#576
Posted: 7/21/07 at 11:34am
"C9 wants to quit baseball because he has been hit a few times. There are only a few games left and I want him to finish what he started. He is crying like a baby to his mother."
Brd – I am going to try desperately to keep my response calm (and as short as I can,) but this hits me on a very emotional level – so if I seem to get carried away, please know it’s more in response to the subject matter, not you in particular.
Quick background – my step-father raised me with one thought in mind: I want to turn you straight by any means possible, and if that can’t be, I’d sooner you were dead. One of his agendas was to force me into little league sports, which I had zero interest in. The last one attempted, when I was 11, was baseball. I moped through the proceedings as best as I could, up til the day I got hit with a hard pitch. I promptly walked off the field and sat in the dugout while the coach, players and all the parents surrounded me screaming their heads off – but I wouldn’t budge.
It was that incident, more than any other, that my therapist had me latch onto when I went through my suicide attempt recovery – it was the clearest and best example that, even as a child surrounded by extreme oppositional forces, I had the internal integrity to know what was best for ME.
NOW, I am NOT saying, “I actually think your son is gay, and you are wrong in your approach because of that fact.” But, there were a couple of things in your statement that really hit me – well, wrong.
Quite honestly, if your son has experienced getting hit by thrown projectiles, and has decided that that is not something he likes, that sounds pretty smart to me – the avoidance of pain is something logical. You say you want him to ‘finish what he started’. To my mind, any endeavor is ‘finished’ when you learn what you needed to – and maybe learning how to decide what works for him and what doesn’t is what he needed. Having discovered that, he IS finished. I would ask if, perhaps, it is YOUR expectations that are the ones not being met.
The other thing is ‘crying like a baby to his mother’. If I understand your terminology for your kids, ‘C9’ means he’s 9 years old. If that’s true, he IS still a ‘baby’ – maybe not as in ‘infant’ terms, but he’s not even a pre-adolescent yet. You’ve come into opposition with what he feels he wants and needs for himself, and he’s turning to the only other source of authority he has – his mother. It just seems that, in your choice of words, there’s a bit of feeling it ‘unseemly’ (or even ‘unmanly’) for him to both cry and seek his mother’s help.
Again, please take this with my good intention – and I would do it privately, but it seems worthy of the community we have established in this thread.
Brd – I am going to try desperately to keep my response calm (and as short as I can,) but this hits me on a very emotional level – so if I seem to get carried away, please know it’s more in response to the subject matter, not you in particular.
Quick background – my step-father raised me with one thought in mind: I want to turn you straight by any means possible, and if that can’t be, I’d sooner you were dead. One of his agendas was to force me into little league sports, which I had zero interest in. The last one attempted, when I was 11, was baseball. I moped through the proceedings as best as I could, up til the day I got hit with a hard pitch. I promptly walked off the field and sat in the dugout while the coach, players and all the parents surrounded me screaming their heads off – but I wouldn’t budge.
It was that incident, more than any other, that my therapist had me latch onto when I went through my suicide attempt recovery – it was the clearest and best example that, even as a child surrounded by extreme oppositional forces, I had the internal integrity to know what was best for ME.
NOW, I am NOT saying, “I actually think your son is gay, and you are wrong in your approach because of that fact.” But, there were a couple of things in your statement that really hit me – well, wrong.
Quite honestly, if your son has experienced getting hit by thrown projectiles, and has decided that that is not something he likes, that sounds pretty smart to me – the avoidance of pain is something logical. You say you want him to ‘finish what he started’. To my mind, any endeavor is ‘finished’ when you learn what you needed to – and maybe learning how to decide what works for him and what doesn’t is what he needed. Having discovered that, he IS finished. I would ask if, perhaps, it is YOUR expectations that are the ones not being met.
The other thing is ‘crying like a baby to his mother’. If I understand your terminology for your kids, ‘C9’ means he’s 9 years old. If that’s true, he IS still a ‘baby’ – maybe not as in ‘infant’ terms, but he’s not even a pre-adolescent yet. You’ve come into opposition with what he feels he wants and needs for himself, and he’s turning to the only other source of authority he has – his mother. It just seems that, in your choice of words, there’s a bit of feeling it ‘unseemly’ (or even ‘unmanly’) for him to both cry and seek his mother’s help.
Again, please take this with my good intention – and I would do it privately, but it seems worthy of the community we have established in this thread.
N MAILMAN WITH MY DA
