I worry a lot about my mental health. As I've turned 56, I frequently meditate on the types of things that drive who I am and how i live.
There's lots of childhood scars, there's a lifetime of things that happened to me or that I caused myself that impact my life to this very day.
What I don't think anyone prepares you for is that you also take on these scars/issues that your children go through as well. You care so deeply for this human that you helped bring into this world, you raise them to be fearless, bold, brave, only to see that they are a pretty good carbon copy of you and they get hurt/suffer battle wounds in the very same way.
My son is one of the most loving, caring people in the world, it's how we've raised him. His ADHD however, will have him process things that happen to him very deeply and they affect him a lot more than it would for me. But I can see that he's already built a shield around himself that I worry, just hides the much larger pain he's feeling inside.
After supposedly finding an ideal situation for him with a sports team, it has gone incredibly pear-shaped because the coaches have changed. One coach was kicked to the curb by the other 3 "buddies". How we approach games has now completely changed as well as, although completely within the rules, they decided they wouldn't communicate it to the parents of all the kids. Instead we found out after the game had started already.
It's the classic bully/hazing sort of behavior and it's come about because frankly, this team is NOT a good team. But we were plugging along, having some success, but in general, 3-16 on the season is not a good feelings, especially for the amount of money everyone is paying for "travel" sports.
Other than the one coach who got booted, the other 3 rarely have a kind word for the kids. They don't build-break-build when errors happen, it's much easier to just yell at them, pull them from the game mid-inning and sit them to make them "think" about their error.
But now apparently they feel that there's 2-3 kids who just aren't able to perform. So they are now benched and we're playing by the rules that MLB plays by. In order for you to go into the game (if you're on the bench), someone has to come out for the rest of the game.
Normally, I would accept these decisions as, it IS how High School ball is played and these kids are now HS aged. Its just that nothing was said and it looked like those 2-3 kids were targeted. Again, if they actually WERE the 2-3 worse kids on the team, it would make sense, but these 3 bullies have decided that it's only their clique who gets to play. Based on the actual performance data, there are 5-6 kids who are all about even at the bottom of the stats, based on batting average, pitching and fielding percentages. But my son is one of the 2-3 who are now, showing up like good soldiers, expecting not to play each weekend.
2 of the bullies kids have all the tell-tale signs of, "I play because my Dad coaches". 1 never makes the weeknight practice for whatever reason and his "on field numbers" are not much better than my kid's. The other, makes many errors on the field (may lead our team in number of errors), kicks dirt, puts his head down and just doesn't give a crap. He can't catch a ball that bounces in front of him if his life depended on it. Last weekend, he hit a pop-up in fair territory and didn't even bother to run it out.
Last night, surprise, a new kid shows up who is now on our team for the rest of the season. Apparently he was playing for another team in our club and they don't need him. Normally that wouldn't be weird except that we then find out that the kid lives by one of the 3 coaches so he was already "one of their clique".
This stuff stinks to high heaven and I can only imagine what our Coach is telling the management of our club as to my son's performance and how they desperately needed another body to help out.
My son is upset by this. But he's being a young man about it. Shows up to practice, helps out during the game with warm-ups or whatever, cheers his teammates on. But I'm saving all of my evidence. Tryouts for next year are just over a week away.
My point to all of this is that my mental health is taking a hit here. I can't sleep, I hurt FOR my son (who is hurting for sure as well), I talk to him daily about the right mindset to have even if these 3 "men" treat him unfairly and unevenly compared to all of the other kids. I'm training him how to cope but I'm positive that I'm not teaching him how to mentally cope because frankly, this has made me a wreck. Kids are malleable and they DO process and manage these pains differently but I hurt SO MUCH for him right now and I am taking it personally. It also means that I have to take my time to construct my arguments about the coaching style and actions and not take it out on the other kids who are not good players but are just playing a game and don't really have an impact on my son. It's their Dads who are horrible people and insensitive and frankly, massive bullies.
We'll see how this plays out. I am definitely going on the offensive soon though because I'm not going to spend money to go to Michigan and Indiana for tournaments to watch my kid sit on the bench for two solid weekends.
