Monday, April 14, 2008

Tyler & Football

While we are on the subject of my extraordinary parenting skills, I thought I'd share another of Tyler's injuries. Last fall he finally got to play full contact football with pads. Prior to that, they had only offered flag football in our area. The season was about 8 weeks long, and he loved it.

He would play football everyday if he could. In fact, he plans to be a professional football player when he gets older. I'm all for it - we've made sure to point out to him the football players who have bought homes for their parents, for example. Plus, I've explained to him that then he'll have to go to college since I really don't think the scouts are going to find him in this small town.

Anyway, back to the story, he made it through that whole season without any injuries. I don't even think he had a bruise (he plays the position where you run really fast & catch long passes, so theoretically, as long as he can run fast, the other players won't catch him to hurt him, right?).

Their last game was played in the Metrodome the morning of October 13th. Yeah, no injuries for the whole season. That evening, one of his friends called and asked if he could come over and play football. First he said he couldn't go because we were going to church, but I had already been planning to go Sunday morning so that we didn't have to take the babies out, so I said he could go to his friends and go to church with me the next morning. Tyler is a little argumentative at times, so he of course had to go through 10 minutes of "why does he even have to go to church at all." Normally he is a pretty bright boy, so I don't know what he does not understand about "because I said so." (I've tried using other, more valid reasons, but after I while I get tired and just go with the old standard.) Then he said he wasn't going to go to his friends house at all then (because when he pouts he get really mature like that). I told him he was going because he already told his friend that he would be there & that he would stop by another friends house to see if he could come, too. So he went, pouting all the way, or at least until he was out of the house.

He came back home about an hour or so later, and when he walked inside he was crying. I asked what was wrong. He said he hurt his shoulder trying to tackle someone. So I had him lay down and got an ice pack for it. I might have even given him a Tylenol for the pain, although, I really don't recall. Later on I helped him into bed, and he still said it hurt. I, being a runner up for mother of the year again, told him to try & sleep and we'd see how it felt in the morning. Now in my defense, he did ride his bicycle all the way home from his friends house instead of calling me to come & get him, so really, if he could still ride his bike, how hurt could he be?

Our cordless phones have an intercom system on them, so Sunday morning, BEFORE 9am on my day to sleep in (and I didn't have to get up until 9:15 to make it to church on time) he called my phone and asked me to help him get dressed. I figured we probably needed to go to urgent care - when an 11 year old asks his mom to help him change his underwear, he is obviously hurting pretty bad!


They took some x-rays and it turns out he actually fractured his collarbone - I guess that’s why you should wear pads when playing tackle football! That might also be sign that you shouldn't skip church to go play football.

He was in a sling for about 5 weeks & then the doctor said it was 100% healed.

Luckily for all involved, having to wear the sling did not hamper his ability to play the PS2! Because that would have been tragic for not only him, but also his parents who would have then had to listen to how bored he was!

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