The joy of parents

I've always said that the most challenging part of any volunteer project involving children is dealing with the parents. After our experience last night, I'm definitely ready for baseball season to come to an end!

Both JR & JC (and their respective parent/coaches...us!) had games last night. We were told Wednesday night that we needed to come to the concession stand before our games and pick up a make up schedule for rain outs. Both my wonderful husband and I were stunned to learn that we both had games scheduled for this evening. Uhm, 24 hours notice when dealing with leagues involving 10 year olds & under seems a bit extreme, don't you think? For my girls, we were only going to have five players so we got together with the opposing coach and rescheduled for a mutually agreeable time. The boys were a little more challenging. My husband (head coach) has tickets for the Reds game this evening, and is taking JR. The assistant coach was leaving immediately after their game last night for a baseball weekend in Chicago. Obviously, since he had a game to coach right then, there was not an opportunity to attempt to line up other coaches or even determine if they had enough kids to play. Instead of being able to watch my son's game after our girls' game ended, I was on a mission to make tonight work out. Finally, a parent who has helped with the team all season agreed to coach, I'll keep the book and the assistant coach's wife will also help base coach. I thought this was pretty generous considering a) my son won't actually be there to play and b) the assistant coach's wife had other plans that she was willing to cancel in order to help. We are going to be short kids, but we received permission to use some kids from teams who aren't playing tonight. They just have to play outfield and bat at the bottom of the order. My husband is amazingly calm and rational...traits which I have none of. He approached the president of the baseball board and explained that we had it worked out, but mentioned that he would really appreciate it if we could have more than 24 hours notice if there was going to be make up games. The board president immediately got defensive and my husband explained that he wasn't angry or upset, but really felt that communication would go a long way towards making things run more smoothly, and would help to make sure that no one got upset or angry in the future. It was a very civil discussion. However, another board parent has a son who is also playing for my husband. To be honest, the son is not very good. Trust me, I'm not a parent who thinks my children are the best on earth, because JR plays only two positions; catcher and outfield. He's been wanting to pitch and my husband has simply explained that isn't going to happen. My husband believes that every child should be placed where they have the best opportunity for success, and where they are the least likely to embarrass themselves. For some children, that means they only play the outfield. This board member's son is one of those, although because the dad is a board member my husband has been giving the son some opportunity to play third base. I was at a game last week where this youngster fielded a ball at third and literally stood there with his mouth open because he had no clue what to do with the ball. Now according to this board member, it is my husband's fault because he hasn't done a good enough job of teaching the kids how to play the positions. My husband just stood there and listened to board member dad and at the end stated that he appreciated the man's opinion, and that it seemed as though they had a different philosophy on coaching. I was so amazed at how well my husband handled the situation, and I know that I could not have been that calm in that situation.

Of course we discussed it over and over again last evening. We tried not to dwell on it, but it finally came down to this: normally, I recognize that there will always be one parent, no matter how things are handled, that doesn't appreciate the way things are handled. That's a given. What bothers me about this situation, is that this was a man that I respected as having some knowledge of baseball and how to handle things. He has coached his older two sons and is on the board of the league (as an aside, he has admitted that he hasn't worked much with son #3, and that this particular son doesn't even want to play ball, but they make him). Furthermore, because this man is on the board of the league, he has the power to prevent my husband from coaching next year if he feels like doing so. That is the part that really bothers me and aggravates me to no end. I take comfort in the fact that my husband has no regrets in the way he's coached the kids. Furthermore, and of the most importance to me, JR has had a very good experience playing this year. After all, that is the reason we agreed to coach this year...for our own kids, not for the whims of other parents.