difficult child got sold

[SuZir]

He is ecstatic, I'm not. It is still pending medicals but that shouldn't cause any problems. It is a short term rental job to much higher level league to cover the injured player, approximately 6 to 8 weeks and will take difficult child very close to transfer deadline, so if he can't line up the next gig while still there, he may end up to their junior team for the rest of the season. While that would not be the right competitive level for difficult child, it would not be the end of the world either.

This will be impressive reference for difficult child and he is paid well, much better for these two months than the worth of his whole season contract. The team that sold him is paid even better. And when the team has not done that well as the whole, selling difficult child who was on the one year deal and doing excellent was something we knew could happen. And I'm sure him being a total pain in the butt lately made parting ways even easier for them.

As I said, difficult child is really happy about it, but I'm not. I see it as difficult child getting a Get out of Jail Free-card after painting himself in the corner all by himself. Not good for him. Neither do I like the fact that he will have three different teams for this season. He is way too young to become a hired gun or a journeyman. That is emotionally tough job even for seasoned pro, 20-year-old kid should have no business into that. Especially 20-year-old kid with social issues. And the whole attitude and framework you have to adapt to do that is basically the opposite of what difficult child should be learning. He should learn to bond and attach and be a good team player. Being a rental teaches him to be cynical, not to trust anyone, not to attach or bond and always put himself first.

But yeah, he is happy, it could be a great opportunity if he can do well, coaches of the new team do know what they get in difficult child (one of the coaches has been coaching difficult child in developmental program during earlier years and certainly know his reputation) and the team is more international so the main operational language is English that will make it little easier for difficult child. Of course he is back to being the runt and almost no one close to his age around, but it is not like he could had made any friends in two months anyway.

I try, but I have hard time being happy for him.

 

[dstc_99]

Honestly difficult child needs to learn to attach to the right people but do you really want him to learn to attach to his team TOO much. Reality is he is a professional athlete. Making short term friends is part of the deal. I will once again compare it to the Army. When we make a friend we know we may lose them soon. IE: they could be getting moved. It happens all the time. We learn to make the best of the time we have and then if it is a real friendship maintain it long distance. You lose people along the way but the good ones are still there.

difficult child has a hard time with the drama, being a temporary piece of the puzzle leaves him outside the drama as long as no one is hating on him for being a fill in. Plus he can take the good and leave the bad. He doesn't have to learn to love the crappy coach he just has to survive them for a little while.

I guess what I am saying is that while you may want difficult child to attach it may be that he doesn't need it so much. As a woman I know I have felt that way at times when dealing with my husband and kids. I want them to have that warm and fuzzy safe haven but reality is some jobs and some groups are more of a keep your head down and do your job situation. in my humble opinion pro sports seem to be that way. Athletes learn to play hard together and then walk away when a trade/injury happens. If they make friends along the way fine. If not, men in particular, just don't seem to care that much.

You say difficult child is ill suited to picket fences so he may love the ability to move around and do what he loves without the commitments. Plus some people like myself prefer short term jobs where we can go in and do the job and then move on.

 

[Liahona]

I am using family life (siblings) for the attachment and social skills learning for my kids. Maybe difficult child can get what he needs through a different way than the team? Is the new team going to have the amazing program for him that his old one did?

 

[dstc_99]

I asked the husband about this one because I felt maybe I was being a little harsh. He seemed to agree that men don't necessarily bring friendship to work with them. Not that they can't have friends at work just that it isn't so important to them. I guess my point is sometimes what we want isn't what they want or need.

MEN they are so confusing

 

[SuZir]

By friends, attachment and bonding I wasn't really meaning any lifelong ties. Those don't happen most of the time in those circles and lifestyle is nomadic. There are some who end up to be a 'Club icon' and may play even their whole career for the same team, but that has never been the goal with difficult child. What I meant were more the basic team player skills and being part of the team. Or at least pretending.

And by friends I meant someone to have a lunch with or chat while warm-ups or even occasionally playing console game in someone's flat at the evening. Or being invited to bar hopping when half of the team is going together. That kind of things, not BFF stuff.

difficult child is capable of deep attachments, that is not something I would be worried about. While not many close friends, he is very attached to our family, both me, husband and Joy but also our extended family. He also has this mentor figure he is close with. He did have age appropriately deep romantic relationship for two years and so on. Deep attachment don't worry me much with him. He could have more friends, but it is not like he didn't have some very close relationships with people.

However, difficult child team skills are borderline to being 'locker room cancer.' He did learn a lot while in the last (and year before) season team. But he still has ways to go and being a hired gun will not be helping. They do expect certain commitment to the team from the players and that certainly doesn't come naturally for difficult child. While he is so very over competitive that he would never not do his very best at the game, he has had hard time getting his head wrapped around the idea that he should be interested if they win or lose when he isn't playing. Or even being interested if they win or lose the games he plays in and not just if he himself did well or not.

difficult child has been known to throw a temper tantrum after important win, because he wasn't happy with his own game. Or to be totally nonchalant after devastating loss, because he did well. And I certainly hope that I never again have to read a game recap with whole paragraph of how difficult child spent whole game showing only interest to support structures of the arena and almost got a ball on to his head because not watching a game a bit, when he was on the bench and didn't play (yes he was protesting and pouting because of the coach decision not to give him playing time.)

His former longer time team did work with him on these a lot and he did show some improvement. Started to show interest even when not playing himself. Congratulating or trying to console team mates after they did well/bad, celebrating wins even when bench and so on. That kind of things are very important in his profession and I do fear he may backslide, if he doesn't get to be a real part of the team again soon.

And of course, let's face it. Team management and coaches treat their long term investments and their rentals very differently. difficult child is still in the place of needing lots of careful development; rentals don't get that.

Liahona: difficult child will certainly not get the type of support he had in his last year team. But situation may be better with coaches than in his team this fall. The original coaches in this team were fired little over a month ago and difficult child really didn't respect his new, very inexperienced, positional coach and while head coach was a solid pro difficult child's behaviour was backsliding a lot. In this new team difficult child will have one coach he does know a little before and he does respect him. And the coach is certainly experienced and used to handle also the hard-headed cases.

 

[DDD]

How much farther away will he be? Does he know any of the staff or players on his new team? I'll cross my fingers that this is a giant step toward his long range goals. Hugs DDD

 

[SuZir]

DDD: From our point of view he is about as far as before. Still less than three hour flight away. He does know that one coach a bit. He has been consultant on some camps difficult child has attended and junior development programs he has been part of. More importantly that coach knows about difficult child, the good and the bad and likely also the ugly. And my guess is, that he is the one who wanted difficult child there for this stint. If he takes a liking to difficult child, it could be very good thing for difficult child's career. He has some major pull and while difficult child is not yet ready to be a permanent member of the team in the level he tends to work with, still good word from him, or even the fact that they took difficult child now, can help difficult child a lot in finding a good developmental place for next season.

difficult child's last season was rough both on the field and out of it, that he was considered extremely risky choice last spring and that took him down quite a few pegs for posts he actually wanted to get in. This fall difficult child has been proving himself on the field and that this coach is willing to take him in, even for the short term, knowing full well his issues in all their brutality, is a big thing. In difficult child business, especially with young players, experienced coaches judgements count a lot. And while difficult child has one of those in his side in his mentor figure, he may be considered too biased because his long time fondness to difficult child is well known. So even getting this chance to train and show himself under this coach could be golden even if difficult child is not likely to actually play much.

But if it doesn't help him score one of those developmental posts for next season I'm scared he may end up rental and 'in-between' for longer time and that could be very bad for his development. (And those developmental posts are extremely competed for and can easily just disappear, like difficult child's last two year's post. Kid who got the post after him has been totally screwed, I think haven't had any playing time in two months and counting, because they decided that developing him is not a priority at all. There were some signs of this already last spring and it was one of the reasons difficult child was also eager to leave.)