life after baseball - for this year
Well, last night ended fall ball season with a ten run rule win over an 11 year old team. No fanfare. No balloons. Hand out the trophies with a few words for each kid and get on home, because it was already 9:30.
Yesterday was also the day progress reports came out at school, which marks the halfway point between report cards. Ours was not good news. It could be called more of a lack of progress report, so we have work to do. Note I say 'we'. The wife and I need to more closely supervise (although the boy's pretty closely supervised now, but I guess it's not enough) and the youngster needs to put forth more effort. This is about as frustrated as I've ever been in my life about anything, and I'm trying not to let that bleed through when dealing with the youngster. We try to help him, and most of the time, when we know what has to be done, we manage to get him where he needs to be. We get him to understand whatever the concepts are that he has to know. We get him to do the work he needs to do. I was expecting real progress on this report, only to find out he hasn't turned in a lot of work....that we didn't know existed. We thought we had a method of making sure that didn't happen anymore, but apparently the method has holes. In a way it's a good thing we don't have the baseball distraction for a while. If this continues, we may not have it at all come spring. I'm just not used to putting this amount of effort into something and have it just not work. Part of me is saying that I can only do so much, and he has to step up and take it from there and take some responsibility for his work. Another part of me says I don't understand what he's dealing with because I've never had to work or think under the conditions he does, and he's my son, and anything I can do to help him just has to be done. If that means more, I have to figure out what more is. The wife keeps reminding me, and rightly so, that none of this comes easy for him, and that's hard for me to understand, because it always did for me. I was the National Honor Society kid in high school. I was the Summa Cum Laude guy in college. Book learning stuff has always been a piece of cake for me, and understanding how hard it is for him is difficult...but I know it's true.
As for advanced ball, I know we won't be doing that in the spring. Whether or not he's good enough, we don't have time enough. I don't know if we're supposed to be done for the fall, but I'm thinking we are. The double header for tomorrow got cancelled. It seems the field was already being used for teams finishing their rec ball season. There's the December tournament, but I don't know the whole story with that. We were asked to send in $34 to play. I decided to act dumb (please, no comments on the degree of difficulty required for that maneuver), and send the coach an e-mail. Basically, it said that I know the youngster is an alternate, sooooo...do you need him for this tournament thing? He can play if you need him but let me know. I figured that was a polite way to hint that we aren't paying the money and going to this thing if he's going to sit. I got no response...yet. If I don't hear anything, or if I hear they don't expect him to play, I'm pretty much done.
Yesterday was also the day progress reports came out at school, which marks the halfway point between report cards. Ours was not good news. It could be called more of a lack of progress report, so we have work to do. Note I say 'we'. The wife and I need to more closely supervise (although the boy's pretty closely supervised now, but I guess it's not enough) and the youngster needs to put forth more effort. This is about as frustrated as I've ever been in my life about anything, and I'm trying not to let that bleed through when dealing with the youngster. We try to help him, and most of the time, when we know what has to be done, we manage to get him where he needs to be. We get him to understand whatever the concepts are that he has to know. We get him to do the work he needs to do. I was expecting real progress on this report, only to find out he hasn't turned in a lot of work....that we didn't know existed. We thought we had a method of making sure that didn't happen anymore, but apparently the method has holes. In a way it's a good thing we don't have the baseball distraction for a while. If this continues, we may not have it at all come spring. I'm just not used to putting this amount of effort into something and have it just not work. Part of me is saying that I can only do so much, and he has to step up and take it from there and take some responsibility for his work. Another part of me says I don't understand what he's dealing with because I've never had to work or think under the conditions he does, and he's my son, and anything I can do to help him just has to be done. If that means more, I have to figure out what more is. The wife keeps reminding me, and rightly so, that none of this comes easy for him, and that's hard for me to understand, because it always did for me. I was the National Honor Society kid in high school. I was the Summa Cum Laude guy in college. Book learning stuff has always been a piece of cake for me, and understanding how hard it is for him is difficult...but I know it's true.
As for advanced ball, I know we won't be doing that in the spring. Whether or not he's good enough, we don't have time enough. I don't know if we're supposed to be done for the fall, but I'm thinking we are. The double header for tomorrow got cancelled. It seems the field was already being used for teams finishing their rec ball season. There's the December tournament, but I don't know the whole story with that. We were asked to send in $34 to play. I decided to act dumb (please, no comments on the degree of difficulty required for that maneuver), and send the coach an e-mail. Basically, it said that I know the youngster is an alternate, sooooo...do you need him for this tournament thing? He can play if you need him but let me know. I figured that was a polite way to hint that we aren't paying the money and going to this thing if he's going to sit. I got no response...yet. If I don't hear anything, or if I hear they don't expect him to play, I'm pretty much done.
John put this out here at 8:37 AM
2 Comments:
that sucks, john. book-learning has always been easy for me, too, and I can only imagine how frustrating that is. One of the many problems the school system has today is that it fails to provide proper motivation for kids to learn. The goals are all long-term and vague, so the kids care not about the present specific hoops they are supposed to pass through, and they all know if you miss a few it won't matter in the end... what a crappy system full of infinite holes. This leaves you to be the bad guy, trying to pry all the info out of your kid so you can help him, and having to take away things he enjoys if he doesn't allow you to. Clearly the threat of no baseball in the spring could scare him... for awhile. trouble is, it's just too far away to impact him every day. And the marking periods are too long to properly monitor him. And the teachers are too busy to help you keep on top of him.
At eleven, a kid ought to be able to take the responsibility... as a parent, you need to get him to a point where he can take care of himself in seven years. It's a fine line to decide where to help him up, and where to let him fail so he can learn valuable lessons.
By the time the youngster is eighteen, he needs to understand that failing to jump through the necessary hoops can prevent us from going where we want to go, or doing what we want to do. Maybe it's the right time to show him how that feels- in attempts to prevent true disaster later in life. Just a suggestion (hell, what do I know, I don't have any kids): tell him that micro-managing is not working, and if he's not going to let you help him, he's going to have to do it on his own. Tell him you're not going to bother him anymore, but you'll be available to help if he wants it... but if he doesn't pass your acceptable margin, no baseball, one year! (soup-nazi style) he's still young enough, John, that failing would not be the end of the world - but if you keep scraping him by like this by being on top of him, he will only continue to try to hide things, and he won't learn the valuable lesson of self-discipline.
While I'll agree with you in theory, in practice it's a far harder thing to do, to sit by and knowingly watch your kid fail and do nothing, hoping he gets the message.
Part of that knowing that he isdealing with a condition I don't understand, but I know it make things far harder for him to grasp. Even down to the consequences for not doing well, let alone the school subjects. I now eventually I have to take off the training wheels and let him go it on his own, and I wish I had a clear grasp of when to do that. I just know if I do it now, he's falling.
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