Over the past year or so, I have noticed a rallying cry amongst radio personalities to condemn the practice of handing out trophies at the end of the season for Little League sports. This is absurd. Every single year I played any type of Little League sport, I got a trophy. If we won the championship, we got a special trophy that dwarfed the trophy we received for participation. This trophy signified that we beat the tar out of our opponents and they knew it!

Receiving a trophy – whether you win a championship or not – is a physical memory of the season played. It is remembering the other kids on your team. It is something you can proudly put on your dresser that reminds you that you gave it your all and had fun doing it. There is not a kid (in history) that received an end-of-the-season trophy and then mistook that to mean that they really did win the championship despite losing most of their games.

But what did they remember? They remembered the plays where they came together and achieved something against the odds before them. They remember goofing off at practice and making new friends. They remembered the cheering parents mistaking their game for a pro sport and screaming at the top of their lungs. They remembered how it felt to win together. That trophy cements these memories.

Last year, I coached my son’s basketball team. We didn’t lose a game. At the end of the season, my primary concern was that each child enjoyed playing the game and hopefully I was a part of making that happen.  I wanted them to understand that it took every member of the team to achieve the success we attained. Moreover, I hoped each child grew as a player and a person during the course of the season – that they were able to take on a larger challenge and succeed. [You should have seen the precision of our Box-In-One!]

Yes, we won. That is supposed to be the end result, but these games are about so much more than winning (and I am a strong advocate of winning). If we had lost that last game and not won the championship, would these kids still have deserved a trophy? Of course they should, because the game is just so much more than the last team standing.

Pondering: Post my divorce, I have chosen not to take my children to a separate church apart from the one that they already go to with their mom. Need to research how other divorced dads are doing this.

I’ve just had an epiphany: 7 & 8 year old boys play basketball because it is supposed to be fun. I have just spent an hour teaching them the opposite. I am my son’s basketball coach. Right about now, he is not too happy about that, and with good reason. You see, they are 7 & 8 year old boys and girls. This means that they are not going to be able to process everything I know in one hour. I just made basketball not fun for them. Big lesson for me. Don’t do what you did tonight.

Every experience we have should be a rewarding one. Why not? I do believe that it matters if you win or lose, but that could mean different things in different situations. I want everyone to be involved so I emphasize passing. Passing means nothing if you can’t dribble more than 3 dribbles in any direction. Some knocks are going to have to be taken. Losing will be worse if the kids are not having fun. Time to look for fun, practice games for next practice. I’m given myself a coaching makeover…starting now. Tone it down. Lower the excitement and let them have time for craziness.

Tonight, I was the modern day version of Bobby Knight…okay, maybe not him at his behavioral worst, but way, way, way too serious. We could run the table and still not get a bid to the NCAA tourney. I think we have some room for fun.

Time to call my son and see how bad the fallout is.

Update: We ended up winning the championship going undefeated. What I learned:

1) Kids, even young kids, respond well to being given responsibility.

2) You don’t have to baby kids. They are much tougher than society is giving them credit for.

3) Parents are much tougher than they act if you just give them a chance to allow their children to hit the floor every once and awhile.

4) Children are in much, much worse shape than when I was playing all day long. I had kids actually wanting to sit out. I yelled at them appropriately. They are still awesome – don’t get me wrong – but I had no response to the child telling me that they wanted to sit out.

5) Children love to win and they will work hard to do so.

6) It is okay to lose with the team you have on the floor.

Time. Time. Time…and any way that I can spend time with my two kids is a plus. This experiment is worth taking a look at. My plan is to weave this experiment in with making french fries (or mashed potatoes). This way, we cook together and learn together.

This is essentially an experiment that shows you the power of bacteria. It shows the difference of  what will happen when you handle sterilized potatoes with unwashed hands and washed hands. Good lesson. I plan on including information about washing your hands after using the bathroom.

The Potato Washing Hands Experiment

I don’t want to come off as the dad that has everything perfected. I’m not. Need something fixed? Probably not your first call, although I am improving. Take the other day…I’m in Home Depot with my kids because I damn sure know that I’m going to need tools for my son’s bike and my new bike rack. So we are there for a set of Allen wrenches and whatever else jumps into the buggy. Don’t you just want to build a house every time you walk into this place?

Anyway, I suck with tools and really don’t have a go-to set at home, so I buy a cheap screwdriver set that has about 200 different bits just waiting for you to screw the world. The highlight? It came in a case that displayed all the bits! Very exciting.

So we get home and I pull out my son’s new bike and get to tighten the handle bars and adjust the seats! Again, exciting. But actually, it was kind of nice to be a to do these adjustments. My son would never have been able to ride with the seat so high. Hold on…I’m feeling just a bit like a proud father as he rode a 20″ bike like a king in circles around me. 4 times running beside him and he politely tells me to get the hell away from him because he can do it himself.

In kind, I beat his ass 10 to 1 in basketball after he challenged me from a “I’ve just ridden my bike” high. I let him get the 1 so he wouldn’t cry like a baby. I told him it was punishment for not being able to dribble left handed. I love that kid.

P.S. A moron could have put up the bike rack.

Last year (for Christmas) I got my daughter an incredibly cool bike. Some awesome lady actually took it home for me from Toys R Us because I was in a car.  I bought a bike and I was in a car.  No hint there. I got to play with my daughter and her bike I think…yeah…1 time the whole year because the bike resides at her mom’s house and well, you know.

That’s 1 time in 1 year. Awesome bike, though. This year: I buy my 7 year old son a knock-you-off-your-ass neon orange Tony Hawk BMX bike. This time, the bike is small enough to fit into the back seat of the car. Then it hit me like the genius I am: “I should by a bike rack so the kids and I can go ride on nearby trails and spend some quality time together. Hey! I don’t have a bike. I should go get one.”

So here I am today riding along with my new bike rack thinking that I am the smartest man in the world and that I was probably the first guy to ever figure this bike rack thing out. Genius. $50 bucks WalMart.

Take my kids to the biggest park in Atlanta the very next chance I get .

Downloaded the iPhone app, War. This is a quick moment you can have with your child with a competitive spirit. The fun part is you can shout “WAR!!!” together.

Little moments are the ones they remember.

Parenting with the iPhone…sort of.

Got my tail whipped (by my six-year-old son) yesterday playing ping-pong on my iPhone.

It is amazing what .99 cents will do when it comes to bonding with your child. The app is Skyworks Table Tennis. I do think, however, that the app worked against me to help my son win. Just saying.

Small Activities With Your Children Are Huge

So my daughter loves to read. It is a bond that we have: she knows how proud I am of her because I always let her know it. She will call me just to tell me what page she is on while reading any particular book. We have started a reading club together. I’ll say this ad nauseam…it is the small things that matter. Toys are toys. Candy is candy. My children love them both. But they could leave them at the door when they are with me because we do other things. I’ll read along with my six-year-old son as my daughter is curled up next to me reading her own book. Tonight, I was reading Treasure Island with my son. This particular version of this book is a lighter version meant for this type of reading. We take turns reading a chapter each night we are together. He loves it. My daughter got the idea to get the longer version of the story (at her school library) and read that as my son and I read our book. Very cool. We can discuss it after we are done.

My children also like to write and animate their own stories, so I got the idea to maybe get some books on drawing sometime soon so they can add to their drawing skills – which in turn would make them even more proud of their animated stories. But tonight we went online for drawing tutorials. Both my daughter and son sat in front of the computer and went through tutorials on drawing dogs. The response was amazing. They loved it. Not only did they have a blast, I felt like I could see their self-esteem rise before me. A simple dog! It is not that it is so easy. It is just brilliantly easy and equally effective.

These online tutorials could not be easier. It is like being an activity leader and delegating the work to a professional in the field of your choice. God bless the internet (as long as you have it porn protected!).