At my x husband...?...
Just as Brian was getting really good at football and showered with attention, he decides to stop playing.
His backstage dad and the main coach were driving him nuts.
You can always tell the over-involvement of a parent in a child's life when the child makes a decision the parent doesn't like. I was trying to pound home the point to my x husband that he was behaving like a fanatic-lunatic-over-obsessed-football-x-jock dad. Of course my x disagreed (as he tried pulling on Brian's jersey to see if it fits him) thus let the arguing begin.
I tried warning him.
Brian is self-aware and rather like an engineer, a type of man my x husband cannot understand. When Brian has had enough of something wild horses cannot drag him forward.
So, Monday night Brian comes to me and says "Dad is driving me crazy. I think the coach is scary\weird (he is) and I am starting to hate football. I want to stop." I grin to myself as I picture my x husband's head exploding when he is told this.
"Are you scared to tell your dad?" I ask him. "Sorta. He acts like this is the NFL." he looks at me like he is about to ask me to jump off a mountain.
Then ... he asks me to tell his dad with him. OIY. Can we wrestle a bear instead?
Are these the times we love parenting?
At least Brian is to the age where we can talk openly about different subjects and negotiate an outcome. However, this time it is about delivering news to his dad he isn't going to want to hear. It is often hard to explain to some dad's that children don't belong to them, they come from us, but we don't own them. If we are lucky, we can manage our children into adulthood and teach them to make positive choices in their lives.
Forcing a child to be what we might want them to be makes for one very screwed up adult later in life. A kid has to find his or her own passion. The kind of passion for something where they nag us to take them. Tiger Woods wanted to golf and bugged his dad to teach him - not the other way around. So Brian has decided football isn't his thing right now. It isn't like he went out a lit someones house on fire or robbed a bank.
The season has not started, positions have not been picked. It is an ideal time to withdrw from the team - before he is given a position they count on him to play.
To me - no biggie.
To his Dad...
We just ruined Christmas.
It isn't like I don't understand this. What if I don't like Brian's wife someday? I can't imagine this, but if it was a problem I'd find a way to be a Tour guide and travel the world. I'd go get a life and leave my son to his own. We need to understand that if we REALLY love someone, we must let go. Love is always about allowing space for people to breathe - to be themselves.
Isn't there a song "Hold On Losely"?
Why do we treat our partners better than we treat our kids? Why do single parents show compassion and understanding with their dating partners and then be closed off and rigid when it involves their kids?
C
