An Open Letter to the Parents and Coaches That Fought at My Sons Football Game

My son is 11 years old and that boy LOVES football. He loves everything about it. The grit the grind, his teammates, the way he bonds with dad after a huge win.. and with mom after a tough loss.

That was until the past couple of months.

I understand he is getting older, games are getting more intense, kids are getting bigger and hitting harder but there is absolutely no reason that the parents need to get crazier. There have been fights at the end of two of his games the past few months. The first one he cried. He had never seen anything like that before. The second one he was just down right scared. Everyone was.

Listen to me. You are parents. You are coaches. You have one main job as an adult. That job is to inspire and teach the next generation. Especially if you are someone MY child looks up to.  You aren't doing that when you are on the sideline using extremely vulgar language, and you most definitely are not doing that when you are in the middle of the field throwing punches. The middle of the field where my husband and I have worked hard to teach our son he needs to shake hands and tell the opposing team "great game" no matter what the outcome.. yea, that middle of the field.

We have worked entirely too hard raising our son to be better than that, better than you. We can't allow you to tarnish this game that he loves and his respect for adults. So please, think about who's looking up to you. Who's lives you have the opportunity to change for the better. Every day of our lives we have the ability to mold these kids to be good and to DO good in this crazy world.

As parents it takes us years to teach our children kindness, and one second for the world to destroy our work. We are trying to raise a boy that turns into a man we feel comfortable launching into the world. It takes a village. We will continue to teach him empathy, that he won't always get his own way, that he should take responsibilities for the wins and losses and lastly real men don't need to make people feel small to make themselves feel large.

"Children are great imitators. So give them something great to imitate." -Anonymous