Saturday, March 29, 2008

Soccer Boy is back!

Forget Cricket Boy, now he's assumed his true mantle once again. First match was on Saturday, which I missed because Princess was sick. It was a friendly, a very different kind of match, against a team of kids with disabilities, most of whom played with their parents alongside them.

Unfortunately we hadn't been able to prepare our kids properly for this, because we had been told the team was 'mildly disabled with some visual or slight physical problems'. Sadly this was way too gentle a description and the kids were quite startled by some of the disabilities. I'm angry with the club about the lack of information, because if they had told us the truth, and we had been able to explain it properly to the children, what to expect and how to behave and play, it could have been a much better experience on both sides. However, our kids did manage to play with some gentleness, but I think it was mostly because if the manager/coach saw any 'big boots', they'd whip the kid off and replace them with a tamer one. Our most timid boy had a whale of a time; I don't think he's ever been on for a whole match before!

Interestingly Soccer Boy said the kids were fine, but the parents were a pain, because they kept blocking them and they put a Dad in goal so he couldn't score. I don't think he grasped that the parents were there to prevent their kids being knocked over like skittles. After six months without his beloved round ball, all he wanted to do was score, score, score! I liked that he wasn't perturbed by the kids, though. He's quite an accepting boy, thankfully.

5 comments:

pacatrue said...

So... as an Aussie Scot, why are you using the term soccer? Did you intentionally use it for us American readers? Are you secretly from Kansas?

Robin S. said...

I'm so happy your little guy is back with the round ball he likes!

Go, soccer boy! Or,is it football boy, as Paca mentioned?

It's odd, isn't it, about the disabled kids? If everyone had been told the truth from the get-go, about the levels of disability, and what to expect, it would've been smoother for all concerned. But that happens over and over again - this under-reporting of the truth, and it does no one any good, and may do harm.

Makes you wonder who's protecting whom, and from what.

Sarah Laurenson said...

It's good he got to play against kids who were very different. Kids adapt much easier than us adults. And they tend to accept differences easier as well. Things for us to relearn.

Maybe they deliberately held back information because they thought it would be better? Hard to say how some people think. Overthinking is one of my problems. And I doubt I'm in the minority.

McKoala said...

Paca, I don't think we're in Kansas any more!

Alas in Australia there are several different sports using the name 'football', including, of course, the one true sport, that being the one with the round ball. Calling it 'soccer' has been the Aussie way for many years. Now, however, the soccer greats want to reclaim their true name and the soccer clubs are all renaming themselves as football clubs and much confusion is ensuing. Soccer Boy calls it soccer, so in his honour, so do I.

I agree, Robin and Sylvia, I thought the match was a great idea. But I think the soccer club was plain stupid not to tell the truth. We happen to have a team of kids all from Soccer Boy's class at school this year (yes, we fixed the draw using our Mummy Mafia Network, sssh) and the school has a policy of not turning anyone away, which means they mix with kids with disabilities on a daily basis. One of the kids on our team has mild learning difficulties. So we wouldn't have freaked if they'd told us the truth in the first place; we'd just have been able to warn some of our, um, more robust, kids to take their gentle boots with them and not expect a full-on game.

Soccer Boy said again today, out of the blue, that the kids on Saturday were fine but the parents were mean and kept tackling him and knocking him over! He's obsessed with the evil parents, but he obviously took the different nature of the kids in his stride.

Blogless Troll said...

I don't know how it is in Australia, but if the same thing happened in the US and everyone had been told the truth up front, I'm betting it would be the parents of the non-disabled team that would throw a fit and protest. It wouldn't be all the parents, but enough to ruin it for everyone.