Now that I’m blogging, some of my friends have asked me to blog about things they’ve seen —thus, the following:

An 11 year old girls soccer team was playing last weekend in a tournament. Against an especially good team, they were all playing hard, but went into half time down one goal. As they were exiting the field a couple of the girls were commenting on the poor play of one of their team mates, who unfortunately heard them talking about her. Instead of heading to the bench, she ran off the field to her parents.

After hearing what was said about their daughter, these parents had an excellent teaching opportunity to talk about teamwork and sportsmanship. No one likes to know that people are talking unkind about their child, but unfortunately we cannot protect our children from the world’s unkindness so we have to prepare them to handle it. Her parents, unfortunately, chose to have her pick up her bag and leave the field. Was one team mate responsible for the lopsided score–no, it takes everyone on the team working together. Were these girls being unkind in their criticism—sure, but knowing when to rebut and when to ignore criticism is a learned behavior. Was this young lady’s feelings hurt by her team mates criticism–yes, and she will have to learn to deal with many more people who will hurt her feelings.

By having her leave in the middle of the game her parents taught her

*teamwork does not matter

*when you are uncomfortable or hurt, runaway

*if people make you mad–quit

I’m not sure that her parents will be there every time she gets into an uncomfortable position. What will this girl do if her boss criticizes a job that she does? What will she do if everyone on her job assignment is not working in the same direction that she is? Will she quit because co-workers are critical of her imput on an assignment? How much different this might have turned out if these parents had told her that soccer is a team sport and it takes all of them to win. Then they could have encouraged her to confront those girls and tell them she did not appreciate their talking about her. The other girls would have had a lot more respect for her if she had said something and not run away.

Parenting is hard and you have to grab a hold of those teachable moments. Fortunately all is not lost in this case—although that young lady chose to leave the team, the girls who were talking about her received the parenting they needed. They were reminded how they felt when others talked about them, how important it is to build up team mates instead of tearing them down, and were made to apologize for their unkind words. Perhaps now they will think twice before being unkind to someone, and they will certainly remember how talking about others can make them feel.