DiaryDad wants you to GROW UP!!!
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Twice in the past week I have dealt with issues in which adults have done very immature and/or childish things when they should have been setting a better example for the children they were around. Unfortunately both times it has been my youngest that has been impacted and… well… I’m pissed off!
Scenario one happened at the end of a “recreational” soccer league that he and a friend had joined. You’ll notice the quotes around that word… recreational… I had to fight the urge to do air quotes while I typed that. When we signed him up, we thought this was just an hour once a week to play soccer. There were no regular coaches for his team, and no practices, you just showed up once a week on Thursday nights and played soccer. On the last game, which was not our carpool (so we didn’t pick him up), they handed out trophies for 1st and second place. Turns out that two of the teams quietly had been given regular coaches and were practicing outside of the once weekly games… So guess who won the trophies…
Now this isn’t a scenario where I think everyone deserves a trophy, I heartily disagree we that concept. I do however think that if you are in a competitive league, all the teams should know they are competing and have a chance to compete on equal footing. Instead I had to console a very sad 10 y.o. who couldn’t understand why his team didn’t get a regular coach and practices like the “winning” teams. That is a crappy way to have to teach your kid that life isn’t fair… and to the adult’s running that I say an emphatic Grow Up!
If that wasn’t enough…
This weekend, the neighbors were having a bbq shindig, as is usually the custom we were invited and the whole group of kids were having a glorious time together. This is where my youngest is at his finest. He loves to get groups of kids together and play with his collection of Nerf/toy/water guns. They seemed to be having quite the time when I left to meet up with some friends. While I was out I got a text from my wife saying that one of the “adult” (see the air quotes again?) partygoers had decided to teach his child a lesson by breaking one of my kids’s toy guns… I mean come on!!!
What made it worse was that the majority of the toys including the one that was broken are toys that my kid saved his money and bought for himself… The only thing I can say to my kid is don’t play with your toy guns when all the kids are over… because we can’t trust the adults to act their age.
Am I asking too much of people over 25 to play fair and not break the toys of kids that aren’t theirs? I hope not…
I almost feel like I am in bizarro world here… Maybe I’m out on a limb here but is it too much to ask adults to act like they are in fact adults.
That is my rant this week, maybe what we need is some therapy here. Please use the comments section below to share your experiences dealing with adults whose inability to act like an adult affected your children. Maybe we can shine some light on behaviors that just need to stop!
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Eric Bennion can be found writing about fatherhood at diarydad.com and Tweeting @diarydad.
Photo Credit: the author.