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Contributed by: Stu Mark
Sometimes parenting is a heartbreaking task, where one can only be a bystander to sadness.

My son is an avid soccer player. He’s 14 and very committed to the game. He goes to every practice, extends himself, even studying books on soccer strategy.

But he is not the only player on the team, and some of the other players lack similar commitment. Hey, that’s ok, at least they contribute to a positive team atmosphere, right?

Well, not all of them.

One of the kids on my son’s team comes from a pretty dysfunctional family, and as such, has a wildly different perspective on what is an appropriate attitude. Let’s call him Harold (not his real name).

Two weeks ago, Harold earned a red card (the harshest penalty in soccer, where you are told to leave the field of play). His infraction? Violent Conduct. He cursed and pushed an opposing player during the game.

Now, I’m not soft, and I get it that sometimes the other team really tries to press buttons, saying stuff that is designed to cause a fight. And sometimes a 14 year-old boy fails to keep his powder dry and he says something back, or, in rare instances, pushes back. It happens, I get it.

And so Harold got a Red Card.

But what grinds my gears is that he was defiant about it, and proud of it. When the red card came out, he could have immediately apologized to the referee and the player he shoved and the worst would have been just getting kicked out off the field for the remainder of the game.

But Harold laughed. He was proud. He walked off the field crowing. This got the ref to ban Harold for the next two games (one of which is the first game of the playoffs). He also rejected his coach’s admonishment, continuing to defend his behavior and refusing to accept his responsibility.

So that was, pretty much, the end of my son’s soccer season. He was crushed.

And there’s not thing-one that I can do to fix it.

Sure, I talked with my son, empathized, validated his feelings. But I couldn’t fix it. And that is a harsh lesson of parenting.

[tags]parenting, poor sportsmanship, Stu Mark[/tags]

Photo courtesy of Farl via flickr, used under a Creative Commons License.