Teamwork as Teammates
This weekend, I tried to take my 5 year old daughter and 4 year old son to the playground to play soccer. Play is a very loose word, it’s more of just running around. I don’t think my kids minded and as long as there was enough laughing and being silly, they would have a good time.
I set up some pop-up soccer goals to mimic a small soccer field and we played a few games to get warmed up. My kids like dodging the soccer ball as I try to kick it into them while they run back and forth. They also like to score some goals (who doesn’t?) and to keep count to make sure they have more than me. One day I’ll be able to beat them :)
After we got the silliness out of the way, I wanted to spend some time getting them used to passing the ball back and forth to work together as teammates. I gave them an example where if they stood too close or if one person had the ball and never passed, it would be easy for me to guard them on defense. If they stood far apart, they could pass it to each other and I would have to run back and forth between them to try and play defense, which is really hard to guard.
My kids seemed to understand this and the first time they dribbled down the field, my daughter passed it to my son and he kicked it in the goal. That’s a win. The second time down, my son decides to stand far apart, but instead of being along the same line as her, he was directly in front of the goal waiting for a pass. My daughter gets frustrated that he wasn’t doing the same thing as last time and after some explaining that it was actually good that he was in front of the goal, it still wasn’t enough to satisfy her and she stormed off
Eventually, she cooled off and we all played together a bit more in the playground, but I learned my lesson. Too much soccer is a bad thing since they are still learning and mainly want to be silly. Also, I think they were probably tired or hungry or both. That’s always a common cause for big feelings. Even though we are close by to home, having snacks and drinks are important to take a small break to refuel. I’ll make sure we break up the soccer into different chunks of time and see how things go, but hopefully the next time will have a better outcome when we are doing more of the “learning” part of soccer.
