When my son first started school my husband loved that his son was finally old enough to play hockey! At this point we did not know was going on with him, although Mommy had an inkling.
At first we thought this is great! With all of his energy this will be amazing for him… right?
WRONG! He had the energy and desire to skate, what we didn’t realize was putting him on the ice with 20+ other kids (at this age 2 games happen at a time), with parents cheering, coaches yelling, music playing and kids skating by that he couldn’t see their faces so he kept stopping to see if they were a friend, it was all about 20 stimulants too much.
My heart broke every week as I watched my 5-year-old on the ice trying to figure out where he was supposed to be, getting distracted, coaches telling him what to do, but he just wasn’t getting it.
To put it into perspective, we live in Canada and both his parents grew up playing hockey, and his dad was one of the coaches on his team. Every week we told him the only thing that matters was that he had fun. And every week I watched him try his hardest to be good at hockey, he so wanted to be good at hockey… but it was an impossible dream.
This is one of the few times my husband had to deal with his hyperactive, inattentive son one-on-one. I wasn’t there to explain to him what was going on and be the go-between, so that didn’t help either. As my son vied for Daddy’s attention on the ice, my husband was forced to give him time outs on the bench or ask that his son be put with another coach every week, just so he could be a coach to the entire team, not just his son.
At the time we didn’t know exactly why our son was acting like this, and were just trying to survive. We had no diagnosis, so we had even less to explain to other parents, so they just looked at us as bad parents who couldn’t control their child, and most of the time that is how we felt.
Looking back I see that my son was out of his element and looking for a safety net but living in the moment who knew?
