Adventures in Parenting

Kieran is enrolled in a kids' soccer league. The key word is "enrolled" because he is, apparently, no longer attending. So he tells us.

Let me back up here. For the past two years, he has been alternating swimming lessons with a session of "Sportball" which is basically a non-competitive sports sports class for kids. One class is football, the next baseball, then tennis, soccer, golf etc. And he has loved it. He would wake up on Saturday and say, joyously, "Am I going to Sportball today? YAY!!!"

Once the last session ended in the spring,the next session was "outdoor soccer" so I signed him up. The first class was held on the lawn of the church where the indoor sessions are held The church has a gym and a couple of classrooms attached, which are part of a Montessori school. On the morning of the second class, we showed up and the class had been moved back into the gym. Turns out the owners of the house beside the church complained that the 4-year-olds playing soccer at 10 am on Saturday mornings were too noisy and were threatening some sort of legal action. Let me repeat, for 4-year-olds happily playing soccer on a church lawn. And here I was unaware that Satan and his family were living so close by.

Anyway, I digress.

The last class of the spring session, Kieran had to stop playing because he had wrenched his knee on the trampoline and he couldn't really run. We thought nothing of it, and signed him up for the summer session.

First class of summer session and Eric tells him to get ready and all hell breaks loose. Complete meltdown of outrageous proportions. Eric forced him to go. It was the hottest day of the year. Kieran went out on the field for a few minutes then sat down and refused to play.

After much tsk tsking, we managed to extract a promise from him that he would be fine next week. But the night before the class when I told him that soccer was the next day, the meltdown started anew.

They had given him a jersey and a soccer ball, which I said we would give to Kaya. He says OK. Wait. What? Hmmmm wasn't expecting that. I tried talking to him, trying to figure out where things had gone so wrong. He is unable to give me even the remotest explanation of what went wrong. The most I could get out of him was that it was "too hot", which was undeniably true, but it is a hollow argument since he was refusing to go even before he knew how unbearable it was going to be once he got there.

Eric told him that since he promised to go last week and now was refusing, that he needed to go his room and think about it. Then, we got a brilliant idea. We would threaten to take away his newest, most prized possession - a brand new Nintendo DS that he had just been given from Eric's brother. Surely, an hour of soccer cannot be worse than losing your brand new Nintendo that has a really cool car game that you love, right? RIGHT?

"OK Daddy, you can take away the DS." Jesus. The kid, really, really doesn't want to go.

So, with the Nintendo gone, we are now at a loss. Obviously neither bribes nor threats are going to work. What is left? Apparently I am ill equipped at true parenting because after about an hour of the "night before soccer" drama, I decided to throw in the towel. I called the organization and asked for a refund. The bored summer student told me they don't offer refunds once the session has started. OK, can I move him? I'm thinking I can move him back to an indoor fall session and start from scratch. No, the bored student tells me we can only move to a class offered in the same season. Which is soccer, soccer and soccer.

So, I told Kieran that he was going to have to go and that was all there was to it. He flat out says no. For the past few days he reminds me every chance he gets that he is not going. He wakes up in the morning and says "Mom, I'm not going to Sportball". He gets in the car after daycare and says "Mom, I'm not going to Sportball." I told him that he needed to finish his dinner and he says "OK, but I'm not going to Sportball." Bedtime: "Goodnight Mommy. I'm not going to Sportball." I told him to stop talking about it.

Who is going to win this epic battle? Do we force him to do something he clearly now hates just to show him who's in charge? Or do I respect his unwavering refusal to go. After all, he has already given up his jersey, ball and Nintendo (all of which he would get back if he tried again).

It's exhausting, this parenting thing.