While trying to reason with one of my girls during a recent sibling Battle Royal, I found myself pulling sports references from my parenting toolbox. Having played, coached, and refereed sports since I was 6 years old, how sport relates to life is often my go to.
For those of us who are siblings or who have more than one child, one kid feeling that the consequences of a quarrel are unfair, is commonplace and this situation did not break from this trend.
During a post game conversation with one of our kids, they grabbed a piece of paper and a pen from my desk, and wrote down how similar their actions were on this specific play. “Brilliant!”, I thought. I then proceeded to take the pen and paper, and drew my own version.
The two stories didn’t line up, so the chart I drew was based on each of their versions of the story, but there was one difference. There was a witness within earshot that heard the verbal denouement of the argument, and as a referee of my favorite three teams, there have been similar previous infractions that as an official, I am conscious of each time these teams play.
My call on the play was that although one tripped the skater and the other slashed back, it was the malay of punches by one that resulted in a minor penalty for one, and misconduct penalty assigned to the other.
Of course these are all metaphors, but sports fans know that it’s the retaliation that gets noticed and in this case, the referee would have handed out a two-minute tripping penalty for one player, and an ejection from the game from the other.
I have spent many days and likely hours of conversation with each of them. I’ve talked about my expectations for how we treat one another in our home, how we can work on our instigation of matters, as well as the importance of recognizing when a person isn’t in a good headspace and when we might be able to come back later to address a need, or bring a parent in to mediate the discussion. It doesn’t excuse the actions in this case but when we care about the future of our relationships with those we love, respecting our breaking points and what we need in times of conflict and at our lowest points, goes a long way in ensuring everyone feels respected and safe to be an imperfect human – which is what we all are.
Discipline hasn’t always come easy for me for reasons I won’t discuss here, but it has resulted in my letting them mostly just play the game – which sports fans have surely witnessed over the years, can result in a dirty game with plenty of roughhousing. Thursday was just such a game and as a referee in our home, it was time to get much stricter on the ground rules for our arena.
Neither kids are really happy with the call on the play, but we do our best to find balance and to recognize all factors that led up to the bench clearing brawl.
Referees are hated by players and fans alike. Not unlike parents of teenagers. The former with the toughest officiating job in all of sport – calling the game between their favorite teams – their children.