When To Hug In Soccer

It's soccer season for Jordan's little troupe. Jordan had to miss the first two practices because of the croup and his reaction to meds, but he's more than ready to play. And so is everybody else. Unfortunately, that doesn't always equate to soccer practice.

Jordan is a five-year-old boy, still very much like his four-year-old version, in that he likes to play. He's getting much, much better at standing still and even listening for short periods of time, but he's a boy. Most of his time is spent playing with cars, building log cabins, racing games on his PSP, Playstation, and XBox, and falling down. I have to say that he's better at not falling down than most of the other kids in soccer, though, no doubt due to his training in karate and his three hours a day in pre-kindergarten.

Anyway, the big problem I'm seeing right now is that there is no consistency for the kids to latch onto. The main coach says to them: Stand still, pay attention. He turns his back and half the kids start hugging and pushing and knocking each other down. Last year, Jordan would have been first to start that kind of stuff. This year, he's not wanting to do it, but if others are going to do it and not get in trouble, he figures, LET'S PLAY!

So who gets in trouble? That's right. The big kid who's just trying to fit in and have fun. And you know how that makes him feel? Frustrated and angry, which is normal. How would you feel if you were standing in line at the bank and somebody jumped on you and when you pushed the guy off you, a security guard arrested you?

Yeah, me either. Let's just hope the coaches remember the level of the kids' attention span and teach to that.

I should have listened

"But Daddy, he doesn't like that game."

"I talked to his mom and she said it would be all right. He'll be able to play it with his family. It'll be fun then, not like at school. Besides, I don't want to get another toy that gets broken or lost in a couple of days."

"But he doesn't like to play that game."

"It'll be all right. We'll get another toy to go with it, just in case."

He knew he couldn't convince me otherwise, I guess, so he let it go. Turns out, he was right.

At the party, it was disaster for him. He wanted so much for his present to be a good one, to help him make a friend. But he was right. The crestfallen look on his face when his present was unceremoniously dropped to the floor made me wish I could disappear.

"He says he doesn't like that game. It makes me feel like I shouldn't have even got anything for him."

"It wasn't your fault. I was the one who bought it, not you. It wasn't your fault. Okay?"

"Okay."

The sadness and disappointment covered me. Uncomfortable looks crossed every parent's face as we all tried to process the honesty of a child.

It's over now, and the hurt will go away. I hope for Jordan that it already has. But for me, the memory of the pain I caused my son will be around much longer. I should have known he was right. He's smarter than I am. I should have listened.

Where's the love?

Jordan wants friends, and I need to figure out how to help him be around kids who will be his friends.

I remember one year as a child my family lived a summer in Michigan, in a town among people. There was a kid who lived nearby who was our friend, the only person I remember from my youth that I didn't befriend in school. We lived near Lake Michigan and played on rope swings that landed us in sand dunes and built log cabins that we then made fall on top of us so we could scramble out.

That lasted maybe three months and we were back in the woods of southern Ohio, never to return. I don't even remember the boy's name that we played with, only his older brother's, Pierre, because, let's face it, how many Pierres does a misplaced hillbilly meet in his young life.

I don't want Jordan to be left with that kind of tiny memory of a friendship. I'm sure he will have more.

Hopefully I won't have to undergo gender reassignment to get Jordan a playdate playmate or two in the future. If that's the case, he just might have to grow up a loner, like his dad and mom. Maybe a simple cross-dressing kit could do the trick.

No growth in culture

The old culture finally grew over the weekend, so another test was done, and it came up negative and stayed negative. Yesterday was the first day in maybe three months I didn't hear the kid cough like he had something rattling around his throat. So bring on the next one, world. Oh wait, don't say that.

One big nightmare

One big cold turned into one big nightmare when Jordan's immune system went haywire from all the medications, presumably--we'll never know for sure--giving him a severe allergic reaction that resembles chickenpox at first, then measles, and finally some kind of fiery red unbelievable torment. Added to that, strep was found from a throat culture, though he didn't have any signs of a sore throat. Nor did the strep sample grow in the culture dish at the clinic.

So, doctors put him on a new antibiotic, along with some stuff to help his cough, because he still had his cold, apparently. But guess what? His allergy got worse and I had to race him back to the doctor. It wasn't as serious as I'd first thought, though, and he came through okay.

By Friday evening, he was reacting positively to being off all the previous meds and having them replaced with a steroid for the immune reaction and an antihistamine for the itching. Today, the redness is barely noticeable.

Tomorrow we'll learn if the strep culture grew. If not, it might be a false positive. At any rate, it was a nightmare for all of us for a while.

The one big cold

Jordan had a cold a month ago. That turned into bronchitis a week ago. Now he's got another cold. He hasn't been to karate in a week. School one day in a week.

The medical assistant I talked to at the doctor's office said there was no cure for the cold. Duh, shucks. I was hoping I'd missed that piece of news.

And the only way to get over a cold was to acquire an immunity. The only way to acquire immunity was to...you guessed it...get the cold.

I thought about taking Jordan to school today as my part in the goal to get everyone's immunity to where it should be. But I didn't.