Weekend Journal

Screams from downstairs pulled me away from planning my Machiavelli lecture. I found Steve struggling to put shin guards on Ian. It was his first day of special education soccer, and the day was doomed from the beginning.

Ian hates socks. Hates them. Every morning, I have to make sure that the seams of the socks are correctly lined up on the top of his toes, and that he's wearing the kind with just enough stretch in them.

The shin guards and the itchy soccer socks were an impossibility. Steve thought that he would want to wear them to be like Jonah, but he pushed the matter a bit too far. Ian ripped them off at the first opportunity. With a red face and tears streaming down his face, he said a loud "no" to soccer.

We took him anyway, but he refused to get out of the car. We left him there, got the T-shirt, and watched the car from the distance.

I was disappointed, because Ian has been wanting to join Jonah's soccer practice all fall. I thought he was ready for it and might have gotten into it, if the sock incident hadn't happened.

Steve and I joked around with Jonah, so that he didn't feel too bad about Ian. We chatted with the other parents and watched the scene from the sidelines. Only about half the kids were on the field. Most of the other kids, all youngsters with disabilities of some sort, were crying on the sidelines. This was way too much pressure for them. One chubby kid sat in a pile of dirt and threw the dusty particles up in the air.

The parents dealt with the soccer fiasco in different ways. Some laughed at the scene of crying kids and hugged their kids a little harder. It's only soccer, they said. Others were too caught up in the own private disappointment. One woman told me of her struggles with her two disabled kids and gave me a long list of the things that they can't do.

We coaxed Ian out of the car eventually, and we all had a grand time on playground next to the field for an hour.

As time goes on, I am much more comfortable with the world of disabilities. I think it helps that I have never placed a whole lot of stock in normality. I think one of the keys to good parenting of kids of all abilities is to not worry about the shin guards or the checklists of perfection that we get from experts and teachers. Perspective.