Sunday, August 29, 2010

Soccer Woes

Last week after we got back from our vacation I took ds to soccer. Soccer is a great interactive thing for him. It's one of the few social activities he usually enjoys and has fun with. I thought it would be a good way to get him back into a routine and since we only had 5 classes left on his pass I thought it would be good to use one of the classes we had left. We went to the afternoon class which is usually less crowded and as expected there was only one other little kid there.

I should have seen it coming because he had been having a hard time listening from the beginning of the day and had run away from me as soon as we entered the park. I could see him but was still mildly paniced that he might get carried off because there were a LOT of people in the park for whatever reason. He stopped when he got close to the soccer field though and waited for me since I had his class pass. We waited for his class to start together and he was really excited to get going. He almost forgot to pick up his name tag from the coach because he was so excited to get started. I watched him go about his business in class and he was getting along just fine until it came to the part of the class they call the "big game." This is always a difficult part of the class for him since he tends to get a little over competitve and only wants certain people on his team. Today was no different. He got very upset when the coach paired him up with the other kid in the class and was going to have them two against him. Apparently ds got so mad he started saying a lot of bad words. The coach brought him over to me so he could have a time out.

I decided that we should leave since there was only 10 minutes left in the class. I was very embarrassed by what ds had said and to make matters worse he threw a huge fit when I told him we were leaving. He got away from me and ran all over the park. I finally was able to get him to stop and had to pick him up and carry him out of the park. He hit my back and screamed the whole way, earning us many confused and shameful looks. I even heard a few parents (not too quietly) telling their own children that I was a bad mommy for not letting him have his way or that I was being mean to him or that they would get the same if they didn't behave.


A few days later we went to soccer again. This time in the morning when there were more kids but less interfearance from other people. Most of the people watching were parents or sitters of the kids in the class. Ds was having a much better day, though he was still running way ahead of me on the way down to the soccer field. He got a bit upset about how muddy it was (it had rained the day before) so the coach (a girl this time) was kind enough to move us to a grassier part of the field. Everything was going fine but the coach kept blowing a whistle very loudly.

Ds has auditory processing issues that make loud sudden noises hard for him to deal with but he was very brave. He kept going through the class for a while but it finally became too much for him and he started to cry and get upset. After only a 5 minute time out though he was able to tell the coach what was bothering him and continued with the class. I was so proud of him for being able to communicate his problem for someone other than myself. I knew it was a noise issue because he was covering his ears but I thought it might be the traffic on the road next to the park or the people talking since background noises frequently bother him more than foreground noises.

Overall he loves soccer so I am glad to be able to keep him in that class.

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