Practice Teaching

Llama drama can hit when you least expect it. Take last night, for example. Our older daughter’s soccer team was meeting for the first time for practice. The majority of the players – including our little Mia Hamm – had participated in a fall league, but it had been several months since they had played together.

Our daughter was very excited about wearing her new pink and black cleats and starting a new season…but the excitement was short-lived. According to my husband, who took her last night, she decided about halfway through that she didn’t want to practice and refused to join the team on the field.

Now who the heck knows what happened to change her mood – but once she makes up her mind, it’s VERY difficult to convince her to do otherwise. Her stubbornness makes mules look passive and indifferent.

So my husband brought her home early and we had a LONG talk/lecture with her. About honoring her commitments. About respecting the coach and fellow teammates by participating and giving 100%. About not acting like a brat. About the value of practice.

She told us she didn’t want to practice because she had played before and already knew how to play soccer – she only wanted to play in the games. If this were true, it would confirm my long-held suspicion that the brightly colored uniforms and post-game snacks are really the draw here – not the sport itself.

However, I think just the opposite is true. Our eldest hadn’t played in a long time and was afraid she wouldn’t do well on the soccer field. Ah, the curse of perfectionism lives on in our family. If she only understood that “practice makes perfect” she might have a completely different perspective. Her competitive nature comes out in very odd ways, but at the end of our discussion, our daughter seemed to understand better and agreed to apologize to her coach at the next practice.

This is the kind of situation that makes parenting so difficult. We want to teach her that when you make a commitment like signing up for soccer, you keep it. And yet, it’s not fair to the rest of the team for her to only play when she feels like it – so my instinct is to make her quit if she pulls this again. How do you know if you’re doing the right thing?

Practice works in soccer, but when you’re a parent, every moment is game day.