.  He passed the reading portion only last year, by the skin of his teeth.  He has never passed the math portion.

He is not stupid.  He has learning disabilities.

The spelling test lying on my kitchen table with the 100% on it makes me teary-eyed.  It’s not because it’s the first test he’s gotten every word right, he almost always has.  It’s because this is the first time he was not marked off for his y’s and p’s and q’s and g’s not going below the line, and his upper case letters being the same size as his lower case.  Those are symptoms that are, firstly, a documented part of his disabilities, and secondly, not indicative of his ability to SPELL.

Last year he was in remedial math.  He doesn’t get the “new” math.  And frankly, his mother who has won various math awards and got a scholarship to study Engineering at a large university (and, according to signatures in her high school yearbook, was the Algebra II teacher), doesn’t get it either.  I’ve taught him math the way I do it, in my head, and he can do the same.  Unfortunately, the lack of showing work and lack of understanding why there is a need to draw 110 blocks in rows of 10 to do a calculation when you already knew the answer 5 minutes ago doesn’t translate well on standardized tests.   This year, he started private school, which doesn’t have to “teach to the test.”  He’s been moved UP to 7^th grade math level.

He currently has a 100% average in all of his classes but one, in that one he is barely pushing a 98%, and he is disappointed by the grade!

He is not stupid.  I’ve always known that, but he just today realized that.  Really realized that. 

I have fought for him his whole school life, trying to find the best school for him, getting him private tutors, spending hours on end on homework trying to find a way he gets it.  I’ve told him how smart he is, and pointed out his abilities.  But it took me this long to realize that what he needed was a school that would teach him HIS way, who would see him for who he is and not what his standardized test scores were, who didn’t just write him off as stupid, and I feel like I failed a bit as a parent.

That’s why they have wine.  And this one is a toast to the little boy who finally realizes his potential.