Soccer

Today was Owen's first soccer game! He was sooo excited (practice started on Monday, games are on Saturdays). We put him in the 4/5 year old soccer this year, instead of the 3 year old. He did great at the beginning. He ran right out to the field and started warming up with the team.

(He's hidden in this first picture)

O's on the left, laying down. LOL! But at least he was with his team!

In the middle, number 4.

But then they started the game and they don't let all the kids on the field at the same time. Only 5 at a time, which means some of the kids had to sit out for the first half. This rule SUCKED because Owen had to sit out the first half. He completely lost interest because of it. There was a box on the sidelines that had held the shirts (which you can see in the second picture). He kept crawling in it and just laying in there. The coach kept taking him out and he'd go right back in. Finally one of the refs got tired of it and moved the box.... only to have Owen run to where the box was and jump right back in. Oops! This is one of the coaches trying to keep Owen away from the box.

By the time the second half came around and Owen was allowed in the game, he was in meltdown mode and didn't want to play anymore. He was so overstimulated he was just asking to go home :( Which, we obviously let him. It wasn't his fault he didn't get the chance to play until he was so overstimulated there was no chance he could even do it.

Of course, then I also had the pleasure of dealing with the other parents. For those who have never done this soccer thing with kids... some of these parents are NUTS and really competitive. So when they saw Owen crawling in the box... you can imagine what some of the comments were. There was one woman and her older daughter (maybe a preteen) who saw Owen and started commenting about how we needed to get him out of here because he obviously wasn't "a born soccer player" and that he "isn't any help to the team". WTH?!? They had no idea they were making these comments while sitting right next to his mom. Boy were they ashamed when they found out ;) Seriously. This is little kid soccer. They're supposed to be having fun. This is NOT a competitive thing at this age. It's kids running around and having fun. So what if my kid was having his fun by hiding in a box?

There was a mom and grandma there who were pretty supportive, but their son/grandson (the really small one, number 5) is in Owen's daycare class so they know Owen and I.

As for good news though.... Owen's having mega issues with drawing/writing/coloring. Lots of issues popping up to where we can't even get a fine motor skill eval done on him because he refuses to do most of the stuff. Or he starts, gets frustrated and destroys it. But on the way home from soccer he did this....

He is so proud of it!!! (Or, he was until he destroyed it. LOL!). How awesome is that?!? I took a picture so we can show it to his OT next week.

As far as the soccer goes.... Owen loves the idea of playing soccer. He gets so excited when it's a "soccer day". But then he just.... doesn't get it. I think we are going to finish up this season (through October) as much as he wants to do. We will encourage him to participate, but we never force him to. After this season I think we're going to focus on finding other things for him to try. He's been begging to to try football (Lord help me now... LOL!). At the place Jason plays indoor soccer, they also do little kids football. But he needs to be 5 to start, so I think next fall he can do it. We're going to get him back into swimming lessons, because he loves doing that. With that he has a hard time paying attention to the swim teacher so she had one of us sit on the edge with him the whole time. But he's advanced enough (swim wise, not maturity) where he can go to the next level if we want him to.

Argh. It's frustrating. It's just one of those days where it hit me hard that he's not like the other kids and our life is so much different than "typical" 4 year olds lives.