Learning to live with disappointment

Wednesday nights are Noah’s soccer game nights.  According to the schedule that we had the game was at 8:05 pm.  This was nice as we could have a leisurely dinner all together, which is a rarity with two kids in soccer 3 days a week plus us running 3 days a week, and whatever other chaos we can add into the mix.  Dinner is over and Nancy and I spend some quality time over coffee on our fancy new deck in the front of the house, just chatting about our day, plans for the weekend, etc.  We have nothing to sit on out front, so we just park our butts on the steps, which is something that usually bugs me; people sitting on the steps.  That's because I often need to get up or down the steps and there isn’t enough room for the person sitting on the steps and me walking on the steps.  This usually results in me squeezing to the side trying not to step on the person seated, the seated person squeezing over to their side and trying not to get stepped on.  Inadvertently, someone often gets stepped on regardless of this charade. 

Time to get ready for the game and off we go to the field.  We get there and the game is oddly already in progress.  "What the heck?" we all say, the game was supposed to start at 8:05 pm.  Noah saunters over to the team and coach and we can see his head bow low with disappointment.  He does manage to get subbed in for the last 10 minutes of the game and seems to have some fun.  He chats briefly with the coach afterwards and saunters back to us at the end of the game, shoulders slumped over.  Nancy says to me “oh great, get ready for him, he’s going to be moody.”  And of course he is, as he says the coach said the game started at 6.  We walk back to the car apologizing to Noah for missing the game.  And it’s little consolation as I say “well at least you got to play for a few minutes of the game.”  Yup, this sounds weak even to me. 

Home we go in a quiet car ride as we’re sure to be treated to Noah being moody for the rest of the night and possibly tomorrow.  His bad moods usually result in bugging the crap out of his sister until she starts yelling at him, talking back to us in really sarcastic tones.  Basically he takes it out on us, which is something I really try to curb as people often react to disappointment in life in this manner, and I think this is crappy.  Not something I want him to learn.

 We chat about the situation a bit at home and I come up with some hopefully better sounding words of wisdom.  “Yes, you have a right to be upset at the situation.  I’m not going to take that away from you.” So basically I’m saying “don’t ignore or close off those emotions, but you need to not direct your anger towards others."  I’m trying not to say “don’t express them in any way, just bottle them up and don’t show any emotion.” I find this is often what we do as adults and it never leads anywhere good for us.

So Noah walks away and sulks into his room, comes out after a while and plugs into his ipod to tune out the world.  This isn’t necessarily a good alternative either.  I sit on the couch and turn on the tv and think “sweet, I get to have a night off everything and park my butt on the couch and be lazy.  Have some ME time.”

Instead I look over at Noah shutting himself off from the world and say “hey, want to throw the football around?” Something he often asks of me, but I seldom seem to have the time anymore. 

My thinking on dealing with disappointment is “if I can just get some activity or something to distract me for a while, hopefully these feelings will subside or not seem quite so overwhelming anymore.” It often works well for me, or maybe I’m just avoiding the problem outright. 

So he concedes and we throw the football around outside.  Soon we’re chatting; I’m being goofy and trying to get him to laugh.  Next he’s smiling, laughing, and being over the top goofy himself and we’re having a grand time, and he’s not moody anymore.  Ok, my job is done.  Can we stop now, because my arm is killing me?  Nope, keep throwing the dang ball.    

After about what seems like an hour, “hey dad, can we throw the baseball next?”

“Sure, why not, I don’t need my arm for work or running or…”