One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

We are in full extra-curricular activities mode. Mainly with Jack, so that means dragging the other two along to practices. We decided to encourage swimming and soccer. Both of these sports seems to come naturally to him.

Not much strategy to swimming, get in the water and swim as fast as you can to the other side. The coach would tell the entire beginner group to go, except for Jack. Once the group would get half way to the other side, he would tell Jack to go and catch 'em. He was amazing, catching and passing the others. Coach said he should move to the intermediate group. Jack is so excited because he gets to wear "fins" now. (I mistakenly called them flippers and got reprimanded, so please use the correct terminology.) I hope he stays with it, he really is very good and still faster than most of the kids in the intermediates.

Soccer is another story. Jack is a bit of a showboat. He likes to kick the ball and wave to the crowd...no kidding. He thinks he's done his job and everyone else can duke it out to get it to the goal. You can see him out there, sportscasting in his head (his lips move) his play by play. At least he is staying on his field and not chasing all the balls. And, he loves it. He started off with one team. He was the tallest guy on the team, most of the other kids were 4 and 5 years old. I kinda questioned this but was told this was the philosophy of the league, mixing older with younger. Blah, blah, blah..something about "kids in Brazil don't discriminate on age, yadda, yadda, yadda". Yeah, this was great until Jack kicked a ball into a poor, unsuspecting 4 year old's face. Jack was yanked to the big kids group...STAT!! We like to call it a promotion. But, now we have to learn about the strategy of the sport..lord help us.