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A Lifetime of Learning

Blogging from the University of Maryland

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The Purple Dragons

As I may or may not have told you already, all three of my boys play soccer. The younger 2 boys play on the same team in the local recreation soccer league. Well, several weeks before the season began; they called and asked me to be the coach for their team. I told them there was just no way I would have the time, however in the end, they roped me into it anyway. In the beginning, we wound up playing our first game, and I didn’t even know the boys names or how they played soccer. Two of our players had never played soccer before and that made it really interesting. It actually turns out that the team was naturally pretty good on that first game day, which was kind of exciting. Well, at practice on the following week, I realized that pretty much all the boys I had on the team were high energy, low attention span, so our first two practices I just worked on trying to get the boys to listen, but that really didn’t go so well. I have an assistant coach, but he really is just a figure head who shows up when he can and really most of the responsibility lies with me. Well, we lost our first 2 games and our practices were out of control, so I called a friend of mine who not only is on the board of the soccer league, but is also a U12 boy’s travel coach and has many years of coaching experience. He came out and showed me some drills and games we could play at our practice. He also gave me some tips, and the practices have been going a little better ever since. I also purchased a whistle, which with these boys was a necessary item to have handy.

We tied our next two games, which I thought was pretty good. Every week I was stressing over my line up and trying to get everyone a chance to play forward and take turns sitting out, and then I truly found the line up that works for us. Well, we only have one game left plus our tournament, but we have won our last two games. The boys are finally learning to pass and communicate on the field. They are doing a little more thinking and backing each other up. Quite honestly, I can’t believe how much better they are playing. Yes, that’s right I am now the proud mama of these boys and am really surprised that I have been able to get any sort of compliance from them at all. Practices are starting to get a little whilly nilly again, but I will reel those boys in next week. I finally have them playing decent soccer while having fun, and I have finally figured up a line up that seems to be really working for all. I am really excited to see how we can do in this tournament in two weeks. I know it will be a lot of fun for the boys and I will have a blast as well. Go Purple Dragons!

Posted on Sunday, May 11, 2008 9:00 PM by Carol Ann

Stalking the Soccer Coaches

My husband is such a character sometimes, I can’t believe him. Yesterday, he got a news paper and on the front cover of the local paper was an announcement that our local high school was having a ribbon cutting ceremony on their new soccer field. We were not even aware that they were creating a new soccer field. Well my son who is currently in travel soccer is 12 ½ and is only about 2 years away from getting to play soccer for the high school team. Well, my husband sees this opportunity to go over there and meet the soccer people at the high school. He makes my son get himself all cleaned up showered and dressed, he is sporting one of those long hair styles that always has his hair looking messy and drives my husband crazy. Anyway, they head over to the school together, and my husband is right away scouting out the varsity soccer coach, whose name he was sure to get straight prior to going over there. Sure enough, he actually knew the assistant coach of the varsity boy’s soccer team, who turned out to be someone he had worked with in the past. He of course also made it a point to meet with the varsity coach and of course had my son speaking with both of them. It was actually a really good thing for my son, because he is the type of kid that gets pulled off task very easily, so sometimes he needs the little reminders about what he is working toward. They also told him that he would need good grades to make the team, which will help him to realize that he needs to stay focused on his academics as well as his soccer playing. Keeping his grades on track has been a really big battle this year, so I am hoping he will work at getting his grades up in the coming year, especially if he thinks he might not be able to play soccer if he doesn’t.

After all was said and done, my husband came home very pleased with himself as he felt like he had helped our son make the necessary connections at the high school. It turns out that a local news crew was up there at the school, so we decided to check out the late night news and see if our son had gotten his picture on camera. Well, needless to say, my son did not get his picture on the news, but my husband was on there twice. Once with the head varsity coach and once with the assistant varsity coach that he was friends with. Well, my son and I harassed him about harassing the coaches and we all got a good belly laugh out of the thing. I don’t think that sometimes my husband really realizes how dorky he really is, but I know that he is well meaning, and I love him for it. I know that he would do anything for his kids and thinks they are the best, and I think that is what makes him so special.

Posted on Tuesday, May 06, 2008 9:57 AM by Carol Ann

I am Big Brother

Maybe it sounds a bit old of me, but I am just not sure I love the technology age that we are in. I think that it invites the potential for people to know more about you than they should. Realize that every time you type information into a Google search, you immediately start getting emails in your inbox about that particular thing that you were researching online. You must be very careful about the information you enter online as anyone can be looking at you and what you are doing. As a mother it concerns me even more, and I have told my kids to not put any information about themselves up online. One day I was watching a show about internet predators, and they showed how putting up even just pictures about yourself and what town you live in could provide a predator with enough information to come after a kid that they “like”. They showed how if a kid puts in their real town or even their state, how if they also put up some pictures of themselves and their friends you can usually find one that either shows a school shirt or a team jersey or something to that affect. That combined with their age, can actually provide an internet predator with a pretty accurate location of your child. It is pretty frightening.

Then they showed a family where the teenage girl had been communicating with what she thought was a kid online and it turned out it was a grown up and he began calling her house and the family was so afraid that they had to move. They didn’t realize that people who are good at this internet stuff can find you even if you don’t tell them exactly who you are. They had tried changing their number, but he just kept getting their new #. It was really scary.

I don’t allow my kids to access a computer that is out of my view. I have two computers and they are both in one of the main rooms of the house, where their father or myself can come walking past at any time. I also installed a program called big brother on the computer that the kids use most often. It was an online down load and cost me about $50.00, but it will save all the words the kid’s type, all their passwords, and also take screen shots at set intervals so you can see exactly what they are accessing. You can hide this in your computer, so the kids don’t even know that it is there. Now I can check out and see exactly who they are talking to and what they are saying. I can enter their my space accounts and see exactly who they are talking to. You can say this is an invasion of their privacy and maybe so, but as a parent, if I need to be responsible for their actions, then I need to know what their actions are so I can be truly accountable. My kids trust me and for the most part, I trust them. I still however realize that they very easily could unknowingly get themselves into trouble in the internet world. After all, they are still just kids.

Posted on Thursday, May 01, 2008 9:56 AM by Carol Ann