For the last few hours I have struggled with the decision to post this or not. My husband and I have talked about it, I ran it by my Mom and even talked it over with a couple of amazing friends. I try very hard to use Facebook only for good. When I see negative posts, I cringe and think they may regret that. But today I was told about a post regarding my son. MY SON! It was written without using his name as if it wouldn’t ever get back to me by a former friend, somebody who I once truly cared about. But luckily she lives in a glass house and can safely make public announcements, give examples of bad behavior, and pass judgment about others because their family must never ever make mistakes. The rest of us have so much to learn. For those of you who do not know this story, I am sharing it with the permission of my son. He understands many will read this, and may even SHARE this. He said if I do this, he hopes that people understand he is a good kid that made a mistake, but beyond that – he protected his teammates. His TEAMMATES, that never had to endure any of the punishment he had to, and he designed it that way. It is for him, and because he is concerned people think poorly of him now that I decided to move forward with this. My middle son Payton who is in 8th grade and is 13 years old, is on the modified soccer team. After school they wait in the cafeteria for their coach. It was during this time he learned a lesson in peer pressure that no parent, no friend, no sibling, coach or teacher could EVER teach him. And I thank God that while it was a bad decision, it was over a fairly minor incident. Payton was asked repeatedly to reach his arm up the vending machine and take food. His arm was the only one that was long & thin enough to reach. He knew it was wrong and said “no” many times before finally saying yes. He did it, he stole food and while he ate some of it – he gave most of it away to the multiple teammates that asked him to get it in the first place. Not only did those teammates eat the food – they were the look out while he was getting the food. When he got caught on the second day, one friend said “You’re on your own. I’m out - I’m not getting in trouble for this.” Ouch. (that child has apologized to him since as well as the coach, and the parents reached out to us) Payton would not give up any names, he took the punishment alone. He was asked by the principle who else was involved and he said nobody. But before we knew the entire story – I made my son tell his coach what he did, then I told coach not to play him on his first game of the season….which was to be played the day he would return to school after serving a 2 day out of school suspension. Let me say this again. I TOLD THE COACH NOT TO PLAY HIM. When that day came, we had time to process what happened and while he made an awful decision by giving in to the peer pressure, I am grateful it was just some cookies and not something much more serious. The OTHER kids involved all STARTED that game. The coach knew other kids were involved, and even had conversations with them as well. But my son was punished and punished hard…and chose to take it alone. So, when the coach decided to let him play the last quarter of that first game because SHE felt he was punished enough we were happy to see him out there, with his team, with the kids he protected. Why? Because coach knew the entire story. Remember, when you are talking about kids – they are just that. KIDS. They make mistakes and hopefully learn from them. While I am not proud of his original actions that got him in trouble, I am proud of how he handled the situation in the end. So facebook friends – it is worth repeating. I use this site for good and I may regret this post – but when you poke a Momma bear….she can’t sit quietly. He is upset about this and I am mad as hell another parent used my son as an example publicly, whether his name was used or not doesn’t matter -people knew who the example was about. But, if you do choose to do such a crappy thing, at least know your facts before you post something for all to see.
Posted on: Thu, 09 Oct 2014 02:07:57 +0000
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