Soccer Star?

This semester, Z has been in soccer lessons one night a week. It's interesting because he is not consistent in what he is does from lesson to lesson. Some lessons, he works with the group a lot and pays attention and learns but other lessons...

For example, one week he decided that soccer lesson time was really just going to be his run back and forth on the field and get his cardio in time. Another week, he laid in the middle of the field on his back for much of the lesson. Another week, he pranced up and down the sidelines doing dances and entertaining the parents for the duration of his lesson.

Z is the one laying on the field.

These are just a few examples of my son taking his soccer practice very seriously.

He has focused in a bit more the last couple weeks but he gets off track pretty easily if it looks like what another (off task) kid is doing is more fun than his current task. We are generally fine with this because, for us, it is about exposure and running off some of that boundless energy.

Last week, the off taskness of another kid kind of took a turn for the worse and that kid (smallest of the group) has started messing with Zach (tallest of the group). He will consistently push Zach down, tackle Zach... this week it grew to punching Zach and throwing cones at Zach's face. The other parents don't intervene and Matt and I try not to intervene either because Zach hasn't always reacted super appropriately to kids messing with him so we partly want to see how Zach will react and use this as a teachable moment and we also want to let Zach deal with his own stuff and not always rely on us to fix things for him.

That was until Zach got a bloody lip this week from either a upper cut to the chin or a cone being thrown in his face. It was a good teachable moment. Zach handled it like a little man. But I know (though I was focused on cleaning up the blood rather than my husband) that the other kid's parents got more than a few nasty looks from Zach's daddy. They were soon bringing the child over to appologize to Zach.

Well, we certainly got our teachable moment. Zach shook it off and went back to score a couple goals. Here's the thing- Zach is learning not to pick on kids and how to respond appropriately in these situations, the other kid is going to mess with the wrong (much bigger) kid some day and that isn't going to end well for that dude. I'm proud of my little man.