Last night I took Salem to stroke clinic. It was a really light crowd. Salem only had two other kids in her lane. One was a little girl who was really fast, she has to be on swim team somewhere. The other was an unpleasant little boy. I say unpleasant because saying horrible, ugly, or rotten could be considered name calling, which I just explained to my daughter as being unacceptable.
Anyway, Salem is a good swimmer. She's not a fast swimmer but for 6 I think she's pretty impressive. Anytime Salem would come close to passing this boy he'd do anything to stay ahead of her. He'd stop doing the stroke he was supposed to and freestyle, he'd push off the ropes, and finally he started hitting her in the face with his kick board (the coach never noticed). I just about lost my mind! I wanted to go down there and wap that brat in the head with a kick board and yell, "You like that? Does that feel good you little punk?" I'd never let one of my kids get away with something like that but his mom was reading her book and never saw a thing.
Then he and the little girl started teasing Say Because she was so much slower than they were. When it was over I hugged my sweet little girl and we talked about what to say when people act like that. Now I know what a friend meant when she said, "It doesn't matter if a person is 2 or 92 when they hurt your kid's feeling you just want to punch them in the face."
Did you mention this to the coach or the organization that is sponsoring this clinic? They need to be more aware of things like this.
Posted by: Nonnie | Saturday, December 06, 2008 at 07:24 AM