A Bitter Pill

Throughout my teaching career, I would occasionally have parents who would call with complaints.  They would range from "You're not treating my child fairly," to "The concert last night was terrible."  As I take my profession very personally, these comments would hurt me deeply.  I made a vow to never become one of "those parents" when my children were the same age.

My son is now in high school--a big step for any adolescent.  While he's been largely successful, we've had to work together to learn different study techniques, and most importantly--how to manage his time.  He tends to get impatient with himself and gets frustrated easily, and so the majority of my time with him is reassuring him that if he works hard, things will work out for the best.  He's been pretty busy with sports since school started, first with football and now with wrestling.  He starts his day at 6:15 with early-morning Seminary and doesn't get home until 5:30.  It's a long day for anyone, let alone a fourteen year-old boy.

My frustration has been with wrestling.  He has been wrestling for the past four years, and has been pretty successful.  His dad and I have given him every opportunity to develop his talent--we've taken him to wrestling camps every summer and to off-season tournaments.  Because of his successes, I thought for sure that he would be participating on the varsity wrestling team this year.

His coach thinks otherwise, and has put him on the freshmen team.  He's undefeated thus far, and has won four out of his five matches by pin.  I don't know that many of his matches have been much of a challenge for him.  On the one hand, I'm glad that he's having successes, but on the other hand, he needs to be challenged.

Yesterday he stayed home sick.  He does this at least a couple of times a month...he comes in to my room and says he feels like he's going to puke and feels dizzy.  In my opinion, this is one of the toughest things about being a mom--do you send them to school or keep them home?  Could he have gone to school and been okay?  He stayed home, slept and did some homework.  When his dad left to go to wrestling practice, Ian stayed home, saying he still wasn't feeling well.

When Gordon came home from practice yesterday, he said that the head coach said that if you weren't well enough to practice the day before a meet, you couldn't wrestle.  This means Ian can't wrestle in the big rivalry dual today.  He was going to be able to wrestle on the varsity team for the first time today.  I have a hard time understanding how this is fair.  It would be one thing if he stayed home from practice just because he didn't feel like going, but he was sick.  Gordon is siding with the head coach, saying that Ian needs to learn how to tough it out, and that not feeling 100% is not a good enough reason to not follow through with your commitments. 

While I understand all of this, it's still hard for me to watch my son hurt.  I want to protect him from everything, and I know I can't.  I want him to have everything he deserves, no matter what the cost.  I love him so much, and know he is capable of so much.  I know that this is an important life lesson for him, and I hope more than anything he will learn from it.  I know it's better that he learn this lesson early on.  I only hope that he does.