Our little goalie.
Suppose you were the parents of the other kid. You have already witnessed shit-talking 4 year old purposely stomp on other kid's sand castle and purposely push other children on the playground. Would you say something to the 4 year old's coach/dad? Something like, "I just thought you should know that your son said 'You stink and you're going to lose' to my kid when he walked onto the field."
I would want to know. I get really bothered when my kids act like assholes. Which is probably why they don't act like assholes too often. But when they do? I apologize and I make them apologize.
In the "hypothetical" story above, the parent's response was, "Okay." No apology, no other reaction.
Which isn't why I'm blogging about this. Sometimes kids act like assholes and sometimes parents don't really feel like hearing about it. I get that. I've been there. But what happened the next time we saw the 4 year old in question and his sibling, who is a few years older, is kinda wigging me out.
Hugmonkey's soccer game had just ended and we were walking to the car when we passed the two kids. I said hi and encouraged Hugmonkey to do the same. You know, like polite people. The sibling said hi back, then said in a patronizing tone, "You did a good job at your game." Then the 4 year old repeated the exact same phrase in the exact same tone. I encouraged Hugmonkey to say thank you as I watched the older sibling smirk.
(It's important to note that Hugmonkey spends most of his games chatting with his teammates or occasionally pouting. While he did technically make two saves during his time as goalie, he spent most of his time in goal watching traffic. In other words, he did not do a particularly good job during the game - especially not the kind of goal-scoring, going after the ball type of stuff that kids tend to notice as "good".)
All I could think was, "Did your parents spend time teaching you what to say the next time you ran into us? WTF????????????" Because I'm sorry, that's not a typical comment between kids who are not good friends. Which our kids are not. And these parents, they don't like us - for reasons that I've never been clear on. I just felt like the whole thing was calculated. . . .
Then I felt like maybe I was being paranoid.
Then I remembered that people can be incredibly petty.
Then I had a brief moment where I was annoyed at Hot Guy for complaining to the dad in the first place, because I really don't want to deal with this drama.
Then I thought maybe I was just creating the drama.
Then I remembered certain stories other parents have shared with me, about other kids and parents around here.
I'm probably not being paranoid. Not that I'm going to let this turn into drama or anything. I just had to vent about it somewhere. And see if anyone else has had a similar experience.
5 comments:
I would most definitely want to know if my kid had said something like that. I think I parent like you, though.
It does sound like the parents had some weird talk with their kids to cause that kind of patronizing response. Gross.
I don't think you aren't being paranoid. There are a lot of crappy parents out their raising their kids to be equally crappy because they don't know any better.
I would want to know if either of my children behaved that way. And I certainly wouldn't promote it.
It amazes me when a parent lets their kid act inappropriate and they do nothing about it.
@Tracie - I definitely think we have similar views. Also, I can't imagine having that conversation with my kids - make sure you say this to so and so when you see them. Yikes!
@Kirs - There's being too stressed out or tired to deal, and then there's making some weird point to us instead of parenting the children. Very sad.
I would definitely want to know if my kid behaved that way, and I think the parent's response was totally inappropriate. They don't sound like very nice people. But I think the "good job at your game" comment could have just been the kid doing what he was told was polite to do after a game (it is possible there is some adult somewhere in his life who has tried to teach him to be polite, even if the parents are clueless). They sound like not the greatest parents, and maybe not the greatest people in general, but I'd try not to over-analyze the dumb things their kids do. With parents like that, their kids are probably more than capable of coming up with obnoxious dumb things to do on their own, without extra coaching.
@Nancy - Excellent points! I hadn't thought of it that way.
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