On Stopping the Spread of Dandelions...and Cleats

You know when you're out in the yard and you glance over at your neighbor's plot?  Then you see it - a bunch of dandelions, soon to go to seed, and infiltrate your oasis.  Herbicide, weed wacker, napalm...so many choices to deal with the threat.  You know you are going into battle...

With a mind that makes some odd, random connections between situations, I had a similar thought after my son's soccer game last weekend.  You see, first, a few weeks back, there was one player sporting a pair of those, admittedly cool, Nike Mercurial cleats.  Then, last week, I saw a couple more...or more importantly MY SON saw a couple more.  You see my son is a bit like my lawn - my lawn accepts dandelion seeds from others, my son begs for cool cleats he sees on others.

If you are a parent of a kid who plays sports, you know that there are two sides to the story.  You want them to engage, to have passion for the sport, to watch their heroes on TV and emulate them on the pitch.  But the other side of it is they want to look like their heroes, and that costs a lot of dough.

I'm currently facing a constant barrage of requests from my little, 11-year old Ronaldo-idolizer for a pair of Nike Mercurials.  I decided, OK, can't stop the spread of Dandelions, but at least maybe I can manage the siege.  I came up with a plan:

I recently read a book by Claudio Reyna (it's available on my Amazon link on the right side of my blog) and he talked about how his dad had insisted from an early age that he be responsible for every piece of his equipment and kit if he wanted to play soccer.  He had to clean his cleats, shin guards and ball, make sure his practice and game uniform was clean and ready to go.  I liked that, and realized we had for too long looked over our son and taken care of a lot of these things for him to the point where he didn't have his shin guards in his bag when we showed up for one recent game.

So I implemented a plan starting last weekend.  I told my son that since his Adoption Day (we celebrate the day when his papers were finalized) was coming up in June, and he had a few weeks left in the Spring season  prior to starting his summer league after Adoption Day, he could show me the responsibility that would earn him a pair of Nike Mercurials.

I told him that he would have sole responsibility for getting everything together before practice, and for sorting his dirty laundry, disinfecting his shin guards (man, those things stink after practice!), and wiping down his boots and practice ball and getting it all back and ready for the next outing.  So far, so good, he's batting 1000 on these new duties - proving if a kid wants something bad enough he'll work for it.  There's no longer a yard sale of his stuff across the floor of the garage after each practice and game.  And me and his mom don't have to smell his shin guards anymore, win-win!

And I've got extra time now to kill weeds, sweet.