Sports, Parenting and Rage

Cameron's baseball team has had, I think, three games and several practices. They have had a player on base only two times, never scored a run, and they walk about a dozen batters from the other team every time they play defense.

It's the first year that the kids are doing the pitching, and it's been a painful experience.

All of the pitchers that have pitched to our kids are throwing the ball so fast that our kids can't connect to save their lives, and yet, when we pitch, we're lucky to get it in the strike zone and when it does the ball is going so slow that it barely makes it to the plate and it's a cinch to hit.

It's been very, very ugly.

I am not one of those moms who signs her kids up for sports to groom them for their college days and Andrew, believe it or not, is certainly not the kind of dad who pushes his kid to train and practice their sport every spare moment they have and yells criticism from the sidelines. We put our kids in sports if they express a desire to play and to learn skills and have fun. We have no grand assumptions or requirements that they use these experiences to secure a scholarship down the road.

But no kid likes to lose. It's much more fun to win, or at least to score.

And I think that everyone on Cameron's team is getting discouraged. But that's no excuse for the behavior of one kid on our team.

We happen to have a kid on our team who thinks he is the star, and while he probably is one of the best players on the team, he is certainly nothing to get excited about. He gets excited enough about himself without help from anyone else.

So this kid decides last night that because he is the self-proclaimed star of the team, he has the right to coach the other players. He tells them where they should be standing, how they should be standing, when it's their turn to bat, how to swing when they are on deck - the whole bit. By the time the first inning was half over, I was ready to knock him up side the head. And where was his mother? In the bleachers, completely aware of what he was doing and saying nothing.

So obnoxious was this child that I was standing at the sidelines plotting evil things to say to him, but deciding that I would be satisfied if he just struck out. (Yes, I was wishing for a kid on our team to fail, but trust me, he needed a little humbling.) I got my wish. He stood there at home plate waiting for the perfect pitch and consequently struck out by failing to swing at three perfectly acceptable pitches. Arrogant little punk.

So what does Star Player do? He uses his bat to beat the heck out of the dugout wall and points his finger at the pitcher and yells about how the pitches were not in the strike zone. (They absolutely were.)

What kind of parent raises a child to feel such disappointment at failure, to blame it on someone else, and to act in such a violently inappropriate way? His mother hollered from the bleachers that it was OK!

No, it was not OK.

She should have walked her rear-end over there and explained to her kid that while it was alright to be disappointed, it was not alright to take out his frustrations on the city's property, nor was it OK to be such a poor sport.

Perhaps her jeans with the fashionable holes much too close to her bikini line were too tight to allow her to walk at all.

So on we went with the rest of the game/massacre, and it was our turn to play in the field. We had a poor little pitcher who was trying his hardest to throw the ball into the catcher's mitt, but it was all over the place and often never made it all the way to the plate. He walked five players before he started to cry. Our coach went out and gave him a pep talk, told him not to give up, and let him continue pitching.

And that's when a kid on the other team started heckling our pitcher. He was standing on second base, right behind the pitcher's mound. He was on second base because our pitcher had thrown him four balls. Not because he had hit the ball, so he really had nothing to feel superior about - but that didn't stop him.

"Throw another ball, we could use some more runs!" He was yelling. "Just throw another crappy pitch and let's get on with it!" And they just kept coming.

I was scanning the opposite bleachers, looking for the despicable parent of this jerk of a kid who was taunting our already crying nine-year-old pitcher. Not one adult said anything to this kid. I was disgusted.

I figure there are three possibilities as to why this kid's parents did nothing about their child's behavior.

A) They weren't there. (Shame on them.)

B) They saw nothing wrong with his behavior. (Shame on them again.)

or C) They didn't want to embarrass their kid or themselves by taking any sort of discipline action in front of the crowd. (So it's ok for their kid to humiliate another player, but not for them or their child to suffer any embarrassment? Right.)

If Cameron had done something like that, I would have yanked his ass out of that game, dragging him off the base by the ear for everyone to see, and he would not have gone back in, even if it were going to cost his team a win. No kid of mine is going to belittle another child, especially one who is already perfectly aware of his own shortcomings.

My blood was boiling.

Of course, our turn to bat came around once again, and this same horrible kid with idiot parents was covering third base. Our kids had no chance at hitting a ball thrown by their pitcher, but this kid just couldn't stop himself from taunting the batters anyhow.

"Swing and miss! Swing at everything! You're going to miss it!" And he waited to shout all this crap until the pitcher had just released the ball, in hopes that the shouts would startle the batter and make him lose his focus.

It was so bad that I could actually see myself rushing the field and slapping this kid across the face and not feeling out of line at all. I probably would have received applause from every intelligent person at the park. These are nine-year-old kids. Maybe taunting and heckling is acceptable behavior for a high school game, but this is little league. We were loosing by something like ten runs; we hadn't even scored.

Andrew got agitated enough to yell, "Hey, third base! How about you shut your mouth!"

If you think that stopped him, you're wrong.

Can you just imagine what kind of parents this kid has? Think about it. What kind of lessons are they teaching that mongrel?

Our teams are facing off again on the 27th of May, and you can bet your life that I will not sit idly again. If we have to listen to this kid harass our children, then he can listen to me telling him exactly what I think of him and his baseball skills.

I need a Valium.

Forget Ten, Count to A Thousand - That'll Do It.

Today was the kind of day where I had to keep reminding myself that eventually it would all be over. By lunch time I nearly had myself strapped in a straight jacket while I rocked back and forth in the corner and sucked my thumb.

I'm really trying to work on the length of my fuse. I feel like a lot of the time I am right on the edge and have no power to pull myself back. I like to blame my kids for this, but really, it's my issue that I need to learn to deal with. Deep breaths and all that meditation stuff maybe. Most of the little things that set me off are just that - little. But pile them all together into 24 hours, and I am done.

I need one of those Keep Calm and Carry On posters in every room of my house.

Clothes can be re-folded or just stuck in drawers all ski-wampus. It's not like anyone keeps their clothes neat in their drawers anyway.

Poop can be washed out of mouths and off of hands, and maybe the experience will teach someone not to do a two-handed reach around butt scratch while I'm changing him and then stick his fingers in his mouth.

It's probably normal to have to scrub your kitchen floor four times a week when you have a mob tracking in all kinds of mud and sticky goo, not to mention the burritos and rice that are always being flung off of high chairs.

Expensive baseball gloves which are lost can be replaced with less expensive gloves, and no one will die.

Dishes can sit in the sink for one more day. People can eat their cereal out of serving bowls in the morning and it will actually save time because they won't have to re-fill the little ones three times.

Blood washes. No harm done.

Spending thirteen dollars on birthday treats for one kid's class is really sucky, but at least it's only once a year.

When the car ALMOST doesn't start, it's important to remember the ALMOST, and also that triple A will come to the rescue, should I need them.

And most importantly - I can overcome this. I can be in control. I can decide what is worthy of a freak-out and what is not.

The lack of chocolate in this house is worthy of a freak out, I can tell you that.

In Case Of Emergency, Dial All Of Your Relatives.

This one is going to be a rant because there is no other way around it. And sometimes that's what a blog needs to be - a place for me to vent my frustrations so that I don't do anything I'd later regret.

About a year and a half ago, I got a call from my son at school. Mr. Drama Queen. He calmly told me that he might have broken his arm at recess. Well, oh, my hell! Why was he the one calling me instead of a school administrator? I grabbed my keys and hit the road to rescue my kid. I got there and the school office is buzzing with activity, but none of it is over my son. The secretaries are all answering the phones and making chit-chat with other moms and teachers in the office, and my son with the possibly broken arm is sitting in a chair by himself with his arm cradled in his good hand.

Long story short - he was fine. Not a thing wrong with him. He bumped his arm a little and was sent to the office, likely because of the amount of fuss he was making. But let me tell you this - I was livid that those secretaries allowed him to call me and tell me that he might have a broken bone. Perhaps if anyone had been paying attention when he called or if they were using the space inside their heads for things besides storage of dirty gossip information, they may have caught on to the fact that my kid nearly gave me a heart attack.

Let's fast forward about three months to the next phone call from Cameron. He was really, really sick this time and needed to come home. Really and truly! I promise, Mom! Well, okay, I'll just wake up the two babies from their naps, load them plus Drew into the wagon and drag it up a snow covered hill for a half mile to come get him. Of course, as soon as I got Cameron home he was magically healed.

The next time Cameron called I was smart enough to make him let me speak to a secretary. I asked her about his condition and she confirmed that he was coughing pretty badly and should probably be picked up. So up the hill through the snow we went to get Cameron, who gave a total of one hacking cough during the remainder of the day. Starting to feel like those secretaries just don't want my kid in school. So I kept him home for two more days, just to be sure that he wasn't going to infect any of the other students with Nothing Disease. I place fair blame on Cameron for faking, but some of the blame should go on the women working in the office who should know when to actually think about and properly react to what's happening right in front of them.

Not long after that, Cameron called home again and was near death for the third time. I asked to speak to a secretary again and told her that our new rules were that Cameron either had to have a fever or had to have thrown up in front of at least one witness if he wanted to come home. Lacking that necessary testimony, I asked her if she had a thermometer to take his temperature with. She replied that, yes, they did and proceeded to check him and find that he was within normal range. Back to class he went.

What the heck happened to school nurses? Where are the sick rooms where you could lay down on a cot covered with crinkly paper until you felt better? I have a great idea! - Lets just let the kids call their parents once a week with symptoms of a major disease or life threatening injury! It'll do wonders for their education!

Today was the best though. This time it was gold medal at the Olympics, first prize at the county fair, promotion at work with accompanying ten percent raise kind of stuff. This one is the winner.

We all remember Cameron's head injury from last week, right? The one that bled a lot but stopped with a little pressure and did not need stitches or prayers or anything like that? Well, apparently some girl in his class, who obviously does not have brothers, hollered that Cameron's head was bleeding, so the teacher sent him to the office to get it taken care of.

You know what the office does? They call me, (I was vacuuming my car and did not hear my phone), they called Andrew, (also vacuuming), they called my mother, (no answer), they called my grandfather, my father, my sister, and finally, my aunt, bless her heart. She immediately jumped in her truck and drove fifteen miles to pick up my son from school. Meanwhile, I check my phone and see that I have two missed calls from the school and so I call them right back. The woman on the other end of the line tells me that Cameron's head is bleeding and someone ought to come look at it, but Aunt Lisa is already on her way to get him.

Let's all take a deep breath here. It's a little cut. He probably picked or scratched at the scab and made it bleed a little. No big deal. But now Aunt Lisa is on her way, so I have to come intervene. I met Lisa in the parking lot and we chatted for a while, because I'm fully aware that there is not an emergency issue going on inside, and then she went home and I went in to tell the office personnel where to stick it.

Inside the office, I find Cameron sitting on that same chair that he sat in with his not-even-close-to-being-broken arm all those months ago, and this time, with no bleeding head. Maybe it did bleed for a second earlier, but he's not even holding a tissue or anything with which to stem the flow, so it can't have been that bad. And again, no one is paying any attention to the kid with the supposed head injury. I guess that in our day and age with law suits over anything and everything, they are required to play it safe and call me, but we're talking about a picked scab here.

I choked back all the swear words that were crawling up my throat and asked if they had any first-aid supplies. Of course they did! (They why in the name of Florence Nightingale didn't they put them to use??) Any gauze? "Of course! Let me just find it.... Nope, probably not in this box labeled "Sterile Gauze Pads", it must be something else..." I had to explain to this secretary how to read a box label and what gauze was. I bandaged his not bleeding head myself and sent him back to class. Completely infuriated that they would call everyone in the valley who shared some of my DNA to come to the aid of my perfectly healthy and well child, I decided that it was not the moment to confront their stupidity and walked out of the office taking deep, calming breaths.

These are the people responsible for the care and education of my children. But not for long.

End rant.

It's Cold Here

I never dreamed that this is how my kids would spend their spring break.

Steamed Over Something I Can't Change. Again.

Every time I see a wedding decorated with paper lanterns I get my knickers in a twist.  Paper lanterns were all I wanted at my wedding nearly ten years ago, but we could not find any on the internet or in any store in Utah or Colorado.  When my mother or I would call somewhere and ask about them no one even knew what we were talking about.  And now they are everywhere.  I guess it's just the burden of being so stylishly ahead of my time.  Now excuse me while I go take off my Cabela's hoodie that boasts a hole in the armpit and go to bed.

*image found here

The Curse

My husband and I do not fight. There just isn't much to fight about. We do, on occasion, argue about whether or not Adam Sandler movies can be considered classics, or why he will never play Rock, Paper, Scissors with me to determine who should change a soiled diaper. But that's about it.

Except for that one thing. The one thing that has caused yelling matches on at least three separate occasions. The one thing that neither of us can see a middle ground on. The thing that makes my head feel like it's going to explode from unquenchable exasperation.

This thing:



Andrew's 1963 Volkswagen piece. of. crap.

Andrew bought this gem back in 2003 and it has been a functioning mode of transportation for us for a total of about seven months, four hours, and twelve minutes since then. But not all at once.

You see, the cause of our disagreement over this "car" is that we put five or six hundred dollars into it, and it runs for about three months, and then we put another five hundred into it and it runs for another two weeks, and then Andrew has his buddy come over and look at it and they decide that it needs an entirely new, much bigger, much faster engine in it. Three years later, Andrew confesses that the problem was simply that a nut had come lose on the engine, and tightening it down fixed the problem, but a new motor sounded like so much more fun!

And then it breaks down again.

Andrew reminds me that we have no payment on this car, so five hundred dollars every few months shouldn't be a huge deal. Well, we also don't have a car with this car, so I call bull, and we end up pulling hair and throwing punches and biting until we're too exhausted to go on.

Ok, not really, but I think that after "discussing" the VW, we both feel like decking each other. For real.

The most recent "discussion" on this topic happened about a month ago when Andrew and I were budgeting our tax return. I saw no point in throwing away another chunk of money, and he couldn't understand how I classified that money as being "thrown away". I asked him if there was an end in sight? When will the madness end? If he has to pay $2K to get it running again and it only lasts for six months, THEN can we call it quits? Please??

He called an end to the discussion.

And finally, after all these years, I can say that I am the one who has decided to admit defeat. It's as if a light has been turned on inside my head and I can now see that Andrew will never be able to see this rationally. He is beyond reason, beyond help, just beyond. And if it's that important to him, then I have to give. I have to let it be, let it go and make peace with it. And I have. I know that I will have to live with this car for the rest of my life, and I ought to quit letting it take years off of that life.

But there is one area that I am not willing to give in. Despite how it looks in the above picture, that Bug is PURPLE. Not blue. It is metallic purple, and anyone who has seen it in person would agree with me. Except for Andrew, who insists that it is blue. Well, yeah, but only at certain angles. That car is purple.

My husband loves his purple car. And I love my husband enough to force my brain into it's happy place whenever we have to talk about it.

Second-Hand Not-So-Goods

Andrew and I rent a house. We just aren't in a position to own a home right now. It really doesn't bother me right now. Call me weird. Oh well.

So one of the good things about renting is that when something breaks, you just call up the good ol' landlord who raises your rent whenever he gets bored, and you tell him to get his good-for-nothing hiney over to your place and fix it. Simple as that, no stress, no worries, no money out of my pocket.

Yesterday, our landlord brought over a "new" fridge for us since our last one had been repaired once already and was broken again. Unfortunately, the landlord found this fridge on the back porch of one "Billy Bob Redneck's" camper. I think that there might have been a family of opossums living in it prior to our winning it through some stroke of strange luck.

When the "new" fridge was in it's appointed home right next to our oven, (makes sense, don't you think?), I gave it the once over and found that while I can cover the rusty scratches on the front with my children's artwork, the rubber gaskets running all around the thing needed some serious anti-fungal treatment. And boy, was the inside worse than I would have imagined. Either someone spilled a Cherry Coke and it puddled down under the vegetable drawer, or something gave birth in there.

But you know me - always looking on the bright side! I told Andrew that he was about to loose a lot of weight with a lot less effort because anytime he looked in the fridge to find something to eat, he would surely lose his appetite.

Two hours after I started scrubbing the thing, it could almost pass for something the HAZ-MAT team might be willing to tackle, and that was a huge improvement. I misted a few gallons of bleach into the thing and then felt a little better about at least putting my condiments in it. In reality, I shouldn't feel too bad about it, because the duct tape on the inside back wall of the freezer is a pretty good indication that I won't have to live with this hillbilly refrigerator for long.

Tomorrow, I am going to thank my cheap landlord for this fine used refrigerator by complaining about the garage door not closing when you push the little button on the wall, AND the grout between the kitchen tiles not being properly sealed, AND the back bedroom light switch being beyond temperamental, AND the thermostat, which is a little off, so we're having trouble regulating the heat.

Because that's fair, right?

Loathing

My broken refrigerator.

My clogged sink with broken pipe.

My dying microwave.

My 14 month old's inability to stay asleep all night last night.

My super chapped lips which are about one hour away from developing a beautiful cold sore.

Loathing

Snow

Being awake

Cold

Loathing...

the day we bought our kids a video game system

My Day

6:35: Wake with forceful and horrific realization that I left a "Santa Claus gift" in plain sight in the living room. Jump out of bed to hide it before anyone wakes up and finds it.

8:30: Send kids to school and begin cheerful cleansing of the house.

11:00: All cheerfulness ends when Cameron calls from school saying that he feels like he is going to throw up. Wake up two babies from their naps, load three kids into the wagon, because we are a one (functioning) car family and Andrew has it at work. Drag three fat butts up the forever long hill to retrieve Cameron.

11:20: Arrive at the school to find a very normal looking Cameron. He's not sick at all. Took him home anyway to punish him for making me walk up the forever long hill, dragging the fatties behind me.

1:10: Load fat toddlers in wagon again to collect Ethan from school. Can't let him walk home alone, after all. Stupid, stinking, forever long hill and fat babies!!

2:00: Force naps upon all 2 year olds, 1 year olds, and anyone who faked sick.

3:00: Find that the reason Drew woke up grumpy and screaming is because Cameron opened the window in their bedroom ALL THE WAY, letting in the frigid air that caused Drew's most unpleasant and very loud wakening. His screaming wakes up the babies an hour before schedule. Kill, kill, kill.

3:15: Take call from extraordinarily rude school secretary telling me that I am holding up her report to the district office because I have still not brought in proof of Cameron's Hepatitis A vaccines, and that failure to do so immediately will cause her to curse me with hellfire and damnation, she will lose her job, alert social services to my atrocious parenting, she'll have to hire a hit man to hunt me down and kill me, etc... Oh yeah, and Cameron is going to be kicked out of school if I don't get it to her yesterday.

3:17: Call pediatrician to request a copy of Cameron's immunization record be faxed to the school.

3:18: Find that Cameron is missing one of his two doses of said vaccine. Urg. Make appointment to have him loaded up on the Hep A shot at 7 PM, and figure that it serves him right for faking sick. Again.

3:20: Tell Cameron that he has to go have a shot in a few hours. Cameron lets out a whoop! because he loves getting shots. Right. Forgot that the kid is a freak of nature and enjoys physical pain. Make mental note to discuss the dangers of drugs and needles, etc, etc...

4:30: Attempt to put house back together from afternoon of toddler destruction.

5:00: Prepare to shower. Three and a half hours after last of the trips up the forever long hill to the school pulling fat babies. Serious stink.

5:05: Internet goes down again, and it can't wait to be fixed because lady who lives downstairs takes online classes and is always in the middle of a bugger of a test.

5:10: Call Qwest. Spend 45 minutes trying to work out internet issues. Down one kid, the other four are attempting to dismember each other, 6 inches from my ear. Yell at them while covering the mouthpiece of the phone as best I can.

6:00: Finally re-enter bathroom to shower, only to find that attempted dismemberment has resulted in a bloody nose, which someone tried to control while bleeding into the bathroom sink that has remained clogged for a week because no one can remember to buy Draino.

6:10: Finish cleaning up blood and take shower while Trent cries/screams like a maniac right outside the door.

6:40: Rush out the door to the doctor's office while Andrew mourns over possibly not being able to go to the gym for the second night in a row. Poor, poor baby.

And now I am going to try to forget all this junk, remember that I've had way worse days, and go take a hot bath with the book that is taking me forever to finish. Stinking tiny print....

Whining, a lot.

Losing my mind.  Still have not unpacked from our trip because there is just too much taking priority over it.  Sold car, delivered documents to the doctor who butchered Andrew's vasectomy so they can pay his hospital bills, (hopefully), mentally died over and over while trying to physically survive all the kids running around here, and have drowned in undone housework that I can't get caught up on while being followed around all day by 2 needy babies and one very naughty toddler.  Lost the hamburger buns that I needed for dinner tonight, then realized that they had been left in the car, along with 18 eggs and a loaf of bread, for 36 hours.  Good-bye eggs.  I was also told that Cameron was sent on vacation with the wrong homework, so after doing 9 pages of math that he did not understand, (we both had break-downs while fighting through it), he now gets to do the nine pages that should have come before the ones we had and that would have helped him to grasp the torturous concepts of rounding numbers to the nearest thousand.  Helps a lot if you start with the worksheets that explain rounding to the nearest ten.  But then there's Ethan, who's teacher sent his homework from last week home with him yesterday, so now he also has two weeks worth to complete in one week.  I don't know if it's harder on the boys or harder on me, who has to help them through it all without letting all the curse words I've ever heard explode from my mouth in a shocking display of Turrets.

If ever the homework gets done, and we can stop spending 3 hours a day on it, then everything will get back to a normal level of chaos rather than the debilitating level we are at right now.  All the kids are now in bed, so I will do the dishes, glare at the suitcases that cannot be unpacked while the kids are sleeping in their rooms, and then watch mindless television in the hope that it will aid me in fending off the urge to light myself on fire and run, screaming through the streets.

And this will be the last time that I complain about feeling overwhelmed.

For at least a week.

Creepy Crawlies

We encountered our first Hobo spider of the year this morning. Andrew called me into the bathroom where he had spotted one sitting on top of the pants Ethan had left in the bathroom last night. I got a bunch of toilet paper to squish the thing with while Andrew stood on the toilet. (I know - what a pansy.) The giant, nasty spider is now in the trash with guts bleeding out all over. So gross. And if you really want to be creeped out and never sleep again, take a look at this, and then click on the link for giant house spider. You'll feel things crawling on you for the rest of the day!

Unpleasant bathroom surprises.

This morning I find myself completely baffled by single-ply toilet paper. What is the point? Does anyone buy it intentionally? About a week ago I was at a grocery store that is not my usual preference, unless I am buying doughnuts, in which case this store is my absolute favorite. So I only needed a few things; toothpaste, soda, (ha-those two go together nicely!), and toilet paper. When I got to the paper goods isle, there were tons of choices, and my normal brand of t.p. was outrageously expensive, (thus my reason for not frequenting this store often), so I went with an off brand that was on sale. The first time I used that t.p. my fingers got a little damp, so now, of course, I use three times as much as I would have if it had been 2-ply. So why? Why? I don't even understand why single-ply toilet paper would be manufactured! There can't be a huge demand for it? Anyway, I could rant for a while longer about the whole ordeal, but suffice it to say that I have learned my lesson and will never again forget to check the fine print on the t.p. package to make sure I don't end up sitting on the toilet cursing unsanitary and pointless bathroom products.

How We Miss You...

This week I am grateful for sunshine and nice weather. Sure would be nice to see some of it. It's so cold and wet here that I almost turned the heat on this morning. Seems a ridiculous thing to have to do in June. Today we went for a walk to the library, and we walked home in a downpour. The kids didn't seem to mind as we sang "The Ants Go Marching" and they stomped in every puddle they could find. Not a bad activity, just not one I planned on for summer. We came home and had hot chocolate, and I grumbled the whole time. So maybe if I express my gratitude for sunshine, it will come back and grace us with it's presence after a very long absence.

There's One On Every Team

I have come to enjoy watching my kids play soccer and baseball. I love to see them have fun, try hard and sometimes succeed. Ethan's emotions on the soccer field are far more adult than I would have expected. He shows frustration, support for team members, elation and superb concentration. Cameron is less intense on the baseball diamond, but no less entertaining. He jumps up and down for a whole slew of reasons; from impatience to excitement. He gracefully runs like a bounding deer. And I have started to feel more comfortable cheering from the sidelines. I try to remember to cheer for my son's teams as well as their opponent's victories, and encourage anyone who seems to be in need of some boosting. These kids are 5 and 8, after all, and the score is hardly the most important part of their games. I have even started to do all of this in a voice loud enough to be heard by the people next to me! A great improvement! But today in Cameron's baseball practice I again encountered the dreaded and ugly Sideline Parent Monster. Why do some parents have such trouble with impulsively shouting out pointers to their child, correcting mistakes, and rejoicing at other players failures? Sitting about 5 feet from me on the bleachers was a woman who had remained completely silent until her son was up to bat in the team's practice game. He stood up there and got ready to swing...listened to the coach give some encouraging suggestions and was then ripped from his mental focus by the sound of his mother yelling, "Bend your knees!!!" So he did, and took a swing at the ball that was pitched by the very unpredictable machine. Missed. Mom yelling again, "Keep your eye on the ball, no matter what!!!" (Thanks, Mom, that's what I was trying to do before you screamed and scared the crud out of me...) Swung and missed again. Mom adds to her rant, "You had a great swing, but you need to keep your eye on that ball all the way through!" Coach at this point has given up trying to help the child at all because the kid can hardly keep his head pointed towards the pitching mound with his mother's constant interruptions going on behind him. So after a few more misses and a few more irritating shouts from his mom, the poor kid finally hits the ball and makes it to first base, but not before the baseman has caught the ball and tagged him out. So now the kid is in the outfield and is waiting for the ball to come his way... He didn't have to wait long, and finally his mother had some positive things to say. Too bad she didn't extend that praise to the batter as well. Her response to her son's catch and tag of the batter was this: "Great job! That was an awesome catch, and you got that kid out!! It was great! Good job!" Hmmm. Maybe she forgot that that poor batter, who had done his best and was excited to have hit the ball, was on her son's team and that it would have been kind and considerate of her to cheer for that child's great hit and her son's catch. Instead, she tore the smile off the batter's face with one swift and prideful remark. I don't know which of these three people to feel the most sorry for. The mother, who will no doubt be the recipient of many disgusted glances from other parents and who seems oblivious to her own stupidity; her son, who will one one day realize what a dope his mother is and will have to survive the embarrassment of her for years; or the poor batter boy , who had the wind snatched from his sails by someone who should have been on his side. Such a shame. Maybe some day, parents like that will experience having their losses or failures pointed out to anyone in earshot, and they will realize how much fun it must be for a young child to be on the receiving end of that. It makes me stop and think about how the things I say might effect my children's self esteem, and while I do well in the sporting arena, I am not guiltless in other areas. So I will resolve to build my children up, and never, ever tear them down.