Sometime around mid-November Ilkan started playing soccer each weekend at the Galatasaray football club here in Mersin. He goes each Saturday and Sunday from 10-11am and absolutely loves it! The coaches are great with the kids (for the most part) and run drills for the first 30 minutes and then the kids have a scrimmage for the second 30 minutes. Each week the teams are divided differently so they get used to playing with everyone. Ilkan is a little young for the group but plays well enough that they let him start early. You see all of the other kids (about 16 in total) he practices with were born in 2004 and 2005 and he is technically supposed to wait another year before starting.
Anyways, they really keep track of the score of the games so each week there is a winning team and a losing team, something I completely agree with. The whole, "let's tie everything" that is going on in the US is not helping kids if you ask me. In life sometimes we win and sometimes we lose, it's important to learn how to handle both gracefully. There is one kid that Ilkan plays with that can not handle losing and has a complete fit if his team loses and even starts fights with other kids. It's been bothering both Kaan and I for a while, but we've just been waiting to see if things improve before we said anything. This week this particular child happened to be on Ilkan's team. Ilkan was playing goalie and made the mistake of picking up the ball when he was outside of the goalie's box, an honest mistake for a 5 year old if you ask me. Anyways, this kid starts going off and yelling at Ilkan because they lost possession and no one said a thing to him. I was up on my feet about ready to storm the field and level the kid. A few of the other mom's looked at me and said that as a mom there are some things we just need to ignore. WHAT!!!???? Are you flipping kidding me!!
One thing I need to explain is how the system works in Turkey. The poor sport child's father is a doctor and most of the parents are like bowing down to the guy. I don't know what other people do for a living and it's none of my business, but clearly they feel they are at a lower status level. (Thank god we do pretty well, so I don't think this is an issue for us, but in my opinion is does not matter.) I know this is going to sound crazy to those of you in the United States, but it is truly how things work. For me, I don't give a rats ass what status level you happen to fall into. If your kid starts yelling at mine for something this ridiculous, there will be hell to pay. And, by the way, I don't care if you are the best damn doctor in the world, you are clearly lacking in the parenting department!
Ok, on to the rest of the story. I wanted to go and talk to the coach, which I could have done, but I knew things needed to be expressed in a certain way and while my Turkish is good, I wanted to be sure our point was expressed clearly. So, I called up Kaan and he jumped right on the ball. Poor guy was ready to kick some butt from Istanbul!! So, I guess both Mama and Papa Bear's claws were drawn! Ilkan was given permission from us to turn around and hit the kid the next time it happened and the coaches were made aware so there would be no confusion! Let's just say the next day at practice the coaches took some time to talk to poor sport and he was like an angel! Oh, and after practice the coach said to say hi to Kaan Bey (Mr. Kaan)! I'm pretty sure my hubby can be pretty scary when he gets angry and you mess with his kid! Let's just hope the good vibes continue!
Can you believe it...as mom's we just need to ignore some things! Come on ladies...don't let your kid get bullied!
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