Being told that your child’s behaviour is challenging is hard for any parent to hear.
The other day I had this exact conversation with the coach at Karta’s football club. The coach told me that out of the 30+ kids in his charge, my son in particular was causing so much trouble that they were on the verge of “letting him go”. What the actual fuck!? This was the first time anything had been said to me about the behaviour of my ten year old. I asked the coach why I hadn’t been spoken to about this earlier. The response was less than helpful, in fact my question was deflected and no real reason given. Alarm bells began clanging in my head and in my gut.
Sure, if Karta had been playing up and not doing what was expected of him, I would be on-board and trying to put things right. But out of all of these children, some as young as six years old, Karta was singled out. Something didn’t feel right, it still doesn’t feel right.
Putting this aside for the time being, I decided that I should take the time to really think about why I am feeling the way I am feeling right now. My past is littered with examples of how I listened to my “gut feeling”, and changed something that was happening to me; it’s how I’ve managed to survive this long without coming a cropper. I’ve had a few close shaves, but my intuition has guided me out of danger. In my youth this intuition was not refined. Often I would misinterpret feelings and make the wrong choices. This kept happening to me, until it all got too much and I suffered a nervous breakdown.
I was 25 years old.
My recovery was slow. It took me a couple of years just to piece together what had happened to me. Even now I have gaping holes in my memory, in fact my time-line is still completely out of whack. Needless to say, at that point my intuition was shot to pieces too. I had no way to determine what the best way forward was going to be.
And so I began to drift. Alone and scared I tried to work out what I was going to do to sort myself out. My good friend Spencer became my anchor to reality. He would try to see me whenever he could, and with his support I began to get better. Around the same time a predatory woman took advantage of my vulnerability for her own deviant ends (a tale that I will tell on another occasion). Not only were my gut feelings being kept at bay, my moral compass was taking a battering too. I will never forgive nor forget that mental abuse.
Then in the spring of 2004 I became grounded. I met the love of my life and was transformed. She taught me that it was okay to listen to my inner dialogue, and best of all she re-ignited my intuitiveness. Ever since then I have allowed my intuition to guide me. By listening to it, I broke free from the clutches of those previous destructive relationships and moved forward. I got married and went on to have a son. There were a few more challenges that I had to deal with over the coming years, but in dealing with them my intuition began to grow stronger and stronger. I’ve learned that giving things time to sort themselves out is a good way to hone your gut feeling. Being a parent has also helped to sharpen my intuition. These days I rarely take things at face value, but instead allow my feelings and emotions to guide me, especially when it concerns my child.
Trying to get Karta into any sort of a football club was difficult. He was a complete novice, but loved the game and wanted to learn. The first club that we approached no longer took novices on, instead choosing established players for their ranks. Hardly as inclusive as their website would lead you to believe. Eventually we found a club that had a development team. A place for Karta to learn the game. He started there in September last year, and to date, has still not played in a football match?! After a couple of months my gut was nagging me to listen to it. Something was wrong with the picture.
Karta is there every week, without fail, and yet doesn’t seem to have made any huge gains in his skills as a footballer. Now I’m being told that he’s a problem, yet all of the times that I have stood and watched him training, I haven’t seen any evidence of him being a troublemaker?
My gut is telling me that that I should get him out of there, my head is telling me to be patient and see if things improve.
We shall see.
Until next time, don’t think…….feel.
Adieu.